APPENDIX IV
The following is intended to serve as a simplified guide to a complex subject: the mechanics of armoured combat in 1944 Normandy.
EVOLUTION AND EXPERIMENT
In 1944, the tank had existed for barely a single generation. Through the 1920s and 1930s, tank tactics and design were still evolving, and in the absence of a major war they evolved slowly. The upkeep, manning, and transport of tanks is expensive; their loss even more so. Many British generals doubted the need for heavy tanks (and many a British politician questioned their cost) in an army still very much oriented to policing the Empire.
As the Second World War developed, Britain continued to experiment with tanks of all varieties: light and heavy, fast and slow; all had their supporters and detractors. The fighting in North Africa taught some lessons and reinforced some prejudices. In particular, it was in the latter stages of that campaign that Montgomery adopted the principles which were to inform his direction of tank warfare in North West Europe. Essentially, Montgomery rejected the widespread belief that two sorts of tank were necessary. According to the accepted wisdom, tanks were needed to fulfil two distinct roles: heavy tanks for infantry support, land battleships which could afford to sacrifice speed for heavy armour since they would only be required to move at an infantry pace; and faster, lighter ‘cruiser’ tanks for reconnaissance and exploitation. Montgomery’s tidy mind rebelled against this diversity. His ideal was to be a ‘capital’ (or later, ‘universal’) tank which could do both jobs.1 The idea had some merit. British tank design in the early war years lacked focus and the consequent volume production of useless models was highly wasteful of resources. Had there been a truly ‘universal’ tank available to Montgomery, the policy might have borne fruit. But there was not. For all its success, even the Comet of late 1944 was still a linear descendant of the ‘cruiser’ tank line; only later did a British ‘universal tank’ take shape, first in the form of the post-war Centurion and later the Chieftain, a design which suffered from many faults but nevertheless became the first true ‘main battle tank’ of the British Army. In mid-1944, the Allies were committed to invading Normandy with the tanks available. For the armoured divisions, this meant ‘cruisers’: Shermans and Cromwells. And even with his dislike of the dedicated ‘infantry tank’ concept, Montgomery could not ignore the existence in England of over 500 forty-ton Churchill tanks, grouped in three brigades trained in infantry cooperation. Which, given the close country that awaited in Normandy, was just as well.
During the Normandy campaign, the British and American armoured divisions were primarily equipped with the American Sherman tank. It was this model (and its British cousin the Cromwell, of which more later) which General Montgomery had in mind when he famously expressed total confidence in the tanks he commanded. ‘We have no difficulty in dealing with German armour, once we have grasped the problem.’ Lacking any realistic chance of re-equipping his armoured forces in the short term, Montgomery could not afford to allow morale to be undermined, and struck back at his critics. ‘In cases where adverse comment is made on British equipment such reports are likely to cause a lowering of morale... It will generally be found that when the equipment is used properly and the tactics are good, we have no difficulty in defeating the Germans.’ He dismissed reports from the battlefield as ‘alarmist’ and the work of ‘officers with no responsibility and little battle experience’. (The American General Bradley could afford to appear more conciliatory, recognizing that the ‘willingness to expend Shermans offered little comfort to the crews who were forced to expend themselves as well.’)
Monty’s critics would not be silenced. They argued that Allied armour in the Normandy campaign was hopelessly outclassed; in particular they demanded more heavy tanks, suggesting that even the Churchill was not heavy enough.2 Among other experiments, ‘The Old Gang’ of First World War tank designers had earlier been commissioned to develop a fortress on tracks, endearingly christened ‘TOG’. Some have argued that this 80 ton monster, equipped with 100mm armour and a 17 pounder gun, would have been ideal for Normandy. Others have dismissed it as a ridiculous throwback to a past era. Ultimately, TOG’s fate was determined by neither argument: she was consigned to Bovington as a museum piece largely due to the perceived impracticality of transporting her, by rail and ship, from England to any European battleground, let alone the deserts of North Africa where her bulk and snail’s pace (under eight miles per hour) would have been less than ideal.3 Replacements for the Sherman or Churchill would not be available for Normandy.
THE PROBLEM OF STATISTICS
Accounts of tank fighting in Normandy frequently give details of different tanks’ armour thickness and gun calibre. Some go further, relating such statistics as muzzle velocities and degrees of armour slope. These are all well and good (when accurately reported, which is often not the case), but they still do not tell the whole story. Even today, attempts to model accurately the effects of antitank fire against tanks require massive computer power and still may not provide conclusive answers.
One major problem lies with the raw data. Surviving Second World War weapons data are often unreliable. Different armies’ records of weapons effectiveness are found to be based on different assumptions: differences in armour quality, slope, projectile velocity, impact angles, and other variables. Official test firings may have been carried out using high quality rounds unrepresentative of ammunition in the field: it is true of most Second World War armies that wartime-produced ammunition was of more variable (and generally lower) quality than pre-war stockpiles. Also, different criteria were applied. Some nations defined ‘successful’ armour penetration as fifty per cent of rounds ‘defeating’ a given thickness (and even definitions of ‘defeating’ varied). For Soviet analysts, a statistical ‘kill’ required an eighty per cent probability of penetration. And when the benefits of sloped armour were debated by the British, some experts stoutly maintained that the issue was impossible to resolve since rounds fired against tanks’ armour could be expected to impact from so wide a range of angles and elevations.
The test environment rarely reflected battlefield reality. One well documented example of test firing was carried out by the British to assess the effect of air-launched rockets on German tanks. A captured Panther tank was drained of fuel and parked on an exposed hilltop, with huge crosses painted on it to ease identification. Then, two successive flights of four Typhoon fighter-bombers took their time to launch salvoes of rockets, untroubled by antiaircraft fire (or the fear of any). Three of the sixty-four rockets fired hit the tank, and the strike rate was solemnly recorded as somewhat under five per cent. But even that low rate was hardly representative of combat against camouflaged and protected tanks in the close Normandy hedgerows.4
In addition to all these reservations, sometimes the data are simply inaccurate. Over the years, errors arising from misprint or anecdote have been repeated in accounts of the Normandy campaign, gaining credibility in the re-telling. One German source, widely consulted and respected for its authority, nevertheless eventually turned out to be based on little more than British intelligence estimates. (Hence, a German weapon’s effective range given as the suspiciously precise ‘457 metres’ may be found to have originated from a rough guess that it was ‘about 500 yards’!)
Fortunately, so far as the GOODWOOD operation is concerned, much of this statistical complexity can be set aside. In armoured combat, the human factor (though barely measurable) remains vital. The men fighting in tanks in Normandy were not for the most part physicists or mathematicians. Their battlefield tactics were shaped by experience rather than laboratory analysis or predictive models. If the following summaries contain generalizations rather than tables of precise data, this is intentional. Tank combat in the swirling smoke and dust of the GOODWOOD battlefield was not an exact science. Nevertheless, most of those involved eventually had a fair idea of their chances. It is a tribute to them that so many carried on fighting in spite of that knowledge.
GERMAN GUNS: KILL, MISSION KILL, AND OVERKILL
Of the GOODWOOD battleground, it is fair to say that almost any Allied armoured vehicle squarely hit by a dedicated armour-piercing round would be put out of action. Tank crews knew this. Indeed, a report by the armoured brigade of Guards Armoured Division even complained that their own Browning machine guns were capable of penetrating deep into the armour of Sherman tank turrets: 0.30 calibre to a half inch, 0.50 calibre guns to an inch and a half.5
Setting aside a handful of Royal Engineers’ Churchill ‘AVRE’ tanks, not intended for tank-to-tank combat, there was no Allied armour on the GOODWOOD battlefield stronger than the front of a Sherman tank. Of the main German classes of antitank gun found here, the most numerous was the high velocity 7.5 cm Kw.K.40 in its two varieties: the L/43, largely phased-out by July, and the longer-barrelled L/486. Whether firing from a tank turret, a self-propelled mount, or from a concealed ground position, this gun’s crews could be moderately confident that a solid hit would incapacitate a Sherman tank out to one thousand metres. As a broad generalization, German projectiles tended to be harder and achieve better penetration than Allied rounds of similar calibre; having penetrated, their effectiveness was further enhanced by a High Explosive bursting charge contained in all standard German APCBC rounds (Armour Piercing Capped, Ballistic Capped). A hit might still fail to achieve an outright kill. The round might ricochet off or it might shatter, causing only superficial damage. But in either of these cases, the target was usually neutralized: a ‘mission kill’ in terms of short-term removal from the action.
There were few British tank crews at GOODWOOD who would remain in their tanks once hit by even a glancing blow. Though strictly contrary to standing orders, most would commence evacuation without waiting for the order to ‘bale out’ (and it should be remembered that most of the Sherman tanks at GOODWOOD had only a single turret hatch: when the three-man turret crew evacuated it was the commander himself who was necessarily the first to leave, disconnecting his intercom microphone in the process). It was generally recognized that the good fortune of surviving a hit or a near miss was unlikely to be repeated. Few crews were as stoical as the Churchill tank commander of 6th Guards Tank Brigade, overheard on another battlefield calmly transmitting, ‘Hello, Able 2. Have been hit by 88. Permission to bale out. Able 2. Over.’ After a ten second pause, the calm, monotonous voice was heard again. ‘Hello Able 2. I say again. Have been hit by 88. Am baling out… Out.’7 The transmission was memorable as an exception to the rule. And of course, a stricken Churchill was reckoned to allow substantially more time than a Sherman ‘Tommy cooker’ before it brewed – as much as ten seconds, some believed. It should also be remarked that by this time ‘88’ had become a standard expression covering any German antitank fire. Operations Research dryly noted that ‘Estimates by fighting soldiers were found to be unreliable since many reported they had been knocked out by 88mm, when in fact it had been 75mm shot, while the reverse has not yet been discovered.’8
More common was the experience of Stephen Dyson (B Squadron, 107 Regiment, R.A.C.) when his Churchill was hit: ‘I’ve never reacted to anything as fast as I did on that occasion… We were drilled to wait for the tank commander’s order before abandoning the tank, but in action that’s a joke... Countless numbers of tank crews owe their lives to the speed in which they reacted... My tank commander didn’t utter a word before the frantic exit from the turret.’9 Similarly, in the experience of Keith Jones, 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry (in Cromwell tanks): ‘For all concerned, entrance and exit were something they were used to, so long as they stayed alive and athletic. For a wounded crew member, getting out was another matter… we could expect to find, like all other crews, that when a tank is hit, the motivation to bale out is a reflex action, like the corks in five bottles simultaneously drawn.’10
Training aside, such behaviour made good sense. Generally in antitank warfare, a gun that has acquired a target will not shift its fire until the original target is demonstrably knocked out (which at GOODWOOD usually meant burning). As a general rule, a British tank crew surviving a first hit would anticipate imminent destruction by a second. They were not wrong.
Analysis of a sample of knocked-out Sherman tanks up to 10 July by 21st Army Group Operational Research showed that about 63% of losses had been caused by just one hit, and nearly all the rest by a second.11 Most hits penetrated: virtually all 8.8cm rounds and about 95% of 7.5cm rounds hitting a Sherman would go through the armour, quite regardless of which aspect of the tank was hit, from what angle, or whether any form of extra (‘appliqué’) armour stood in the way. It therefore mattered little that armour quality varied, nor that some Sherman tanks on the GOODWOOD battlefield had been reconditioned from previously knocked-out wrecks, with consequent but unmeasured weakening of their armour plate. Operations Research concluded that up-armouring the Sherman tank was pointless, but the authorities wisely turned a blind eye to battlefield expedients which might, after all, raise the morale of the men asked to fight encased in the armour. It is sad to relate that, at a time when tank crews were busily welding on extra armour plate, lengths of track, and other metalwork to supplement their tanks’ armour, the overall performance of their Sherman tanks might have been improved by reducing their weight. A reduction in the Sherman’s armour would not greatly have diminished the crews’ chances of survival and might even have conferred some slight benefit in manoeuvrability.
So, a 7.5cm round which did succeed in hitting a Sherman would usually penetrate. If it hit in the engine, a fire was likely to ensue and once started would take as little as three seconds to spread to the crew compartment. By 1944, the statistics were similar for diesel or petrol Shermans: the popular myth that petrol-fuelled Shermans caught fire more readily was largely unfounded.12 If the crew compartment was penetrated, then fragments of armour plate along with the detonating warhead would ricochet around the internal walls. Added to whatever damage these inflicted was the high risk of detonation of the tank’s own ammunition, again leading to fire. At the time of GOODWOOD, most British tank ammunition was still stored in open racks; often extra ammunition was carried loose. Only later was it recognized that burning ammunition, rather than fuel, was responsible for initiating most ‘brew ups’, and steps were taken retard its spread. In a Sherman, ‘You were in a “Ronson”, and if you were hit it was best to bale out PDQ.’ [“pretty damned quick!”] Later, crews learned to cope with the inconvenience of storing rounds in steel containers, some of these even jacketed with water. ‘The Comets that we had later were different. Their ammunition was in heavy metal bins – awkward to get at but safer. Then, if hit, it was better to stay in. You just calculated your chances.’13
The larger German guns were designed to cope with much sturdier armour than the western Allies possessed. The natural prey of the Panther and Tiger was the sturdy T34 of the Russian front, later the even more heavily armoured Klimenti Vorishilov and Ioseph Stalin models. A round from the Panther tank’s Kw.K.42 L/70 gun could hardly fail to destroy any Sherman tank it hit squarely. If the Panther was deadly, 8.8cm rounds from the Tiger tank variants and the 8.8cm antiaircraft and purpose-built antitank guns present were devastating. Turrets were dislodged, sometimes bodily ripped off and hurled clear.
HITTING THE TARGET
Killing was one thing. Hitting was another matter. As a general rule, German antitank guns had longer range, flatter trajectories, and gunsights with superior optics (though by 1944 this superiority was gradually reducing). GOODWOOD was fought over ground more open than most earlier Normandy battlefields, often allowing the more vulnerable towed antitank guns and thinly armoured ‘sp’s to engage at greater range. (Becker’s improvised batteries depended on long range fire, siting firing positions from which they might ‘shoot and scoot’ before the Allied tanks closed to within effective range of return fire.)
But even on this relatively ‘open’ battlefield there were limits to visibility, which helped restore some balance to the conflict. Uncut grain, mostly wheat and rye, stood on the 1944 GOODWOOD battleground much higher than modern, modified strains: four feet high and more, shoulder height for the infantry. Combined with minor undulations of terrain this could create blind areas where tanks might seek shelter or at least remain ‘hull down’. When advancing through grain, tank drivers often found their vision totally obscured. Even in the biggest tank engaged in the battle, the Königstiger, it proved possible for a driver lacking direction from a busy tank commander to incapacitate his vehicle by plunging it into an unseen bomb crater. Farmers had begun an early harvest just before the battle, with the result that some fields were lined with hay ricks. These provided a degree of concealment, if not hard cover; as the fighting wore on numbers of them caught fire, further diminishing visibility.
For much of the first day of GOODWOOD a breeze blew from the north east. This spread the smoke of the aerial bombardment and the dust of the advancing army without entirely dissipating the haze. The summer sun broke through from above, but along the ground visibility remained poor. And of course, many of the forward German guns, especially the towed pieces relying on concealment rather than armour for protection, were caught in the initial bombardment and their crews stunned if not entirely neutralized. Conversely, the Sherman tank was a particularly tall target. Since conspicuous target height is a major factor in range finding, especially in achieving a first-shot hit, and since the Allied Shermans were often caught advancing with minimal cover, this mattered. (A lower profile was one of the advantages the Cromwell tank enjoyed over its American cousin.)
The M5 Stuart light tanks (especially those still retaining turrets) and the Crusader antiaircraft tanks might be mistaken in the heat of battle for standard gun tanks, and were targeted accordingly, suffering alongside the Shermans and Cromwells. As to the other Allied armoured vehicles on the battlefield, the tracked Universal (or ‘Bren’) Carriers, half-track vehicles, wheeled scout cars and armoured cars all had relatively thin armour, generally proof against small arms fire, but extremely vulnerable to anything heavier. For these, size, speed, and concealment counted for more than armour thickness. Open-topped vehicles could be taken on with High Explosive rather than Armour Piercing rounds, most effectively when the former was fired into treetops for ‘airburst’ or delay-fuzed and bounced off hard ground for a ‘scattergun’ effect.
OTHER GERMAN ANTITANK WEAPONS
The German artillery arm should be mentioned. Apart from the dedicated antitank guns, the role of most of the artillery was indirect supportive or suppressive fire. True, many German artillery pieces were furnished with Armour Piercing rounds for emergency use; some on the GOODWOOD battlefield almost certainly possessed specialist ‘HEAT’ ammunition (High Explosive Anti Tank: better suited to large calibre, low velocity guns since the rounds relied on chemical rather than kinetic energy to penetrate armour). As a rule, these guns were less accurate by virtue of their less flat trajectories, their crews’ lack of specialist training, and (crucially) the higher priority normally given to their primary role of area fire. The many Nebelwerfer rocket batteries present on the battlefield were conspicuously inappropriate weapons for use against tanks; on more than one occasion on 18 July charging Allied tanks rolled right over their positions. As to the many heavy antiaircraft guns in the area, most of these were under Generalkommando III.Flakkorps. Divided into three Flaksturmregimenter under the command of Generalleutnant Wolfgang Pickert, these were Luftwaffe units whose primary task emphatically remained antiaircraft fire. Indirect fire support for the army was a second priority, and antitank defence against deep penetrations was a last resort. Apart from a battery of four 8.8cm guns supposedly sited forward near to the village of Cagny, the bulk of the Flakartillerie – as many as eighty six tubes – was sited well back from the battlefield, many in emplacements purposely selected to shield them from ground line-of-sight using hedgerows and other terrain features. It is unlikely that many of these (except perhaps the aforementioned Cagny detachment) engaged Allied tanks with direct fire during 18 July.
While GOODWOOD is characterized by tank vs. tank combat, nevertheless it should be remembered that the German infantry had its own inherent antitank capability. The hand-held Panzerfaust now allowed a lone infantryman to deal a death blow to a tank. The fact that we come across few records of Panzerfaust use at GOODWOOD is easily explained. This revolutionary single-shot, recoilless weapon was the original ancestor of today’s ubiquitous RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). The Panzerfaust had enormous armour penetration capability but lacked accuracy and range. It required close proximity to its target. Throughout the campaign in North West Europe, and even after versions with a theoretically longer range became available, most Panzerfaust shots were taken at ranges of less than 60 yards. Above 40 yards accuracy diminished rapidly; even at ranges of 20 yards or less about half the shots still missed. Firing a Panzerfaust required a degree of bravery. Not only were many users ‘frankly terrified’ of firing it 14 but surviving after the attempt required luck. In combat, few men ever tried a second shot at the same target. After firing, most either surrendered or tried to escape. Barely a third survived after hitting their target, usually succumbing to the revenge of other Allied tanks, while perhaps half of those whose shot missed succeeded in escaping.15 British accounts of the time rarely distinguish between the one-man, disposable Panzerfaust and its cousin, the bazooka-like Racketenpanzerbüchse (or Panzerschreck, ‘tank terror’). This 8.8cm rocket launcher was usually manned by specialist infantry antitank teams. More cumbersome yet more reliable and longer ranged than the Panzerfaust, its lower penetration was academic: it could penetrate any British tank with ease.
For all its shortcomings, the Panzerfaust was ideally suited to the close terrain of so many Normandy battlegrounds, where a man might creep along a hedgerow or through rubble, take a close-range shot, and still retain some chance of escape. The open GOODWOOD battleground was less forgiving. While a man might use the tall grain to hide, there was less chance of escape once revealed. Pip Roberts, commanding 11th Armoured Division, observed that his opposite number, ‘Alan Adair, commanding Guards Armoured Division, arrived and I had a few words with him and he went off to do a recce of the area, but within a few minutes I saw his tank doing a sharp retreat with the GSO2 firing smoke over the rear of his tank. Apparently a couple of Germans in a slit trench … thought the time had come to take some action, so fired a bazooka [in other words, a Panzerfaust] at the General’s tank. They failed to score a hit and were soon dealt with by some Grenadiers nearby.’ No doubt the aggrieved Guardsmen exacted a price for the attempt on their general. Significantly, Roberts reflected, ‘I had been in the same spot a few minutes before, but I suppose the bazooka party had not worked up sufficient courage to disclose themselves.”16 11th Armoured Division’s intelligence summary prepared on the morning of 20 July noted ‘a certain amount of trouble by sniping at our tks with “bazookas”. As soon as our own inf. appeared, however, they appeared very much more willing to come out and give themselves up without any trouble.’Armour and infantry were learning the necessity of close cooperation.
And finally, mines. To the surprise of some British, including VIII Corps commander O’Connor, German antitank mines were not an important factor in the GOODWOOD battle. Most British losses to mines were caused by minefields laid by the British defenders of the sector and not lifted in time for the advance. After the fighting had moved on, it was to take three field companies of Royal Engineers a full five days to clear the remaining British minefields, which prior to the battle had only been hastily ‘gapped’. Why the Germans did not employ mines remains open to conjecture. Von Luck categorically stated that he did not want minefields limiting his free tactical movement. Roberts remained unconvinced by this logic. Far more likely, he argued, that the Germans simply did not have the mines available for what would seem a sensible defence of an important position.
BRITISH GUNS AND GERMAN ARMOUR
It is harder to generalize about the chances of a British gun firing at a German tank at GOODWOOD. Broadly speaking: large numbers of British tanks on the GOODWOOD battlefield carried a medium-velocity 75mm gun whose antitank performance was outdated for tank combat; smaller numbers had a high-velocity 76mm gun whose armour-piercing performance was very good. Both these guns had a chance of destroying or at least immobilizing any German tank which they could hit in the flank or rear. Against the Germans’ frontal armour the story was different.
For battle-experienced British tank crews of 1944, taking the field at a qualitative disadvantage to the enemy was nothing new. Through the desert campaigns, where so much depended on mechanized forces, the British tanks’ guns, armour, and tactics proved generally inferior to the Germans’. In 1941, 3rd Royal Tank Regiment was pleased to take over obsolescent captured Italian tanks in place of British models. By 1942, the British tanks’ 2 pounder gun would not penetrate German armour except at close range, but the British crews frequently opened fire regardless. Since there was little chance of penetration, accuracy hardly mattered. One tank commander recalls, ‘I knew what it was to experience the sound of solid shots screaming and tearing past one’s head… with ‘rapid fire’, as soon as he [the gunner] got near the target I just slammed shells in as fast as I could [in the Valentine’s two-man turret, the commander was also the loader] as he continued firing with little or no correction…’17 By this device, a troop of three tanks (normal in the desert campaign) could loose as many as forty-five rounds a minute, and create the impression of much greater numbers. Only in May, 1942 did the British acquire in the American M3 Grant a tank with a gun capable of firing 75mm High Explosive rounds. Now they could reach out to the German antitank guns that had tried them so sorely. Later, the M4 Sherman with its dual-purpose (AP and HE), turreted and fully-traversing 75mm gun appeared even more promising. That promise was sadly dashed as long-barrelled Panzer IV ‘specials’ appeared on the scene in increasing numbers. In firepower, the early models of the Tiger appearing in Tunisia were simply beyond meaningful comparison.
By the time of GOODWOOD, several successive stages of Second World War British tank designs had been abandoned: some after failure in the field, others – mercifully – recognized as unbattleworthy even before men were asked to die in them. The only descendant of these to take the field at GOODWOOD was the Cromwell, equipping 7th Armoured Division’s tank regiments as well as one so-called ‘reconnaissance tank regiment’ in each of the three British armoured divisions. These Cromwells carried a 75mm gun similar to that of the Sherman tanks used by the British. The Cromwell’s fire control systems were marginally superior, but for purposes of tank killing they could be considered roughly equivalent.
The Sherman had been designed to the established American theory that the job of the ‘medium’ tank did not include the destruction of enemy tanks. That was supposed to be left to specialist ‘tank destroyer’ artillery, either towed or self-propelled. Instead, the Sherman’s envisaged role recalled General Sherman of the American Civil War, whose destructive raids ravaged the hinterlands of the Confederacy. The tank that bore his name was to be a weapon of exploitation. Like the cavalry of old, Sherman tanks would sweep around and behind the enemy, harrying his lines of communication and supply. To which end, the Sherman was well equipped with a gun whose High Explosive round could deal very effectively with ‘soft’ targets.
Most British Shermans were equipped with an American 75mm gun whose Armour Piercing capability was adequate (just about) to deal with an enemy whose armour was no better than Sherman’s own. And some of the German tanks encountered at GOODWOOD fell (just about) into this category. The tank regiment of 21. Panzerdivision was equipped with the Panzer IV, mostly later models with flank armour protection somewhat weaker than the Sherman or Cromwell and (in later models at least) frontal armour somewhat superior. (Though as noted above, the disparity in armament was far greater, the German long 7.5cm gun much superior to the Sherman’s in hitting and killing power.) All things being equal, a Sherman 75mm could often destroy a Panzer IVwith a single side or rear hit, and could expect something close to a ‘fifty-fifty’ chance of a penetration after achieving a solid hit on the front from 500 yards or less. Against the Tiger tanks attached to 21. Panzerdivision, the 503. schwere Panzerabteilung, or the Panther tanks appearing on the field later on 18 July, the 75mm Sherman’s chances of a frontal penetration were virtually nil. Analysing German tank losses between 8 and 31 August, Operational Research could only confirm one Panzer VI (Tiger) whose front armour was defeated by any calibre of Allied armour-piercing shot (in fact by a 57mm, 6-pounder gun firing APCBC, which happened to hit the Tiger’sfront hull machine gun aperture). As to the Panther, Ops Research concluded, ‘The small success of our A.P. projectiles against the sloping glacis plate of the Pz Kw Mk V is outstanding… and in many cases a gunner will not fire against a head-on Panther.’18 The report concurred that not firing (in the hopes of remaining unnoticed) was indeed the best tactic.
This grim state of affairs was relieved by one British innovation conceived in the latter part of 1943. In a classic confrontation between imaginative engineering and official scepticism, imagination won. With the support of the Royal Armoured Corps and the Ministry of Supply, a scheme was devised to fit the British 17 pounder gun into a Sherman tank turret. In time for the Normandy invasion, 17 pounder-armed ‘Firefly’ Sherman tanks were available in sufficient numbers to allow most regiments a ratio of one Firefly per four-tank troop. In addition, 17 pounder antitank guns were provided to the Royal Artillery antitank regiments, in both towed and self-propelled batteries.
Advances in tank armour during the Second World War were accompanied by the parallel development required of antitank guns. In 1940, the British 2 pounder antitank gun performed very well. By 1942 it was obsolescent, its replacement by the 6 pounder long overdue. By mid-1944 the 6 pounder was itself approaching obsolescence. True, with the ‘APCBC’ (Armour Piercing Capped, Ballistic Capped) round its armour penetrating capability was somewhat greater than the 75mm gun. A new ‘APDS’ (Discarding Sabot) round further boosted this penetration, though at a cost of diminished effective range and greatly reduced accuracy. Also, the ‘sabot’ round was in short supply; it caused increased bore-wear; and before July there was little opportunity for crews to discover the range settings needed to compensate for its unusual trajectory. Many crews fired their first ‘sabot’ round when facing a real enemy (urged by superiors to save the precious rounds for ‘special’ occasions, many a gun commander determined that the approach of any German tank was quite special enough!). Though an excellent weapon in its time, which continued to soldier-on in many post-war conflicts, the 6 pounder’s usefulness against modern tanks fell away rapidly after mid-1944.
In its turn, the 17 pounder went a long way towards restoring the balance in tank combat. It could cleanly penetrate any German tank from the side, and the Panzer IV from any angle. Out to a thousand yards, it could take on an early model Tiger I from the front with something approaching a fifty percent chance of a hit penetrating, and a Panther with somewhat less, perhaps one-in-three, with a better chance against the turret front than the sloped glacis plate. Against the Königstiger, first met in combat during GOODWOOD, the seventeen pounder enjoyed a statistical possibility of a frontal penetration if it hit the turret (the early, Posche-turreted models assigned to schwere Panzerabteilung 503 had turret front armour of ‘only’ 10cm, as opposed to the 18cm of later, Henschel turrets). In the event, no King Tiger tank suffered a frontal penetration by British fire in this battle (nor, so far as this writer is aware, in any later combat).
The picture was not as one-sided as is often portrayed. Though outranging the British tanks and virtually impenetrable through their frontal armour, at closer ranges the Panther tanks of the Leibstandarte lost their invulnerability. While the aspect of hits on a Sherman was almost an irrelevance, the case was very different with the Panther. On the defensive, it was easier to keep the strongest armour facing the enemy. When they descended from the Bourguébus ridge into the smoke-filled ‘cauldron’ of low ground around Four, the Panther tanks too suffered losses in the close fighting. Fewer losses than their opponents, it must be said, but nevertheless a Panther penetrated through its side or rear would blow up almost as readily as a Sherman ‘tommy cooker’ would burn. As a broad generalization, Operations Research concluded that knocked-out Panthertanks had on average succumbed to 2.55 hits (vs. Shermans 1.63), and 63% of them burned (vs. Shermans 82%).19 At the close of play on 18 July, a major of the 23rd Hussars noted, ‘We had suffered a very “bloody nose”… But all those Shermans were not blazing in the cornfields for nothing. Many a Panther blazed there too.’20
Bombing apart, it appears that the only early-model Tiger I tanks knocked out by antitank fire at GOODWOOD were two which apparently had the misfortune to be accidentally engaged by German 8.8cm guns. And while the front armour of a Königstigerremained proof against most antitank guns in the Allied arsenal, few of these seventy-ton monsters were deployed in the Normandy campaign; most of those involved were lost to breakdown during the retreat to the Seine rather than to enemy fire. Only fourteen were present at GOODWOOD and not all of those took part in the action. As previously noted, one was immobilized in a bomb crater. Shortly after, in the same location, two more succumbed to flanking fire, probably by multiple tanks including at least one Guards Firefly. (At the time unsung, this was the first occasion on which any Königstiger was destroyed by ground fire.) Elsewhere, another was abandoned after being rammed by a Sherman (while reportedly also penetrated by ‘friendly fire’).
In one respect, the odds on 18 July were stacked against the Panzertruppen. GOODWOOD was one of the two recorded instances during the Normandy campaign of heavy bombers catching concentrations of German armour. (The other being 25 July when prior to the COBRA breakout Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division was caught by carpet bombing as its armour concentrated to repel the expected ground attack.) These events were exceptional. Allied airpower was directly responsible for destroying relatively few tanks. We now know that throughout the Normandy campaign barely one hundred German tanks were actually destroyed by the Allied 2nd Tactical Air Force, for the loss of upwards of 1,600 aircraft.21 But this was not how the German tank crews saw things. The dread of air attack led to the abandonment and loss of many more tanks than were ever destroyed from the air, to say nothing of the interdiction of tactical movement of tanks and their vital supplies during long daylight hours of summer as German vehicles remained static under camouflage.
THE HUMAN ELEMENT
Once again, combat between tanks is hard to reduce to statistics. The German Panzertruppen invading France in 1940 and Russia in June 1941 frequently came up against tanks bigger and more heavily armoured than their own. Yet what they lacked in hardware might be made up by ingenuity and tactics. French tank units were relatively poorly co-ordinated; individual French tanks, for all their heavy armour, had poor guns and worse fire control.22 Tanks encountered in Russia were in theory more formidable still. Yet even pitted against enemy tanks whose armour was virtually impenetrable, the Panzertruppen found ways to prevail. After six months in combat on the Russian front, after-action reports from Panzerregiment 203 recorded the destruction of 115 enemy tanks for the loss of fifteen. Enemy armoured forces superior in both numbers and quality were overcome by superior German tactics. ‘Success has always resulted when our Panzer unit builds a fire front and overwhelms the enemy with fire. Even when no penetrations can be achieved, the enemy, impressed by the accuracy and rate of fire of the German Panzer, almost always breaks off the action.’23 When Russian armour proved impenetrable, the Germans fired High Explosive and even smoke rounds, disorienting inexperienced Russian tank crews and causing them to withdraw (some appear to have succumbed to rumours that the Germans were firing poison gas). On other occasions, German armour incapable of penetrating Russian tanks are documented as having rammed vehicles, stunning their crews and dragging them out literally by the scruff of the neck.24
In Normandy, it was not uncommon for British tanks to fire High Explosive rounds at German heavy tanks. This apparently pointless practice would at least encourage the German crews to ‘button up’, greatly reducing their situational awareness, and might achieve more. Examples are recorded of HE rounds failing to penetrate German tanks yet detonating their ammunition stores. And even Tiger tank crews dreaded being subject to large-calibre artillery fire, which in the Normandy campaign included massive shells hurled from ships at sea. When ‘buttoned up’, crews could not readily identify the calibre of the incoming fire and were often observed to retire from combat rather than risk being bracketed.
Whatever the statistics, the psychology of the armoured forces should be considered. German armour engaged at GOODWOOD included large numbers of highly experienced tank men who had been victorious in combat on many occasions and had high confidence in their vehicles. Some leaders maintained their units’ cohesion throughout the bombardment and prepared to repel the subsequent massed tank attack. But others who had not previously harboured doubts about their equipment became depressed by the shattering experiences of aerial bombardment and armoured assault on such unprecedented scale.
The human element in armoured warfare must never be forgotten. Hardware is not everything. Sometimes this is just as well. As the historian of British tank forces records, ‘On the design and production side, much of what occurred was little short of a scandal,’ yet many of the Sherman tank crews, ‘knew the odds and did not flinch, even when it meant stalking a tank of twice the size and power in order to ensure victory.’25 During GOODWOOD, most of the British crews leading the VIII Corps charge at the heart of the battle were comparatively inexperienced. ‘We learned as we went along.’26 They learned very quickly the shortcomings of their tanks. Armoured regiments arriving in Normandy conducted their own trial shoots against wrecked Panther and Tiger tanks. The results were not encouraging. Yet the knowledge that their tanks were inferior in one-to-one combat did not deter the regiments of 11th Armoured Division from a bold assault on the German lines. In the first day of battle they experienced losses as unpleasant in their nature as in their numbers. Yet the regiments of VIII Corps returned to the fray on 19 July. And a mere ten days later, its complement restored with replacement personnel and with Sherman and Cromwell tanks no better than those lost in such numbers at GOODWOOD, VIII Corps embarked on Operation BLUECOAT, its crowning achievement in Normandy.
References
1
This subject is treated in depth in ‘The Universal Tank’, David Fletcher, 1993, ISBN 0 11 290534 X, see also Harrison Place, ‘Military Training’, p 89-92; and French, ‘Raising Churchill’s Army’, p 102.
2
In heated debates in Parliament, the Honourable Member for Ipswich, Richard Stokes loudly criticised British tank policy, culminating in a challenge to single combat outside the palace of Westminster: Stokes in a Tiger, versus the Prime Minister in an (eponymous!) Churchill tank.
3
Though not always reliable on points of detail, a good source for this story is ‘Rude Mechanicals’, A J Smithers, 1989, ISBN 0-586-20305-2, p 98-99.
4
Gooderson, ‘Air Power’, p 103-4
5
No 2 Operational Research Section: 21st Army Group: Report no 2
6
That is, a gun with a barrel 48 times its calibre: 48 x 7.5 cm giving a barrel of 3.6 metres.
7
‘6th Guards Tank Brigade, The Story of Guardsmen in Churchill Tanks’, Patrick Forbes, 1946, p 33.
8
ORS Report no 12
9
‘Tank Twins’, Stephen Dyson, 1994, ISBN 0 85052 274 9, p 59.
10
‘Sixty-Four Days of a Normandy Summer’, Keith Jones, 1990, ISBN 0 7090 4240 X, p 64
11
ORS Report no 12
12
The issue of combustibility, its causes and preventive measures, is well covered in ‘British Armour in the Normandy Campaign’, John Buckley, 2004, ISBN 0-7146-5323-3, p 127-128
13
This and preceding, Steel Brownlie diary.
14
‘Men Against Tanks’, John Weeks, 1975, ISBN 0 7153 6909 1, p 70
15
ORS Report no 33
16
Roberts, p 176
17
‘Armoured Odyssey’, Stuart Hamilton, 1995, ISBN 1-871085-30-6, p 44
18
ORS Report no 17
19
ORS Report no 17
20
Bishop, ‘23rd Hussars’, p 76
21
‘Normandy 1944’, Niklas Zetterling, 2000, ISBN 0-921991-56-8, p 38
22
‘L’Arme Blindée Française, vol 1, Mai – Juin 1940’, Gérard Saint-Martin, 1998, ISBN 2-7178-3617-9, p 113-120 gives an honest and authoritative précis of the shortcomings of the French armoured forces.
23
Quoted in ‘Panzer Truppen’ vol 1, Thomas L Jentz, 1996, ISBN 0-88740915-6, p 232
24
One photographic record of such an event is found in ‘7,000 Kilometers in a Sturmgeschütz’, Heinrich Engel, 2001, ISBN 0-921991-65-7, p 97-99.
25
Fletcher, ‘Universal Tank’, p 22
26
Steel Brownlie diary