Scanlon's Knock-Out Punch

There is a constant problem in doing these articles. Sources can conflict quite badly. Sometimes you need to glue snippets together from multiple sources, other times they seem contradictory, so let’s see how we get on this week!

We start, early one morning with a French farmhouse near Issy les-Moulineaux before the First World War. Out of nowhere a 37mm shell smashed into the farmhouse and ploughed through the building. The projectile was recovered and there was much curiosity as to where this could have come from. Such a projectile was normally used by the Navy, but there were hundreds of miles between them and the nearest naval firing range. Equally, all the eyewitnesses had not reported a gunshot being heard. A local newspaper reporter then got onto the case and begun investigating this curiosity. He very quickly worked out what had happened. It was a stray round fired by a Voisin aircraft that had been testing 37mm guns fitted to planes for the French military. This, by the limited source we have, solved the mystery to the satisfaction of everyone who heard about it, but upset the authorities who had wanted to keep this project rather more secret.

A Voisin IV, with its 37mm gun

The plane’s designer, Gabriel Voisin, had a history of strapping large guns to planes, having first displayed such a weapon on a plane in 1912. Although that plane never flew, and it is unrecorded what type of plane this experimental model was as the internet seems to confirm that the first such 37mm armed aircraft was the Voisin IV of 1915, and yet some sources state that a squadron of 37mm aircraft were used to defend Paris at the start of the war.

Voisin's 1912 display piece.

Voisin's best efforts with this new project would be rewarded, when it is claimed two US aircrew from the Lafayette Escadrille in a Voisin aircraft, with a 37mm mounted in the rear seat of a plane, managed to score a direct hit on a German plane on the 10th of January 1915.

The pilot was stated as Norman Prince, who was born in Beverly, Massachusetts in 1887. He had ties to France with an estate being bought there by his family in 1910. In January 1915 he travelled to France to persuade the French authorities to set up the Lafayette Escadrille, which became operational in 1916. For that reason, I fear we can assume the date of the air to air kill was wrong.

Norman Prince

Prince would serve in the Lafayette Escadrille until October, when with four kills under his belt he flew an escort mission for bombers hitting the Mauser works at Oberndorf. During the mission he achieved his fifth air to air victory. On return to his base, as he was approaching the landing strip, he flew too low and his undercarriage caught on a set of telegraph wires, and his plane crashed killing him.

Bob Scanlon

The gunner on the aircraft was listed as being Bob Scanlon, a person much harder to locate documents for. He was born in 1886 in Mobile, Alabama (or Milwaukee...). As a black he found life in the Land of the Free very unpleasant and soon moved abroad at the age of 16. His first job was a cowboy in Mexico, but he then moved to the UK as a middleweight boxer. Up until 1914 he lived in London working several of the boxing event clubs there. In 1914 he seemed to have moved to Paris. When war broke out he appears to have joined the French Army serving in the front line, at first with the Foreign Legion, then the regular Army. A newspaper story mentions Scanlon by name, when woken during an alert one night he grabs his rile and scrambles up out of his bunker and onto the firing step. He stands there with his rifle until stand down is called. It is at this point the exhausted Scanlon realizes he had grabbed a plank of wood used for shoring up the bunkers rather than his rifle. To make matters worse an inspection is immediately called, there he was, with no rifle in the middle of an alert! Scanlon snapped to attention shouldering the plank and hoped that the officer will not notice. The inspecting officer halted and stared at Scanlon. This officer was quite provincial, and not familiar with Colonial regiments, or the novelty of meeting an American. He assumed it was some traditional tribal weapon, and thus a good display of bloodthirstiness and eagerness to get to grips with the Germans, congratulated Scanlon and moved on.

By December 1915 (Or January 1916) Scanlon had moved to the machine gun company of his battalion, when he suffered an injury to the hand in the closing days of Verdun. This seems to have caused him to be discharged out of service. There is a newspaper article mentioning Scanlon, and it is entitled "Chops of finger to stay in the war", although details are non existent. Thus, it is likely that Scanlon could have joined Lafayette Escadrille as a gunner after this time, with his expertise in a machine guns serving him in good stead for a role as an aircraft gunner.

After the war Scanlon returned to boxing, living in Paris, until 1923 (or 1927). By one account his boxing career was ended when a jealous woman shot him! With that he seems to fade from the records.

Image credits:
www.ww1-planes.com and boxrec.com

Operation Gutesholz

At 1400, on 27th June 1944 the guns around Rauray, almost due west of Caen, fell silent. Both the Germans and British forces had agreed a local truce to allow recovery of the wounded. The village of Rauray had been the focal point for the British attack that had been rolling on for the last few days. Rauray had been selected as the objective, because it was on the high ground, and a British attack was to pass underneath this position as part of the larger battle for Caen. If the Germans had been left in position, they would have had full observation across the attack, and had a perfect jumping off point for an attack into the flank of the Scottish 15th Division. To give you an idea of the severity of the fighting, earlier a company of the 11th Durham Light Infantry, consisting of two platoons, and seventy men had been reduced to just six uninjured. On the German side a company of Panzer Grenadiers was down to just 21 men.  During the truce, at 1600 the Germans withdrew, considering their position untenable in the short term, and left the British in charge of the ruined ground.

Clearing a sniper in Rauray.

The remains of the exhausted 11th DLI battalion occupied Rauray itself. In support was the 1st Tyneside Scottish battalion. Over the next couple of days, they pushed out from their position but met stiff German resistance, and were subjected to particularly heavy Nebelwerfer barrages. The resistance came from Kampfgruppe Weidinger, which was made up of elements from the 2nd SS Panzer Division. By the 1st of July the 1st Tyneside has extended their line to the south east of Rauray and linked up with the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. The 1st Tyneside's positions were not entirely random. Previously they had reconnoitered the area looking for good defensive positions. Most of the area was bocage, with limited fields of fire. However, A company was sited in a large five cornered field, which gave several hundred meters view range. Into this field were deployed several of the 1st Tynesides surviving 6-pounder anti-tank guns. The others were dispersed where they could find the best fields of fire along the relatively open front. In addition, two dummy guns were set up to further confuse the Germans. To their rear was the Suffolk Yeomanry.

Early on the 1st of July the Germans launched a major attack. Kampfgruppe Weidinger was reinforced by the 9th SS Panzer Division and this mass of tanks and Germans advanced on the battered battalions around Rauray. The German objective was not to take Rauray, but head for Cheux. Rauray, and the positions to the south east were directly across the German's axis of attack. In doing so they would slice off the head of the British salient extending past Caen, and cripple British forces in Normandy. Von Rundstedt saw this as their last chance to throw the Allies back into the channel. The initial opening looked very very promising. The attack started at 0600, and by 0630 the 1st Tyneside company that had been the focal point of the attack was reported as falling back through the Suffolk Yeomanry's positions. All that stood in the way of this mass of armour were a handful of 6-pounders.

Those 6-pounders however had a secret weapon, super velocity rounds. These days more commonly called APDS these days, this was likely the first real test of this brand-new projectile. But initially it caused problems. Brian Stewart, commander of the 1st Tyneside's anti-tank platoon reported that the gunners were caught out by the velocity of the shots, and most of the rounds fired went high. However, the range was short and some would have struck. It is likely that after the initial opening salvo's the 6-pounders had used up their scarce few APDS shots and started firing good old fashioned APCBC, with telling results.
Due to the unusually open terrain, at least for Normandy, the Germans found themselves in a rather horrific crossfire. Tanks from the 24th Lancers had moved up to support the 11th DLI in Rauray and were on the left of the German attack. The 1st Tyneside's 6-pounders were on the right-hand side of the attack, and the Suffolk Yeomanry were blocking the front.

Moving a 6-pounder by hand.

There is an account from the Suffolk Yeomanry's after-action report, where a German tank flanks a pair of anti-tank guns and begins to lay accurate fire on them, causing causalities. One of the gun Sergeants, by the name of Hall, rallied the survivors and formed an ad-hoc gun grew. These men then manhandled their gun 350 yards to bring it into a new firing position. They got their gun ready to fire, and just in time. A Tiger used a burning enemy tank that had been previously knocked out to advance into a hull down position. Two rounds were fired, the second one causing the Tiger to brew up. A second Tiger attempted the advance in exactly the same way. The crew had the range perfectly and only needed one round to destroy it. Shortly afterwards a Panzer IV became engaged with the gun team. A fierce firefight broke out, and several men were wounded, and one killed. However, the Panzer IV was destroyed. Then a packet of four or more German tanks attacked. This was too much for the infantry who retreated, leaving Sgt Hall's mauled gun team to hold them off. In the bitter fighting that followed it seems that Sgt Hall knocked out or destroyed two of them.

This crossfire, and the stubborn resistance by the Suffolk Yeomanry blunted the German attack. Later that day, around 1100 they shifted their axis of attack northwards and closer to Rauray. The Suffolk's, DLI, 1st Tynesides and 24th Lancers, although battered and exhausted kept on fighting holding the Germans with bitter fighting. By 1700 the Germans retreated. The exact losses the Germans suffered is hard to tell. But as an example, Kampfgruppe Weidinger lost 48 vehicles from all causes. The 9th SS Panzer Division, on the 2nd of July reported the following vehicles operational, 10 Panzer IV's, 19 Panthers and Stug III's. Upon hearing of the results of the battle, Von Rundstedt was asked, what do we do know? To which he responded "Make peace, you fool!".

Attacking prepared massed anti-tank guns is expensive in tanks, as the British would find out in Op Goodwood. However, there was one huge difference between the German attack at Rauray and Op Goodwood. The British actually managed to take ground, the Germans failed.

Image credits:
www.militaryimages.net and www.dday-overlord.com

Bouncing Bazooka's

About two months ago I mentioned, on my Facebook page, a friend in the US by the name of Harold Biondo. Now he's a lucky bloke, and gets to spend his time leafing through the US Archives. He recently came up trumps again, finding this testing report:

At first glance It's pretty earth-shattering stuff. Tanks with Zimmerit on them are proof against Bazooka's and presumably other early shaped charge warheads like the PIAT! Simply by providing a cushioning effect against the fuse. However, this report provides an ideal example for you historians on critical thought, and how to deal with sources. Now, I have no doubt that some of the doggy denizens of the internet who have vested interests will try to make much of the claims held within the above letter, I saw enough of that with the Japanese heavy tanks from my first book, but it’s something we'll have to bear as long as there's free access to the internet.

First, let’s review what we do know about Zimmerit. Zimmerit was born out of a problem that was facing all nations. Technology was advancing fast enough that tank armour was pretty quickly leaving infantry anti-tank weapons behind. After the opening salvos of the war it became pretty clear that anti-tank rifles were not going to do the job any more, so everyone started scrambling for ways to defeat the armour. For example, Britain produced the No 68 anti-tank grenade which could be fired from a cup discharger from a normal service rifle. This was a pretty poor warhead but did have the advantage of starting research that would eventually culminate in the PIAT, but that is a story for another time (and is going into a book!). In the meantime, Britain used the sticky bomb, a kind of hand thrown HESH round which you could use to beat a tank to death with.

Note the guy on the right? He's about to smash his sticky bomb onto the hull of this Valentine "Panzer", at which point the sticky glue will hold the bomb in place and allow the explosive gel to spread. At the same time, when the safety lever is released it starts a short time fuse before detonating.

In Germany thoughts turned to HEAT weapons as well and resulted in the Hafthohlladung. Unlike the sticky bomb, which used glue to affix itself, the Hafthohlladung used strong magnets. Now weapon development in Germany during the war was one of trying to stay one step ahead of everyone. You can clearly see it when you look at tanks. Each generation of AFV's would be one up on the previous generation as Germany tried to introduce the answer to their own tank design. This ensured that if any of the Allies tried to match them, they would be ahead and have better tanks. Of course, this all went horribly wrong when the Allies reached the level of the Sherman and happily stayed there, while the Germans kept on devoting massive amounts of time and energy to getting the newest thing.

As they kept designing the counter to their own weapons, the obvious concern was the magnetic anti-tank mine. This is where Zimmerit arrived. It was a paste designed to be added to the tank that would cause any magnetic mines to fall off. When applied it could be allowed to dry naturally, but this would take eight days. By using a blow torch this could be sped up to two days to coat a tank. The use of a torch started considerable fires as the solvents used in the application were burnt off, but the time saved was considered worth it. Earlier I mentioned that Germany spent a lot of time and effort preparing for an enemy weapon that was not yet in the field, and here is a prime example. In the ten or so months that Zimmerit was applied to German tanks roughly 15,000 tanks and AFV's were produced. Please do note this is a very rough figure to illustrate the point. At two days per tank that equates to 82 years worth of work just to apply the Zimmerit!

Zimmerit was discontinued from September 1944, which leads us back to the original report quite nicely. You'll note that Captain John Long states that tanks equipped with this covering were only encountered in Belgium. Most of Belgium was captured in September to November 1944, which seems to tie up quite nicely with Zimmerit service. But there are additional problems with his account, which illustrate why eyewitness reports are so notoriously difficult.

Tiger turret nicely showing off the Zimmerit, as some areas have been knocked off.

First, he states the colour as green-grey (possibly German field grey?), but 15% of the composition of Zimmerit is pigment, which gives it an ochre colour. Next he states that the thickness of the covering was 6.35-19.05mm. Yet every other source I can find states that the Zimmerit layer was between 4-6mm. It could be Cpt Long misremembering the facts, as this report seems to have been generated sometime after February 1945. Or it can be explained away, by such factors as painting the tank and dodgy measurement taking.

That last point applies in spades to the rest of the report. Those of you who have seen reports from grown ups at dedicated trials departments will know that every aspect of the trial is documented. Often batch lots of ammo are recorded. Indeed, in testing one form of protection, one trials department had to source ammunition from a particular batch, from a particular factory, that had gone out of production the year before just to ensure consistency in the trials. This involved the British logistics system scouring its depots for boxes of ammo that had not been yet fired off (You'll be glad to hear, that it was successful, the testing proved the facts, and the Germans got a hell of a surprise when they found themselves on the wrong end of a WASP flamethrower and couldn't kill it).

So here we are to ask so many questions of Cpt Longs trials. What was the fusing like, the angle of impact, what type of warhead and rocket (the M6 Bazooka rocket was notoriously unreliable)? Also, what was the expected result? This last point should be considered as the text talks about rockets not sticking in the covering... was this something you were expecting? Why? We don't even know the number of rockets fired. There are just too many variables not recorded in this report, so we cannot say why Cpt Long got the results he did.

What we do know is that HEAT warheads were killing German tanks with Zimmerit, and that the Germans stopped applying it from September 1944. if it was so effective at stopping incoming HEAT warheads you can bet the Germans would have been plastering it all over their tanks, yet they did not. This would indicate the problem was with Cpt Long's methodology. This is why you should always be careful of badly documented reports of trials carried out by troops in the field!

Still a damn interesting find by Harold, so our thanks to him for letting me share it with you.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrt!

 Last week we looked at the background to the mighty A-10 and its development, now we continue the story.

The A-10 has been made famous by its weapon, the GAU-8 Avenger. A weapon so massive that the A-10 has to have a special jack under its tail should the GAU-8 be removed for servicing. The weapon itself is offset to one side, and the barrel that fires is actually the 9 o'clock one. This barrel is the one on the centreline of the aircraft. In later years it would be related to another US procurement mess. 

Video doesn't seem to be working correctly, so here's a link. http://i.imgur.com/2TFpP1G.gif

In the mid to late 1970's the US Army was facing a number of new issues, mostly helicopters performing pop-up attacks and a new generation of vehicles, the M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley's entering service. The later had a higher degree of mobility than previous chassis and would therefore leave those older vehicles behind. This included the M163 Vulcan and Chaparral SAM's. For that reason, the US Army instigated the Advanced Radar-directed Gun Air Defence System (ARGADS) program. The hull in all versions was to be a M48A5 with a new engine, and rear deck. This seems utterly perplexing, as this would not have been able to keep up with the new front-line equipment either. 

Several companies were invited to tender designs. These included General Electric with an AA vehicle based around the GAU-8. All four entrants received a designation number. Although there has been no documentation to confirm it, it is likely the General Electric’s entry was given the number XM248. This is down to published numbers of all the other competitors, XM246 (General Dynamics), XM247 (Ford) and XM249 (Sperry Rand). There was a fifth competitor in the shape of Raytheon, but they were proposing a German Gepard turret mounted on the M48 chassis, and it is not entirely clear what happened to this project. 

The General Electric entry, with its GAU-8 was only ever created as a model. But one can get an idea of how devastating it could have been. On 7th of November 1979 an A-10 was used to attack a company of tanks, spread out in an attack formation. These tanks were M47's, fully stowed with ammo and fuel. The A-10 made ten passes, with one quick burst per tank, a total of 174 rounds were fired (total ammo capacity for an A-10 is over 1,000 rounds by the way). Each burst lasted for about 0.57 seconds. 

Interestingly, the attack angle for this was only about 3-4 degrees, so the A-10 must have been almost flat to the ground! This dive angle was to simulate the nap of the earth flying needed to avoid Soviet air defences. 

Of the 174 rounds fired, ninety rounds hit the vehicles, thirty of which penetrated the tanks armour. Three of the tanks were destroyed, four more were immobilized, of which two had their main armament destroyed and one final tank suffered a minor degradation in its ability to use its main gun. Thus, the A-10 had rendered an entire company combat ineffective as only two tanks were still operational, and a third mostly operational. 

The ARGADS project seemed to roll on for a while, and then was re-named to DIVisional Air Defence System (DIVADS). At this point General Electric brought out their scale model, re-worked it with a new radar fit, and new optics modelled on and resubmitted. Of the competitors only the Ford (XM247) and General Dynamics (XM246) designs were selected for comparative trials. In a shootout the XM246 thrashed the XM247. The XM246 achieved twice the number of hits, at over twice the range of the Ford entry. By the end of the shoot out the XM246 had shot down fifteen helicopters and the Ford just 8. 

So, the contract was awarded to the Ford with the XM247 becoming the ill-fated Sgt York SPAA. I have no idea how this happened, but I suspect the words "Congress" and "Committee" will be included somewhere. 

If you read the US Air defence journals.. this is the most awesome Air defence tank of all time...

The Sgt York went on to perform disastrously badly, on one occasion managing to lock onto the spinning blades of a ventilator fan on a toilet block on the range. Another time, the gun locked onto, and laid its guns onto, the viewing stands containing large numbers of the Army's brass, only to be prevented from firing by the gunner. 

As the Army had no other backup they continued to press forward with the project. Eventually Congress stepped in again, this time for good. The Sgt York was ordered to be put through a series of battlefield tests to prove it was capable. At first the Sgt York could not score hits on the drones, even when just flying along in a straight line. So, the drones were just set to hover, and still the Sgt York missed. In the end the drones were covered in radar reflectors to increase the strength of the radar return. Further tests and checks showed that while the gun was sufficient the tracking and laying system was fault ridden. Operational reliability was given as just 33%, which means that only 1/3 of all Sgt Yorks would be working at any one particular time. In 1985 the program was terminated.

Image credits:

AW upcoming releases and media.defense.gov

Empire Building

The US equipment procurement system is complex and impenetrable to an outsider. On at least one occasion it has been the subject for a comedy (Pentagon Wars). But today I feel we should cover that, and a few other items that are related to the A-10 Warthog, and the issues of US procurement run through the entire story. 

Roughly my reaction to this story... If you ever think your nation is bad at weapon procurement (I'm looking at you Czech Republic) refer back to this story.

The big argument was between the US Army and USAF, it was over Close Air Support (CAS). For the longest time the USAF had concentrated on high tech shiny supersonic marvels of the jet age. The Army, however, thought that CAS might be quite useful, while the USAF disagreed. The first inter-service agreement on the subject was from 1948. But by the outbreak of the Vietnam War the USAF had no way of providing CAS, and so started strapping bombs onto its planes. It was quickly found that these planes were somewhat ineffective. Luckily the US Navy and Marines operated the A-1 Skyraider, a plane designed in 1945, and the USAF begrudgingly brought these into service. It was from the experiences of the A-1 over Vietnam the A-10 would grow. 

Us Army Airborne Rocket Artillery from Vietnam, there's another bank of rockets on the far side of the aircraft. These were so heavy they were almost beyond the Huey's lift capabilities.

 In the early years of the Vietnam conflict the Army began to increase its rotary wing assets, much to the annoyance of the USAF which kept on trying to limit the Army's flight capabilities. The USAF view appears to have been if it flies it is part of the USAF’s remit, even if the air force was not working on the subject. Let’s not forget the main reason for the increase in rotary winged firepower was to provide the airmobile units sufficient firepower to do their jobs. By 1966 the air force relented and surrendered the control of rotary winged assets, but did come to the agreement that fixed winged assets were entirely within the scope of only the USAF. 

Rear of the AH-56 Cheyenne. Note the two tail rotors. One to prevent the body spinning, the other to provide forward thrust. Equally look at the size of the stub wings, these would actually provide a good chunk of lift when in motion.

The Army, then brought out their newest project, the AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter. This was vastly more capable attack helicopter than the AH-1 Cobra had been. It also bridged the gap between fixed and rotary wing aircraft. The USAF saw this as erosion of their responsibilities and immediately started putting up a fight against it. One of the responses to this threat was to launch the Attack Experimental (A-X) program to create a dedicated CAS aircraft. 

The A-X program was utterly despised by the air force brass. One Colonel was even fired after he was caught a bit too blatantly trying to sabotage the program. The core of the program was a group of experienced A-1 pilots, all with combat experience over Vietnam. The USAF then saw the US Marines working on the AV-8 Harrier program. They immediately attempted to use the A-X program to halt that development. Congress became involved as well. The result was the USMC's AV-8 was deemed not to be under the CAS umbrella and could go ahead. The AH-56 was also killed off partially for cost reasons. However, Congressmen had been approached by the manufacturers of the A-7 Corsair, which was suggested as a CAS aircraft by Congress, urged on by interests from Texas (The home state of the company that builds the A-7) . So, the Congressional hearings demanded that the winner of the A-X program would compete against the A-7, because reasons... 

A-7 pretending to be a dedicated CAS Aircraft over Vietnam. I mean it has a sharks mouth painted on it and everything!

The A-X program came to the conclusion that their plane needed the following abilities: massive cannon firepower, long loiter time and extreme survivability. Thus, two aircraft were selected. Both mounted the monstrous GAU-8 Avenger 30mm Gatling cannon, which we'll talk about later. The aircraft were the Northrop YA-9 and the Fairchild YA-10. The YA-9 bares a passing resemblance to a SU-25 Frogfoot. After comparative trials it was decided that the YA-10 was the winner and would go on to face the A-7. 

The YA-9 with its distinct SU-25/Warthog combination of looks.

Now the A-7 was in no way a dedicated CAS aircraft like the A-10. It was faster, with less loiter time, a lot less survivable, lacked the cannon armament and had a smaller payload. 

In 1974 the A-7 comparative trial was carried out. Despite the air forces utter disregard for the A-10, their hatred for the A-7 was greater. It appears the main reason for this was simply because it was a US Navy plane. The USAF was able to rig the trials to use the worst weather conditions they could, and thus prejudice the tests against the A-7. 

Even then with the A-10 coming out the winner of the A-X project, over the next few years it struggled to get into service with the USAF brass attempting to discredit or otherwise delay the project. It finally entered service in 1977, eleven years after the project was started, and five years after its first flight.

Next week I'll cover another procurement mess that is linked to the GAU-8 cannon.