Tropical Holiday

Life as a historian isn't easy, especially here in the UK. You might think it sounds fun walking into an archive, leafing through an old document and finding out something new. Or flipping open a document and finding a small brown envelope, as here in the UK those normally contain either plans or pictures. But it's never that easy. First you have to sift through the catalogues of the archive, and often you'll see something that sounds like it's what you're after from a brief description, but it turns out to be about 400 tables of fume toxicity measurements (that was one of mine when I was looking at stuff for the RARDEN gun), or data about engine cooling. The latter one happened to a colleague who described it as "possibly the most boring document ever."

Equally here in the UK, documents are spread over the entire country in different archives. You might have two identical documents in two locations, and yet be missing the start and end of the story. Or one document in one of the locations might be missing page number 47 from the other document, and it contains a vital piece of information.

Add in that a lot of the UK documents have been destroyed in clean outs of various departments as they took up space. Or archives that won't let you access their documents, such as BAE's. For those of you who don't know, nearly every British armaments manufacturer has been bought up by BAE, and their archives are closed. Every historian I know of who has tried to access stuff about tanks has run head first into a solid brick wall built about a refusal to deal with those grubby ground forces types, aircraft are fine and all right, but woe betide you if you're trying to research something with armour plate on.

The above is just the situation from after the Second World War. Dare you delve further in to the pre-war period, it's like trying to work out what colour a dinosaur is. That's what this week’s article is about. I recently finally got round to reading some documents I originally saw last year at Bovington, and it illustrates perfectly the problems we face. This concerns three tanks, and so will include new material. It also concerns Philip Johnson.

One of Johnson's last tanks, the Light Infantry tank

First the man. If you look at the very early years of British tanks, from the end of the First World War up until about the mid 1920's Johnson's name will always appear. There is little known of the gentleman, and he certainly is controversial. He seems to have acted on a few occasions like J Walter Christie, or Ferdinand Porsche, in that he designed what he thought was a good idea, not what was asked of him. At the end of his career after one of his biggest excesses he was tasked with designing a common chassis that could be used for tank, amphibian, supply carrier or gun carrier variants. For once he did as he was asked. The tank variant is the most famous one that we know of today, and it was known as the Tropical Light Tank. Some secondary sources add in the designation "8-20-10" to the name.

The Light Tropical tank

 

What we do know about it is this, it had two turrets, offset from each other, and strongly resembling those of the Austin armoured car, although the latter were basically a tube with a roof so how much the Tropical Tank’s design owed to the Austin is up for debate. These turrets would presumably be fitted with a pair of machine guns, as it's difficult to see anything else being mounted on the openings. The automotive components we know a lot more about, a 45hp Taylor engine was linked to a four speed variable Bevel gearbox, from that to wire suspension tracks steered by Rackham steering clutches.

Austin armoured car

 On Friday the 7th of October the tank was run for well over thirty minutes in a stationary position. It sounds like the tank was lifted clear of the ground as the right hand track was running. The left hand one at this point was not connected. This was done in the presence of Sir George Buckham and Colonel Dreyer. Everything went well with this test, apart form noise from the gearbox, which it was hoped to correct later. On Tuesday the 11th it was, to use Vickers own terminology, "launched", and ran under its own power from the workshops into an adjacent yard for a short trial run. During this some defects in the gearbox came to light and were to be put right.

More trials followed on the 28th of October, but this time the tracks were shown to be inadequate and far too noisy, so further modifications were to be carried out. By the start of December the gearbox was still being a pain and had been sent back to Crayford for further work. It was hoped for a test run on the 28th and then a demonstration to the Army on the 29th of that month.

From here things get weird from the sources, hence my overly long introduction about the state of British archives. So far I've been using two sources. David Fletcher's ‘Mechanised Force’, published in 1991, and the document I alluded to earlier. The document itself isn't a primary document, and looks like something printed out in the 1980's, but seems to be notes or a transcript of reports filed from Vickers. The document itself is held at Bovington, so is likely genuine. David Fletcher though uses Bovington documents as he's based near there. So we have a quandary, especially when they start to contradict each other.

Fletcher states that the Tropical Light Tank was at Farnborough for tests and ceased running after 238 miles in June 1922.

The document however is a bit of a curiosity. First from the start of 1922 it starts referring to the tank as just the "Light tank", and stating that there are two under various degrees of construction, and refer to them as No.1 and No.2 machines. Both sections of the document are under a title that says "Tropical Light tank" and later on the document starts talking about another project that gets a different title. So what's the problem?

Vickers no1

 According to the document in June 1922 the No.1 Light tank is still being modified, and didn't get delivered to Farnborough for trials until October 1922. While it doesn't seem too critical it does make you consider two other tanks. There were the Vickers No.1 and Vickers No.2 tanks. These resembled a First World War ‘rhomboid’ tank with a domed turret on them.

According to what Fletcher writes about, the Vickers No.1 shares almost exactly some of the details of the Tropical Light Tank's history, even down to the dates, yet the document specifically says those events belong to the Tropical Light Tank. Equally the Vickers No.2 tank dates match some of the dates the document says belong to Light tank No.2. Equally another of Fletcher’s works says the Vickers No.1 tank is at Farnborough for testing on the 17th of December 1921.

Vickers no2

 So basically we have a confusing mess of secondary sources, possibly changing names, lost documents and me sitting here getting very confused. This is what a British armour historian has to deal with, and it's no wonder so little research has been done in the field, unlike those nice orderly archives that my friends working on other nations report. This is also my holiday from my job, not quite the tropical one I was thinking of.

Image credits:

www.landships.info and www.aviarmor.net

Pom pom Power!

When Hiram Maxim invented the machine gun in the mid 1880's it was revolutionary. Hoping success would strike twice the gun was scaled up to 37mm. This new weapon fired a one pound shell. Oddly it didn't fit in with the thinking of the period, having a terrible range and shell weight compared to a conventional gun, and a slow rate of fire and was much heavier than a machine gun, so no one could see what to do with it. Also, it was rather expensive. However, several were brought by the Boers just in time for the Boer War. There the Boers used them as light support weapons, ideally they'd smuggle one in range of the enemy, fire off a short burst then withdraw. Meanwhile the British on the receiving end had a series of small explosive shells raining down all about them and were thoroughly suppressed. The British armed forces might be averse at spending money, but when in a war and there's something the enemy have that they don't that they need, they'll pay for it. Soon the British Army had these guns in service. Troops had named them from the distinctive sound they made, the pom pom gun. The pom pom gun, like its smaller cousin, soldiered on for a number of years, and was in service until the end of the Second World War. 

Boer Pompom

 As well as an infantry gun it was fielded on naval vessels where it was to provide close in defence against steam launches mounting torpedoes. As warfare became three dimensional the pom pom gun took on its main foe; the aircraft. In British service at least this started in 1913 on the Isle of Wight. At the Needles Battery a pom pom was mounted on the drill square and fired at a kite towed by a Royal Navy destroyer out in the Solent, and just in time as well, as the First World War was right around the corner. On the 23rd of September 1914 a pom pom under command of Lt O. Hogg opened fire at an enemy aircraft. After firing 75 rounds the plane was shot down. The pom pom served on both sides of the war, primarily as an AA weapon. However, a new job was beckoning, the tank. Little Willie, the famous ancestor of all tanks was originally designed to be fitted with a turret, and in that turret the main gun was to be a pom pom gun. Another round of scaling up took place during the war, and the pom pom gun reached its final, and most common form. It was now 40mm calibre and fired a two pound shell. 

1Pdr Pompom mounted on a vessel. For most of WWII these were used as self defence guns on small ships such as coastal trawlers and the like.

 From 1923 until 1930 the 2pdr pom pom was developed by the Royal Navy to be mounted on ships to provide them with close in protection. These were most famously mounted on in quad or even octuple mounts. The idea was to put a constant wall of explosives up in the face of an incoming aircraft and hopefully drive it off, or if it barrels through the flak to kill it. On the larger mounts the guns could be fired for 73 seconds continuously before needing re-loading. In one engagement HMS Illustrious is considered to have fired some 30,000 shells, without a single gun fault.  

"At least we shot that Focker down"

 Today there is some question about the lethality of the weapon, with most of the detractors pointing towards the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, and the report into it. Which contains words to the effect that a single Bofors 40mm would have been better than the 2pdr pom poms fitted. 

However this isn't entirely true, the report is talking about the effect of warding off the attackers by causing them to flinch, the pom poms had one flaw, no tracer in their shells. So for warding planes off it was largely ineffective. Equally during the same battle the pom pom's were using ammo damaged by the heat of the tropics, and the ships fire control radar was offline, again due to the heat. One of the leading gunners who survived the attack recounts how he spent the entire time racing from one gun station to the next to unjam the thing and keep the barrels going due to the faulty ammunition. Yet despite these negatives the pom poms accounted for two of the four attackers that were shot down in the incident.  

The Bofors 40mm was also heavier and required more space to operate, and for a time when ship designers spent a lot of time worrying about weight limitations these were not small concerns. 

Just to give you an idea of how big the 2Pdr shells were. Imagine sixteen of those a second coming at you.

 In between the wars the 2pdr pom pom also was mounted on a tank, and was utterly unique at the time. A small number of Vickers E type 6 ton tanks were modified with an open fighting compartment and had a single 2pdr pom pom fitted. For many years the exact story of these tanks has been missing but recent work has brought it to light. I've been wanting to write about these for some time, however someone beat me to it. I'm not going to steal someone else's work, so for the full story go here. 

In summary the Siamese Type 76 AA guns were used to help defeat a coup led by lower members of the royalty against the government ministers during the Boworadet rebellion. 

As well as the Type 76 SPAA the 2pdr pom pom served out the war arming many Royal Navy vessels, and quite a few trawlers and other small craft around the British Isles. After that the gun was replaced by the ubiquitous Bofors 40mm. 

Image Credits:

www.boerwararchive.com

Charlie does Surf!

If you ever get a group of veterans from the British Army of the Rhine together, they're likely to come over all misty eyed and start talking stories about the SLR, and how awesome a weapon it is. "Able to bayonet six Russians at a time, and knock out a T-72, with a blank round. Unlike this modern plastic pea shooter!" etc, it’s a bit like the blind spot US soldiers of a certain age have in regard to the .45 ACP. If you can move them off the subject of the SLR, which admittedly takes a bit of effort, then you might start to hear other stories about the 84mm Carl Gustav anti-tank launcher. Most of them revolve around how bloody heavy it was. 

The weight has given rise to a story that the barrel of the first weapon was created when the 84mm barrels from fortress guns were scrapped. These were used to provide a length of the original barrel. The guns in question are named as m/94-06 guns from Tingstade-Gotland in one source. Trouble is there's not one shred of evidence to back this up. 
The next most common story is about how horrific its black blast is, and you've got good odds on a tale with some scary injuries as well. Another common story is that it’s just the right calibre for smuggling cans of beer out on exercise hidden in its barrel. It’s likely that if the Russians had of attacked the Charlie G, as she was known in UK forces, would have gotten a better reputation. Its been deployed around the world, including playing a crucial role in the Falklands war. For that war the Charlie G got used mostly for smashing Argentinian bunkers, however there are two notable exceptions from the first hours of the war.

The first comes from the landings at Port Stanley by the Argentinians. Arriving on the eastern edge of the settlement twenty LVTP-7's waddled ashore and moved inland. The objective of this force was to relieve some commandos who had landed earlier and attacked the Royal Marine detachments barracks, which had been empty. Mainly because there had been enough warning for the Royal Marines to meet with the Governor, whom had uttered the line "sounds like the buggers mean it!", and arranged for the Royal Marines to deploy.
After shooting up and setting the Royal Marine barracks on fire the Argentinian commandos then moved to seize the government. However, they had found the missing Royal Marine detachment defending the government and become bogged down in a fire fight.

As the lead LVTP's pushed inshore, a section advanced towards Stanley and at 0715 they ran into a road block from a second detachment of Royal Marines. The Royal Marines started by engaging the lead APC's with a pair of 66mm LAW's and one round from their Charlie G, while machine guns on the roofs of nearby buildings racked the following section of LVTP's with sustained and accurate fire.
A second salvo in the shape of a single LAW and one Charlie G round hit the lead LVTP destroying it. The following section began to deploy its troops and engage with recoilless rifles and mortars, as well as the machine guns in the LVTP's. With this base of fire, the Argentinian infantry began to work around a flank, but ran into the Royal Marines and a brisk fire fight developed, before the Royal Marines threw smoke and began to fall back. Faced with overwhelming force the Royal Marines hadn't a hope of stopping the Argentinian invasion and surrendered in short order.

The next challenge for the Charlie G was a much tougher one. Upon hearing of the invasion, the Royal Marine detachment defending South Georgia began to prepare for a fight. They pre-positioned supply caches around the island, so if they were forced to retreat they could continue to fight. Equally they dug some firing positions and laid some wire. Then the Royal Marines became a bit creative. They laid fougasse, created by filling 45 gallon fuel drums filled with petrol, paint and plastic explosive all linked to a command detonator. 
Then an Argentinian ship arrived in the bay next to the main settlement of Grytviken, where the Royal Marines were stationed. It warned the British to stand by for an important radio transmission the following day. The next morning an Argentinian corvette, the Guerrico, demanded the Royal Marines surrender. The initial messages were on the VHF radio, however the Royal Marine Commander replied on the HF set, claiming his VHF set was out of service. This enabled the British ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance to listen in. Guessing this was what the Royal Marine officer was up to this somewhat annoyed the Argentinians. They demanded everyone be assembled on the beach for surrender. The Royal Marines informed them that any attempt to land would be resisted.

The Guerrico entering the bay

The Guerrico then entered the bay that holds Grytviken, and her Puma helicopter landed a detachment of marines. It soon returned with another load of soldiers. However, as it came in to land the Royal Marines began to batter it to pieces with small arms fire from their well sited firing positions. The pilot managed to limp to a point across the cove from the British positions and crash landed. Later on it was discovered the Puma had been hit about thirty times. Two of the Puma's crew recovered her machine gun and began to use it to fire at long ranges at the British positions. Meanwhile there was a fire fight brewing between the stranded Argentinian marines and the British.

The puma after "landing"

Closing up to the shore the Guerrico was going to end the fight. Armed with a 100mm gun, a 40mm Bofors gun and a pair of 20mm's she began to move inshore. The Royal Marines patiently held their fire, luring the warship in closer. At about 250-300 meters the Royal Marines decided they could see the whites of the eyes and opened fire.

The Guerrico

The detachment's Charlie G loader tucked himself in close to his gunner to avoid the back blast and the weapon fired. The round hit the sea just short of the corvette but it continued to travel a short distance before detonating causing flooding and structural damage. 66mm LAWs were also fired, three of which hit around the forward 100mm turret, jamming it completely. Further 66mm hits wrecked the corvettes Exocet launchers. Later on the Argentinians would admit they found 1275 bullet holes in the ship from the Royal Marines fire.

Unsurprisingly the corvette changed her mind and began to limp back out to sea. However during this action a second smaller helicopter of the first Argentinian ship had been ferrying marines ashore at the rate of two per time. With no idea where this force was as it landed behind the settlement, and utterly cut off from reinforcement or support, the Royal Marine commander decided it was time to surrender. He made an impromptu flag of surrender from a jacket, and approached the first party of Argentinians that had been landed by Puma. At first the Argentinians were hesitant, however the Royal Marine officer pointed out that the group of Argentinians by the beach was at a distinct disadvantage, and liable to suffer severe casualties if the fighting continued, which he'd rather avoid. With this the Argentinians accepted the Royal Marines surrender, although at first they didn't believe that the defenders were just 22 men, and demanded that the entire force surrender.

The Royal Marine detachment, with Grytviken in the background.

After searching the area, they accepted that was the entire force and allowed the Royal Marines to disarm the explosives that they had previously been warned about. With that the Argentinian capture of the Falklands was complete, now they could settle back and relax. After all the new, struggling British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, wouldn't care about a small uninteresting set of islands miles away from their country, would she?

 Image Credits:
dailymail.co.uk, www.americanrifleman.org, paradata.org.uk, www.crusader80.co.uk, www.britishempire.co.uk and www.sofmag.com

Under Dogs

There is a little-known war that is full of surprises. It happened between 1932 and 1935 and had around 100,000 killed, but is almost unknown. This is the Chaco War. What's surprising is how one side lost. It was fought in a baking hot area between Paraguay and Bolivia, with areas of desert and jungle but always sweating heat. This plateau was considered to belong to Bolivia, however they never exploited or worked upon the area. The people of the area also had historic links to the population of Paraguay. Both sides of the divide had claimed the area and there were skirmishes for decades. Then oil was discovered, with thoughts of an oil rush both sides staked their claims and the war began.

Paraguayan soldiers.

On one side there was the Paraguayan Army, which had been trained by exiled White Russians and the French. However, the Paraguay was largely without money and this was reflected in the state of the army. Many men lacked boots. Even guns were hard to come by, with enough elderly cast off rifles from her neighbours to equip about 1 in 7 men. As the war loomed agents in Europe brought what small arms they could with Paraguay's limited funds. Mostly rifles and the occasional batch of light machine guns. Support weapons were limited to mostly mortars, although a few heavier conventional pieces were purchased. The rest of the men were armed with machetes. Oddly machetes were the one thing that the Bolivian forces lacked. During the phase of re-armament, the Bolivians began to buy weapons from abroad, mainly from Vickers in the UK; planes, machine guns and armour. Along with the artillery from continental countries, the Bolivian Army was as well supplied as a modern army could be, although it may have lacked numbers of some of its more sophisticated weapons. For example, the total number of tanks was limited to just five armoured vehicles. These were a pair of Carden-Loyd tankettes, a pair of Vickers six tons with the twin machine gun turret arrangement, and a lone Vickers six ton with a single turret, these were even equipped with radios. They also had a veteran German commander in the shape of Hans Kundt, who had served as a Regimental Commander on the Eastern Front in World War 1, rising through the ranks to the rank of General by the end of the war. He had been present at some of Germany's big victories against the Russians

One of the Bolivian Carden-Loyds

The war began, and its exact course would take too many pages to cover, and there are many perfectly good books on the subject. But instantly things went wrong for the Bolivians. Due to the nature of the terrain the logistics of supply to the troops was appallingly hard. Even so the Bolivians began a grand offensive with overwhelming force to push the Paraguayans out of the disputed land. Almost instantly the two Carden-Loyds were knocked out by small arms fire when they were used as assault tanks. After several months of grinding battles one of the Vickers tanks was destroyed when it was hit by one of the few Paraguayan artillery pieces, which damaged its transmission. It was then blown up by sappers after it had been abandoned.

Bolivian Conscripts being taken away from their homes.

The reason for the Bolivians poor performance was several fold, General Kundt wasn't a good general. He often used human wave attacks without preparation bombardments, and would ignore his officer’s recommendations. He also neglected the need for logistics. Morale of the army was falling and self-inflicted wounds spread like wild fire. After a year the Bolivian soldiers had been at the front for the entire time with no leave. In an effort to improve morale home leave was awarded. Of the troops given leave only one third returned, with the others all deserting. Even the Bolivians equipment was proving troublesome, with many of their radios being damaged by the humid moisture of the jungles.

The Vickers six ton after it had been blown up to prevent capture..

The lighter equipped Paraguayan infantry was also more mobile in the primal jungle. In late 1933, Gen Kundt carried on receiving aircraft reconnaissance reports of a large force of Paraguayans out flanking one of his forward positions. Kundt had so far constantly failed to recognise the military manoeuvres of the enemy and misjudged their plans. He'd also shown an utter lack of willingness to adapt, just going on with the headlong charge into defended positions. He'd also been on record as saying that air reconnaissance was of no use as pilots always exaggerated. This, tied to his lack of understanding about outflanking a position possibly lead to the battle of Campo Vía. Unsurprisingly the Paraguayans cut off a large force of Bolivians, consisting of two divisions. Several times the General had been prompted to withdraw the forward forces, or do something. But every time he had issued the order of failure, to hold all their ground! (can anyone think of a time when that order has actually worked and not resulted in a severe beating?)

One of the two twin turreted Vickers six tons, maybe even in place after its capture.

To open up the road to Campo Vía, General Kundt ordered a counter attack, being led by his last two tanks. However, the Paraguayan forces arranged a surprise. One cavalry regiment, the Seventh "San Martin", comprised mostly of Argentinian volunteers prepared an ambush. As the tanks advanced slowly through the dense jungle on an arrow winding trail, the Paraguayans waited. As the tanks entered their ambush the cavalry men felled several trees in front, and behind the two Vickers tanks. Blocked in on all sides by impassable terrain the two tanks put up as much resistance as they could, slashing at the jungle about them with their machine guns. This fire fight carried on for two hours. Then as the temperature rose with their morale sapped by the constant hammering of small arms, the crew surrendered. The temperature inside the tanks was said to have reached over 50 degrees centigrade. The attempt to reopen the road to Campo Vía failed, and the Bolivians were pushed out of the eastern part of the Chaco region. About 7500 Bolivians surrendered. Along with the prisoners came a mountain of weaponry, including 8000 rifles, over 500 machine guns, 25 mortars and 20 artillery pieces, as well as two tanks. One of the tanks was mounted as a monument in Paraguay and only returned to Bolivia in the 1990's, where it was lost.

The Captured tanks on its war memorial.

After the defeat a twenty day cease fire was agreed, and both sides halted to prepare for the next phase of the war. Gen Kundt was dismissed from his job. However, things didn't go well for the new appointee, even with 12 Italian CV3's, some with flame throwers fitted, the war still went against the Bolivians. In June 1935 a cease fire was agreed, with Paraguay holding most of the Chaco region.

Image Credits:
civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com, theunion4ever.com and www.latinamericanstudies.org.

Who do we Fight?

The middle of 1943 was a confusing time for the Italians. First came the fall of their dictator Mussolini. That was followed by an outwardly pro-German government, whom was trying to negotiate a peace settlement with the Allies and at the same time showing their dedication to continuing to fight as part of the Axis. Both the Italians and the Germans drew up plans for the eventuality of the Italians dropping out of the war, however the Italian plans were more guidelines in the case of German hostilities, the German plans were much more detailed. In early September the crunch came with the Italians surrendering to the Allies with the Armistice of Cassibile, which was announced on the 8th of September at 18:30 by Allied radio, and confirmed by the Italian government radio broadcasts at 19:42. At 19:50, moments after the Italian broadcast had finished, the German High Command transmitted the code word "Achse" to all commands informing them to take action as detailed in the issued plans.

One such location was Piombino, on the Italian coast. On the 10th of September, about 04:30, the Germans approached by sea. They claimed to be an Italian flotilla that wanted to put in for refueling. The two lead vessels were Torpedoboot Ausland (this was used by the Germans to describe the myriad of small foreign vessels captured across Europe as they overwhelmed their original owners). The two lead boats were TA9 and TA11, these originally had been French La Melpomène class torpedo boats. Each weighed about 800 tons, and had two each of 4 inch guns, 37mm AA guns and a pair of machine guns. TA9 had been the 'Bombarde', and TA11 the 'L'Iphigénie' in French Service. Any mentions of previous service are rare, for example I've only found mention of L'Iphigénie helping escort a convoy to Malta in 1939, for five and a half hours.

La Melpomène class

After being seized by the Germans they were handed over to the Italians, and given Italian two tone camouflage. This was hastily painted over with a third shade of grey when the Germans seized her, although she retained most of her other Italian markings.

At first the Italian naval commander denied them access to the port and the Germans held position off shore. After some five hours the local port commander gave permission for the Germans to enter. As they entered the two ships split up taking up station on either end of the harbour and covering the entire port with their guns. During the rest of the day many more boats entered the port, all German. These began to land armed patrols who roamed about and began to prepare to seize key parts of the city. Thus the tension began to bubble as the citizens began to realise what was about to happen.

Piombino was a steel town with two large steel plants. In the 20's there had been a distinct communist feeling in the city, which had once before come to armed conflict, with the army being used to suppress the revolts. Again, after that fateful morning the workers of the steel plants began to gather and formed the core of a protest to the Italian authorities that they should defend their town. The protests also included the warning, if not outright threat, that if the military didn't act then the civilians would rise in open rebellion. So here you have a large riotous group of people with a distinct whiff of communism, arguing against fascist officers. 

Men from one of the steel plants moving to action in a communist dispute in the early 50's.

The Italian authorities agreed to the demands of the populace and called in tanks, while they were awaiting the arrival of the armour the civilians set about preparing for the defence of their town. As the day passed with no sign of reinforcements the protests began to become agitated and angry, eventually they tried to storm the headquarters of the National Fascist Party looking for weapons, this storming was driven off by troops firing warning shots. However soon after about twenty M15/42 tanks arrived and began to fire directly on the crowd.

During the afternoon, lower level officers began to side with the protesters, these were lead by the commander of the local anti-aircraft battery, this placed stocks of small arms in the hands of the protesters. Slowly junior officers began to change sides, when the two regional commanders who had organised the armoured force arrived on the scene to arrest the rebelling officers. What happened to them isn't recorded, however they didn't succeed, as the Germans were now beginning to land in force and move towards the Italian protests.

At 21:15 someone launched a flare over the harbour, this illuminated the German ships and their captain believing they were about to be attacked, ordered the ships to open fire. On land, the armed civilians bolstered by the soldiers that had changed sides began to engage the German sailors. The tanks began a fierce gun battle with the German ships.  The 47mm guns of the tanks peppered the two torpedo boats, sinking TA11 and forcing TA9 to withdraw at midnight after being heavily damaged. TA9 was to survive until August 1944 when she was sunk in an air attack whilst at sea.

As dawn broke the next day the German forces who had been abandoned by their ships surrendered. About 2-300 were captured with about 120 killed in the fighting, many of whom were likely to have come from the ships. The Italians had lost only four people killed and three times as many wounded. Later that day with command and control restored an Italian general ordered that the German prisoners be released and their weapons returned. The Germans then retreated from the city. The authorities then agreed to a surrender to the Germans. Incensed at this many of the soldiers and civilians who had taken part in the defence of their city grabbed the guns they had liberated and fled to the hills to form a resistance band. As they left they destroyed any equipment they couldn't carry, and just in time as the German forces returned.

Image credits:
www.navypedia.org

See also this book for information on the TA11 camo, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

The Last Stand

The war was coming to an end, France was nearly defeated, and soon the last battle would take place at Epinal. Over the preceding month the Germans had driven deep into France forcing the Allies to evacuate, and then they had hooked south, diving past the Maginot line. Epinal is located behind the line of fortresses, and the Germans were attacking from the wrong way. Their objectives were the small fortresses of Adelphes, Longchamp and Dogneville. Towards this the Germans threw the 6th Panzer Division, supported by a variety of units including the 660th Assault Gun Battery. From this force Kampfgruppe Esebeck, commanded by Colonel Hans-Karl Freiherr von Esebeck was to capture the city of Epinal. The Kampfgruppe had started off the battle of France with one battalion each of tanks, artillery and infantry, along with a company of engineers and anti-tank guns. However by this stage in the campaign the engineers and anti-tank guns had been withdrawn. At least two famous names were also on the force in the 6th Panzer, Claus von Stauffenberg and Franz Bäke.

German forces at Epinal

Facing them were a demoralised French formation, which I've not been able to identify. They were described as scruffy and drunk, not interested in defending their ground and all command and control had broken down with the soldiers ignoring the orders of their superiors. However these French forces did obey one order they received, the one to retreat.
This didn't leave Epinal open to the Germans though, the 46th GRDI, the reconnaissance battalion for an infantry division took over the defence. Even at full strength this force would only have two 60mm mortars, ten machine guns and a pair of 25mm anti-tank guns. Once again the battle in France revolved around a bridge. The French forces dug themselves in fortifying houses with sandbags and knocking firing slits in walls to cover the buildings flanks, they prepared to fight the Germans aiming to hold them on the river line. The last thing the force did was to lay mines on the bridges, they did this at about 0400 on the 19th of June 1940.

Sgt Schillé's 25mm gun, sandbagged in the entranceway of a school. Looks like some German has nicked the flash suppressor off the barrel.

At 0600 the Frenchmen saw several Sdkfz 251's pulling up on the other side of the river, they started to unload the troops they carried within themselves. Immediately the battalion’s machine guns began to stutter, and soon a blazing fire fight was in full flow. The Germans flanked and crossed further down from the French position, luckily there was the open ground of a park there and one of the 25mm's had been sighted to cover it, along with several riflemen. This rush of two half-tracks was wrecked by the French, with both Sdkfz 251's set on fire, although about a squad of Germans was left on the bank, they were under fire from the small arms.

The Germans brought up some more armour, a Panzer 35(t). It halted and began to fire at the building occupied across the river, then after only a few shots swung about and drove off, all the time under fire from the 25mm, the rounds bouncing off the tank.
About ten minutes later a Panzer 35(t) approached again, no one knows if it was the same one or a second tank, but looking at pictures I suspect it was a second vehicle. It halted beside the river and began to fire against the buildings again. After six or so rounds it lurches forward, crossing the bridge, avoiding the mines laid there. A second 25mm was dug in the doorway of a boys school, it was commanded by Maréchal-des-logis (roughly sergeant rank) Schillé. He waited until the German Panzer was at point blank range, before firing three rapid shots. As was shown earlier the long range striking power of the 25mm was fairly terrible, but at such short range even the 25mm's could hurt a Panzer. The tank shudders to a halt and begins to burn. The horribly burned commander clambers out, and somehow despite the pain helps his loader get out. Of the hull crew one is killed instantly the other, now wounded, manages to get out, despite his wounds he staggers into a house, and ends up in its cellar, he is found there still alive six hours later.

The Ps-35(t) knocked out by Sgt Schillé's 25mm.

The blaze on the tank reaches its ammunition, and the tank begins to really burn, this sets fire to the nearby buildings adding to the problems for the beleaguered Frenchman. The German bring up some Panzer IV's or maybe Stug IIID's. Their armour would come round the corner, and trying not to close with the 25mm's would then begin to bombard the enemy buildings and then withdraw. One of their salvoes destroyed the 25mm covering the park, and a Panzer IV moves up onto the bridge and begins to smash the buildings. Soon all the French machine guns are destroyed, the last one manned by one volunteer until his stand is ended by the Panzer IV. Unable to respond to the Germans the French troops begin to fall back, leaving a covering screen in their place. These men use up the last of their ammunition and the battle ends. Two days later the war ends for France as the Armistice is signed.


Image Credits:
www.worldwarphotos.info and www.materielsterrestres39-45.fr

The Biggest gun in the West

Just after the Second World War the west was facing a problem, it's the same problem that tank designers face today. Its gotten to the point where a tanks protection is better than the guns on tanks, they are lacking the power to perforate the tanks defensive layers. Just after the war we were worried about the IS-3 , and later about the T-54.

Jim Warford uploaded these pictures over at Tanknet, they show an IS-3 that's been shot up by L7 APDS... Scared yet?

Normally what would happen, and what happened during the Second World War, is that a gun would defeat an armour, then the other side would increase the armour, so the gun's increased by a small amount so that they could defeat the armour. Then the cycle would repeat. So you got a steadily increasing calibre of gun in small increments.
In the early 1950's the chief engineer (I suspect his name was Lillywhite, but I haven't been able to prove it yet) at the Fighting Vehicles Development Establishment sat down, and thought 'What if we cut out the small steps and went directly to the end, to the biggest gun possible? What is that calibre?'. So he pulled out his slide rule and some paper and set to work. The figure he came out with for the maximum theoretical gun calibre was 180mm. This was the 180mm Lillywhite gun. The engineer also calculated the estimated performance of the gun. It fired a whopping 71.5 lbs AP shell at 3720 feet per second. This gave a kinetic energy at muzzle of around 20 megajoules. In comparison a modern 120mm L/55 smoothbore with the best available ammunition is providing about 13 megajoules (APFSDS). The Lillywhite had such a big round it was split into two bag charges and the projectile.
From this point the gun was developed and became the 183mm L4, that we all know and love on the infamous FV215 and FV4005. The L4 had a single bag charge, but the projectile was very similar. It however lost some of its velocity as it was only ever designed to fire HESH rounds (HESH rounds are often seen as "low velocity"). Well these low velocity HESH rounds were still able to generate about 18 megajoules of kinetic energy.

"I say, you! Over there in the tank that looks like an inverted frying pan... Yes you! Want some low velocity HESH rounds delivered?"

The L4 was worked into the FV215 and there has been a great deal of misinformation floating about this tank in modern games. It could carry twenty rounds, of which twelve were ready rounds. The turret could rotate through 360 degrees but the gun was to be locked out and prevented from firing if the barrel passed forty five degrees of arc. However the gun could be fired when pointing backwards.
From the outset the army was lukewarm about the FV215. When the Malkara guided missile appeared on the scene they got behind the project with enthusiasm and dropped the L4 as soon as they could. Then the L11 120mm gun showed up and it had enough power to defeat the enemies armour and things settled down.

In the 70's people began to see armour once again getting better, and forecasts indicated that Russian tanks could get very scary. During the time when I was growing up a lot of writers and commentators pointed out how superior the Soviet armour was, going on about how invulnerable their tanks were (much like people do today in regards to the T-14), so once again the idea for the next generation of tank guns showed up. Of course after a few years we actually learned their armour was pretty poor. First on the scene was the 152mm for the MBT-70 project. Not much is known about this gun, but from little that is known is that it'd have produced a kinetic energy value similar to the 120mm L/44 smoothbore with its earliest variants of ammunition.

There's even less known about the gun that came next, it was 145mm joint US-German gun project hinted as the "Future Armament system" on one sketch. It occurred sometime about 1986. We do however know what it would have looked like as some models have survived.

The next gun to be developed was the 140mm FMBT gun, and is widely fitted to a whole host of tanks. It was a NATO standard weapon in many respects. The choice of 140mm wasn't as random as you might think, research shows that above 140mm the projectile is actually less efficient with that calibre being the optimum. Coming in two parts it had to be screwed together before use.  As you can see the sheer size of the rounds would have meant a autoloader was necessary, as it'd be like trying to load a small human into the breach with each round. The 140mm FMBT gun developed a whooping 20 megajoules of energy.

I got bored, and did some drawing, ably helped by Maddest. Who now wants me to add All of the shells ever made since 1945 to the diagram.

Finally we come onto modern times when the Germans announced that the 120mm was no longer good enough, and that presumably not enough power could be pulled from the gun to defeat current threats. Rheinmetall has designed the 130mm Main Gun Combat System. The MGCS is reported by Rheinmetall to have 50% more energy than their 120mm gun. However one has to be very careful about these sorts of claims as most companies sales teams are worse than the shadiest of used car salesman. An expert who has to deal with this sort of stuff professionally laughed at that figure and suggested its more likely to be around 40% at best. This would give the MCGS around about 15-17 megajoules of energy.

Classic German design, at its finest, draw a box around the gun and call it a Panzer! Then lie about its emissions.

Without a technological leap guns are going to have to become bigger if you want them to keep punching through enemy armour. However that will impose a series of big problems that modern western armies are reluctant to have on their tanks, such as limited ammunition and less crew. All things considered the immediate future of tank armament is looking very tumultuous.