My absolute favourite WW2 novel is ‘Easter Day 1941’ by G F Borden (which is why it sits at the top of my list above).
I cannot reccomend this book enough. I have read and re-read it until my copy (a Penguin paperback published in 1987) is beginning to fall apart.
It is the story of a lone tank behind enemy lines in the Western desert. In this case, the enemy are the Italians and Germans, and the tank crew are British tankers, plus a couple of wandering infantrymen from the Indian Army who are picked up by the tank, and an American veteran of the Spanish Civil War (he is the tank commander and also the narrator of the tale).
The tank is a captured Italian M13/40. Borden must have done some intense research in order to write this brilliant story. He presents the M13/40 warts and all, comparing it unfavourably with the British and German tanks in the desert, but shows that it was still capable of dishing out some serious damage. I suppose there could have been M13/40 variants with different armament configurations, but the one in the story has a 47mm main gun in the turret, able to fire HE or AP, with a coaxial 8mm Breda machine gun. There are also two more 8mm Breda MGs in a ball mounting below the turret next to the driver.
Just to give you a taste of the book, I have typed out the beginning of the story and a couple of other passages. Please forgive any weird spelling mistakes; I am not a great typist.
This is how the book begins:
“Up on the hull of the M13/40, his back to the barrel of the 47mm gun, Mackeson sees the rising trail of dust first. He pounds his fist against the slabbed armor of the turret, points southwest across the desert and shouts “Something’s coming.”
We stop considering morning tea and start thinking of danger; for in the desert any unidentified movement is potent, and during this retreat, movement to the west is hostile. We are in our second confused week of the great withdrawal to the east. The 2nd Armoured Division is dead, shot down in the afternoon at El Agheila and at dawn nine days later at Agedabia. We are a cast off remnant, a single armored fighting vehicle far out in the sand, equally distant from the Gulf of Sirte to the west, the Mediterranean to the north, and the Egyptian border to the east.”
A little further on, Smythe the machine gunner points out to Mackeson the driver that they are not in a Panzer III:
“Don’t I bloody well know it,” Smythe says. He is aggrieved and deflated by the mention of the Panzer III, a German armored fighting vehicle of efficient design employed with dash and cunning by the Germans. But then the Panzer III aggrieves and deflates us all, for we ride and fight in an M13/40. The M13/40 is an Italian armored fighting vehicle dragooned into the 2nd Armoured Division after the great desert victories against the Italians. So many M13/40s were captured, the powers that be thought they might as well be put to use. It wouldn’t have been such a bad thought except that the M13/40 isn’t worth much. For although it has lines reminiscent of the Russian T34/76, that faint similarity, and the diesel engines, are all the two AFVs have in common. The M13/40 has a poor power to weight ratio and is slow off the road. It is also poorly gunned and mechanically unsound. It has a high silhouette, which in armored warfare means death. Its plates are held together with rivets. Rivets are unnerving: any solid shot striking the M13/40, even if it does not penetrate, may pound a rivet into the fighting compartment; and any such rivet will be moving almost as fast as the shot that struck the tank’s carapace. We are told we are to get tanks with welded plates, but that possibility is meaningless now. We are in the desert, alone, in an M13/40 and we must rely on Italian design and Italian workmanship to see us through. We aren’t required to be happy about it, but the M13/40 is all we have.”
Having given the M13/40 a thorough shellacking (above), Borden describes some very good action scenes where the M13/40 and its unhappy crew destroy pretty much all before them.
Later they are spotted by Italian aircraft:
“As Chowduri straightens, his back stiffens and he says ”Aircraft”. At first I do not understand: he speaks with the same tone he might use had he said “Sand” or “Water”.
Mackeson slams the faceplate shut and I hear his hoarse voice call out, “Oh, Christ now.”
I vault onto the hull of the M13/40, scramble up onto the turret. I take the field glasses from Chowduri and say, “Where?” He points his arm northwest and I see three shapes moving against the sky. They are close to the earth and they are angling toward us. As I raise the glasses I tell Chowduri to get inside. He slips down through the hatch and flattens himself against the wall of the fighting compartment in front of Mohammed’s knees. He says something to Mohammed I do not understand.
Through the glasses I see the aircraft are Savoia SM-79s: more Italian equipment. But Italian aircraft are better than Italian armor, and Italian pilots are good. I have seen the Savoia before: it was the standard bomber aircraft used by the Fascists in Spain. It is a trimotor and it carries more than two thousand pounds of bombs. It also carries five machine guns, but these do not worry me. Machine gun fire is not a problem unless the gunner is very lucky and is able to shy rounds through an open port. But here we have warning and can button up like a tortoise. Unfortunately, no one can button up against bombs. A good pilot in an SM-79 can end our journey to the east right here.”
Again, I suppose there were variants of the SM-79, with different armament configurations, but while Borden says the SM-79 had five machine guns, one of my most treasured reference books says they only had 4 machine guns. On the other hand, it gives the SM-79 a really good rating as one of the best bombers of the war:
Info from page 19 of Bombers 1939 ~ 1945 (Purnell’s History of the World Wars Special):
Savoia-Marchetti SM79
Armament: 3x 7.7mm; 1x 12.7mm machine guns
Bomb load: 2,750 lb
Not only the best Italian but one of the best of any land-based bombers used during the Second World War. Developed in 1936 from a commercial airliner design and later active on virtually every battlefront involving the Regia Aeronautica.
Sorry if this post was too long winded.
Cheers,
Pete
