Nick’s comments on the 17 Pounder thread inspired me to open this one.
32Bravo
The Rifles acquitted themselves quite well at Kidney Ridge, though, with their Six Pounders.
Nick
Of course. But the Afrika Corp had a field day for a bit until the Rats caught on…
32Bravo
Sure they did, as I mentioned elsewhere – learning curves.
But that’s way over-simplified; there were many reasons diverse and complex which compounded the problems of the Eighth Army operating in the Western Desert
For example: After WW1, many of the senior members of British cavalry regiments wanted to remain, or revert to being, horse regiments. This was their mentality, hence, charging against Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
I have mentioned some of the British Army officers’ attitudes above. Thye were not all like this, but when one puts it into perspective. WW1 was considered somewhat of a freak by many regular officers. Imagine, they were of the ‘hunting set’ and had spent years manning the outposts of the Empire. When WW1 finished, with these, it was a case of ‘Now we can get back to real soldiering!..Where’s my horse?’ To them the tank was an abomination (into the Valley of Death rode the Six Hundred).
The Germans, on the other hand, had studied armoured warfare, practised in Spain, adapted and improved their Division and Battlegroup methods.
Back to North Africa: Not all of the British generals in the early battles were totally incompetent. Take O’Connor. he used pretty much the same strategy as Rommel’s when he defeated the Italians. He later fell foul of the same mistakes as the Italians. However, he was the type of man to learn from his mistakes (back to learning curves).
Lines of communication. Until Malta was reinforced with Spitfires, the re-supply of the Eight Army involved sailing all the way around Africa and up through the Suez Canal. Rommel was supplied via Sicaly.
Seasoned troops. The Eight Army was leached of its better more seasoned troops to reinforce Greece and later Crete and Singapore.
Politically, the generals were under pressure to produce a victory always before they were ready to do so. Mainly because of manpower and equipment problems. The men had to be trained for desert warfare. the equipment had to be adapted to operate in the desert - and it was not usually of the standard of the Germans equipment. Apart from the obvious, such as tanks, the German ‘Jerrycan’ was far superior to anything the Brits had.
Winston Churchill threw down the Sunday Pictorial on the morning of August 11, 1940, with an angry scowl on his face. “We Have Wasted Brains!” blazed the headline to a slashingly critical article by Britain’s top military analyst, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart. Dominating the page was a photograph of a hawk-faced officer in the black beret of the Royal Tank Corps, former Major-General Percy Hobart. He was Liddell Hart’s classic example of Britain’s “wasted brains.”
Practical pioneer and developer of the now-dreaded Blitzkrieg technique and former commander of the world’s first permanent tank brigade, Hobart’s revolutionary innovations in armored warfare had won him international military fame – and special attention in Germany. Dire peril now threatened Britain, but General Hobart was not commanding British tanks. He wasn’t even in the Army. He had been found serving as a corporal in the Home Guard [overage men and other civilians otherwise unfit for regular military service, meagerly armed, whose “uniform” was an arm band] – the highest responsibility Britain’s military mandarins were willing to give to the progenitor of the Blitzkrieg…
[and the article continues]
…The most memorable tribute to Hobart came from Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, whose exposure of the Home Guard episode started the tank pioneer on the road back. All the high British commanders and most of the Americans had passed before the famed analyst in a living parade, as they pursued their careers and often aroused his criticism. Liddell Hart also knew the Germans well – perhaps better than any other military writer and thinker outside Germany. As Britain’s leading military brain, his judgment has many times been vindicated, although his warnings all too often went unheeded.
In Liddell Hart’s opinion, the independence of a top command would probably have proved Hobart to be the best of the British commanders, capable of matching the best of the Germans on equal terms. In summing up, Liddell Hart writes of Hobart: “He was one of the few soldiers I have known who could be rightly termed a military genius.”
A lot of the wastage wasn’t down to CHurchill, but his pedecessors. After the slaughter of the first war, they were dedicated to peace and disarmament. Of course, all of the signs were there regarding Germany. At first they chose to ignore them and then when they could no longer ignore, they chose to appease. Appeasement bought some time, and in some places the time was put to good use e.g. the Spitfire and Radar. However, people like Hobart ought to have been put to use developing the tactics of the Blitzkieg and the equipment to implement them. Instead, others developed the type of tanks, equipment and tactics which would have been of better use on the old Western Front.
well the crappy part about tank warfare in africa was that as soon as either side had mastered it, it was time to move onto the rugged terrain of italy
The Germans were particularly good at battlefield recovery, whereas the British had no capacity for this, not in the early days, anyway. More often than not, if a British tank simply through a track in a battle it had to be abandoned and that was the end of it.
Battlefield recovery was one of the reasons that the Germans refused to give up the battlefield. Even when things didn’t go their way, they hung in there. It was only when they were heavily defeated and had no choice but to withdraw that they would abandon vehicles.
However, Rommel was not the cunnming fox that his nick name, the Desert Fox, implied, and without the element of surprise he would not have been as successful as he was.
Yes, the Western Desert was very much a war of maneouvre, although, at El Alamein, maeouverability was somewhat restricted on account of the north coast and the Quatara Depression, which was why the British chose to stand there.
The Germans were also on the offensive for much of the time in North Africa. By the time of Sicily and Italy, the Germans were fighting more defensive battles and the terrain there, particularly in Italy because of the Appeninnes, lent itself to the defense.
I say this with little knowledge of the subject, which allows me to offer suggestions uninhibited by the nuisance of factual constraints :D, but might that view owe a bit more to stereotyping than reality, as Henriques did in his 1939 novel No Arms No Armour?
No ARMS, No ARMOUR—Robert Henrlque
On a hill above England’s Salisbury Plain a stuffy general stood at the roadside, watching the 17th Light Battery return from a route march. Mules, guns, gunners. A frail, thoughtful major at the head of the column, a red-faced ungentlemanly subaltern in the rear. The general responded more favorably to the sight of a third officer: a fair young second-lieutenant with the right build for a horseman, a careless, well-bred face. Good stuff, this. “Who’s that, Benjamin?” “Windrush, sir, Tubby Windrush.” “Windrush . . . Windrush … I knew his father. Get him here, will you?”
Thus Robert Henriques introduces the hero of No Arms, No Armour, which is the winner in the All-Nations Prize Novel Competition for 1939 (sponsored by Publishers Farrar & Rinehart, various foreign publishers and the Literary Guild). As an officer and a gentleman, Windrush represents a tradition which causes the English distinct pride and a certain worry. Author Henriques worries over him like a maiden aunt. What is somewhat less credible, he makes him a subject of tender concern to his major (“Sammy”) and to “Daddy” Watson, the hardbitten subaltern of the introductory scene.
No Arms, No Armour has, for all that, the limited distinction of being the best novel about the British Army during the late peace (1928-30, precisely) that has yet appeared. Author Henriques, 34, is a major in the regular army. He writes with authority and irony of the military mind ("[the general] looked on the war as a pitiful era of confusion for the army, a lapse that must never recur . . ."), with intimate affection of the quieter moments of routine (“Like the Lord’s Prayer, you had it all by heart . . . feet, head, belly, legs; nearside, offside, eyes, nose, dock; hoof-pick, body-brush, dandy-brush, sponge, stable-rubber, wisp . . . ‘Stables’ hour was as sacred as the twenty minutes before the drawing room door opened and nurse came in to say that it was bed time . . .”). And with a dogged, unhurried intensity he makes Tubby Windrush grow up, grow sick of soldiering.
Riding for the Battery in a race, Tubby smashes up and spends months in a hospital, where he has time for unaccustomed cerebration. “Daddy” visits him, troubles him with bitter gibes at the caste-ridden army system. “Sammy” comes and perturbs him still more with philosophical questionings. Recovered, Tubby feels like making love to Lydia, a sophisticated beauty of Belgrave Square. She tells him that what he needs is a nice, kind widow.
Tubby’s maturity grows by leaps & bounds while the Battery is on duty at a Godforsaken post on the Red Sea. He learns about women from an easygoing army wife in Khartoum. He learns about good and evil when it comes out that half the Battery resorted to homosexuality during the months of isolation. On a camel trek, alone, Tubby finds himself at last in a mystical exaltation of thirst and exhaustion. . . . Lydia is rather implausibly waiting for him when he steps off the boat and out of the army. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,772370,00.html
Also, was the composition of the British officer corps altered by the retrenchments in the early 1930’s, which perhaps enabled officers with independent incomes from the huntin’ shootin’ squire / aristocractic backgrounds to remain comfortably in, and rise, in the army where others reliant solely on military pay, which by some accounts barely met uniform and mess bills, might have been forced out?
But, for all that, in an area where I do have a bit of knowledge, the assessments of the Imperial General Staff so far as matters affecting Australia go were pretty much spot on from the early 1920’s. The deficiency wasn’t in their attitudes or thinking being outdated and buried in a cavalry age, but largely in the failure of government to provide the means to carry out their sound plans. These plans included jungles in Malaya where cavalry had no place and, as far as I’m aware, was never deployed as an operational force.
I think that attention should also be paid to the different influences on military thinking from the top through the Imperial General Staff, which brought together representatives of the Commonwealth and Empire forces, notably India which through the Staff College at Quetta produced some execllent officers to rival those from Camberley in England. While the English dominated the IGS, there was a degree of collegiality which contradicts the stereotype of benighted Colonel Blimps running the show. Even if all the British IGS officers were exclusively the huntin’ shootin’ crowd, which I doubt, the Commonwealth and Empire officers were often from a very different background and had some influence on IGS thinking.
I might, or I might not. I’d have to read it first.
I’ve just seen it and the opinions outlined in my quote referred to in a few things and, due to the marvels of Google, searched for it and found the quote above, which summarised the point I’ve seen the quote used to make elsewhere.
If we both live about twelve times the normal life span, I might read it and you might have a chance of getting my opinion on it.
But don’t hold your breath.
Other problem is, with another twelve life spans we’d have a few more wars to discuss where cavalry will be nuclear or hydrogen or who knows what propelled air vehicles piloted by Oiks who trained on computer games while the Hooray Henrys were riding to hunt, with pretend foxes.
Well, the point regarding the cavalry mentality, and the way they charged-in attempting to take on the panzers, tank-on-tank (which the Germans cleverly avoided, allowing their 88’s and other anti-tank units to deal with them) was only one aspect of the problems that the British had to overcome.
Not the least problem was that the Germans had the intelligence on British deployments and capacity, updated on a daily basis. So, the Germans were able to concentrate their forces and hit the British wherever and whenever they were at their weakest.
There wasn’t any of that cavalry pointless charging mentality at Tobruk when the combined Australian and British forces defeated the previously invincible German blitzkrieg tank tactics, which exposed the weakness of the German tactics against intelligent static defence. Other considerations obviously applied in mobile engagements…
Tobruk’s strength as a fortress lay in the fact that for an attacker there was no cover around the perimeter as the area is an almost perfectly flat plateau. With the harbour as the heart of the fortress, the defences built to protect it ran in a rough semicircle across the desert from the coast eight miles east of the harbour to the coast again nine miles west of it. The defences had been hewn from the desert and consisted mainly of dozens of strongpoints. These posts were protected by barbed-wire fences and anti-tank ditches. Supplemented by captured Italian weapons the strength of the garrison lay in its fire-power, and the extensive use of minefields offset to some extent the weakness in infantry.
This was the position when the Germans launched their ill-fated attack on April 13th, 1941. Known as the “Easter Battle”, the Germans had confidently expected a walk-over - instead it had ended in their being completely routed. The spirit of co-operation, trust and comradeship between the men of the garrison, consisting of two thirds Australian and one third British, was the real strength of Tobruk. No other Middle East front saw understanding between the men of these countries so complete.
On Easter Sunday the enemy made his attack with infantry action against the perimeter. The vigorousness of his attack was matched however by the vigour of our defence, and his success in this phase was very limited.
On the morning of Easter Monday the Germans launched their attack by tanks. The familiar pattern employed by these “Blitzkrieg” experts was to have the tanks break through the defences - a deep armoured thrust - and through the gap would pour the infantry. In Poland, France and Belgium these tactics had never failed. Once the tanks had broken through it had always been the beginning of the end and the rolling up of the defences had been a matter of course - until Tobruk.
Here the enemy’s tanks did not so much break through as they were let through. The Australians lay low until the German infantry appeared in the wake of the tanks. These were engaged by our fire with the result the tanks were left to advance without the support they had expected, and the further they advanced the more intense became the fire they encountered. For there was the secret of our defence - a defence in depth. The combined force of our artillery and tanks lay waiting for them. They were hit with every calibre weapon at our command capable of damaging them. The fire of our 25-pounders at point-blank range was particularly devastating. As the enemy armour in retreat poured through the gap they had made in our lines, they came under the fire of Brens, mortars, rifles and shells and terrible confusion resulted.
Thus ended the Afrika Corps’ first attempt to capture the garrison. Tobruk was a nut they could not crack and further attempts such as the Battle of the Salient in April-May had little more success. While Rommel gained a small amount of territory with his far superior forces, the men of the Fortress inflicted such heavy casualties he did not seriously attack Tobruk again in 1941. Under the inspired leadership of General Morshead the actual defensive task of holding Tobruk was, in reality, held by offensive tactics.
I was rather hoping someone would mention Tobruk. It was a reverse role situation. The Garrison being backed to the coast and supplied by sea. Rommel was unable to out maneouvre or completely surround the garrison. All that he could do was pound it and take it on head-on … he failed!
Maybe, but theoretically he should have creamed it on his first assault as his tactics weren’t essentially different to those which overran France.
Which rather suggests that neither side was holding on to outdated cavalry horse riding tactics but adapting to the realities of the horseless but armoured battlefield.
The British side rather better than the Germans, at least at Tobruk.
More like the tactics of the trenches. The cavalry charge wouldn’t have been of any use in the defense, except for the odd sortie which would have been a drain on recourses.
The prince Rupert style charges, of the British, were those used on the offensive.
The stronger defences of the Western Front in Europe were outflanked via the Ardenne.
Of course, certain tactics even by todays standards can be likened to those of the old horse regiments. Now, instead of probing patrols of light cavalry, we have light armoured units doing the job, but the principle is the same.
In the Western Desert, O’Connor was captured by just such a German armoured recce unit. Even Rommels ‘Shield and Sword’ flanking movements were not innivative, check out O’Connor’s victory at Bedda Fomm, and Alexander’s at Issus.
Of course, another example of British tenacity, was the first battle of El Alamein, when Auchinleck halted the German panzers. No room to maneouvre around the flanks.
Nick’s comments on the 17 Pounder thread inspired me to open this one.
32Bravo
The Rifles acquitted themselves quite well at Kidney Ridge, though, with their Six Pounders.
Nick
Of course. But the Afrika Corp had a field day for a bit until the Rats caught on…
32Bravo
Sure they did, as I mentioned elsewhere – learning curves.
But that’s way over-simplified; there were many reasons diverse and complex which compounded the problems of the Eighth Army operating in the Western Desert
For example: After WW1, many of the senior members of British cavalry regiments wanted to remain, or revert to being, horse regiments. This was their mentality, hence, charging against Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
Um, I wasn’t trying to sum up the entire desert war in one sentence…
Let’s not forget that Rommel had his problems too, like having to drive his panzers around in a big circle in a parade, very early on, so the British intelligence would believe the Afrika Corp were far stronger than they were…
And I’m not positive to what panzers were sent to Africa initially, but I think the British thirsted for tank vs. tank engagements because the early generation panzers were suspect in many ways, perhaps with some examples of the Panzer Mark III being the sole early German tank capable of causing them problems…
[i]Prince Rupert fought for the Dutch army during the Thirty Years War until he was taken prisoner at Vlotho.
After his father was deposed he settled in England in 1635. On the outbreak of the Civil War Prince Rupert was put in charge of the cavalry. He introduced a new cavalry tactic that he had learnt fighting in Sweden. This involved charging full speed at the enemy. The horses were kept close together and just before impact the men fired their pistols.[/i]
Sound familiar?
[edit] Influence of the North African theatre on Allied armoured doctrine
In the deserts of North Africa, the British developed the alternate approach of combining the armoured, infantry and artillery together to form a ‘balanced, combined arms team’. The 10th Italian Army of Maresciallo (Marshal) Rodolfo Graziani, being ill-armed and inadequately led, soon gave way to this approach by the Commonwealth troops of the 8th Army.
The arrival of the German Afrika Korps under command of General der Infanterie Erwin Rommel highlighted the weaknesses of the British approach: the small number of infantry and artillery in each armoured division was sufficient when attacking the immobile and uncoordinated Italian troops, but against the highly mobile, well-coordinated German units, the undermanned Commonwealth formations were proving inadequate.
It was only towards the later years of the war, with the invasion of the European mainland, that the Allied Armies began to become more effective in armoured warfare. In 1942 and 1943 , the Allies consistently lost armoured battles in the North African desert due to improper tactics; in particular, running armoured formations into opposing anti-tank positions.
