Tanks!!

[savage560]

WWI grandadys of them all:
1)British MK5
2)Tsar Tank 1st Imperial Russian Tank
3)German Tank 15-20 man crew!

[mjm1963]

Originally Posted by Staffsyeoman

Thank goodness we are back to talking about tanks, rather than the means of destroying them. Had that remained the case, I would have had to go back to looking ( ) at pictures of naked women. And I've just spent the day reading the war diary of an Armoured Brigade (British) which a. underperformed b. got shot up in the week after D-Day.

Are you referring to the encounter at Villiers-Bocage? Unfortunately it was a perfect storm. If I remember rightly it was part off the offensive by the Allies to take Caen.

The encounter at Villiers-Bocage involved 22 Armoured Brigade belonging to 4th County of London Yeomanry Division. The German opposition was the 2nd company of the SS 101st Heavy Panzer battalion, equipped with Tiger 1s. One of the Tiger 1s was crewed by Michael Wittman, a leading tank "ace". By June 1944, Wittman and has crew had already gained a 138 "kills" i.e. tanks knocked out, all gained on the Russian front.

Further, another point not appreciated. Tiger 1 battalions were crewed by a high proportion of veterans -even in 1944.

It was not a good day for 22nd Armored brigade. They lost 26 tanks (Shermans and Cromwells), 14 Half Tracks and 8 Bren Carriers, in addition to 230 men taken prisoner.

The 101st lost three tigers.

[Staffsyeoman]

Nope, well before Villers-Bocage. I was looking at 27th Armoured Brigade moving off the beach - behind schedule due to congestion - and getting bogged down at Lebisey etc. on 7-8 June and not getting anywhere near Caen. The Brigade was disbanded and dispersed in July.

[mjm1963]

Originally Posted by Staffsyeoman

Nope, well before Villers-Bocage. I was looking at 27th Armoured Brigade moving off the beach - behind schedule due to congestion - and getting bogged down at Lebisey etc. on 7-8 June and not getting anywhere near Caen. The Brigade was disbanded and dispersed in July.

You got me on this one. I thought my knowledge on the Normandy campaign was fairly good but I think I've got some reading to do.

Many thanks

mjm1963

[Lurkio]

The 101st lost three tigers.

as an aside re Normandy, as I remember (not actually being there of course):

SOP was it would take a troop of 4 Shermans to destroy a Tiger: 3 were targets and the 4th had to rush around behind it and 'take it up the arse'. This worked only cos the Tiger had a particularly slow turret traverse and required the last Sherman to actually spot the Tiger and maneuver out of the way.

So to take 3 Tigers, you would need 12 Shermans (technically you might get away with only 10!)

There's more history about the Yeomanry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_London_Yeomanry

[Historian]

Originally Posted by Lurkio

SOP was it would take a troop of 4 Shermans to destroy a Tiger: 3 were targets and the 4th had to rush around behind it and 'take it up the arse'. This worked only cos the Tiger had a particularly slow turret traverse and required the last Sherman to actually spot the Tiger and maneuver out of the way.

So to take 3 Tigers, you would need 12 Shermans (technically you might get away with only 10!)

:

That wouldn't surprise me at all- Hence the improvised solution of the Firefly- As discussed a couple of pages back, that big 17-pounder did even the odds a fair amount...

Apparently, once they'd encountered the Firefly, the SOP for the Germans when encountering British tanks (usual distribution being one Firefly to each troop of Shermans or Cromwells) quickly became to try and pick off the Firefly first.

[mjm1963]

Originally Posted by Historian

That wouldn't surprise me at all- Hence the improvised solution of the Firefly- As discussed a couple of pages back, that big 17-pounder did even the odds a fair amount...

Apparently, once they'd encountered the Firefly, the SOP for the Germans when encountering British tanks (usual distribution being one Firefly to each troop of Shermans or Cromwells) quickly became to try and pick off the Firefly first.

Not wrong Historian.By mid July, August time the Firefly would be the first target of choice. It got to the situation that some British tank units would paint the front half of their 17 pounder gun barrels a disruptive pattern to make the Sherman look like the standard shorter barreled 75mm version

[mjm1963]

I realise that two off the pics are models, nevertheless they illustrate what some British and Polish crews did to their fireflys;

[Trintron]

The Sherman Firefly and the US Army long barrel A4s balanced the scale of armor superiority during the Allied invasion of Normandy and their push through France and Belgium.

During this period of the war, the German Army was mainly equiped with Panzer IVs, Sturmgeschütz IIIs and IVs, even with the addition of side skirt armor to dissipate the energy from a shaped charges or anti-tank rounds, these tanks still found themselves on more and more equal footing with the Shermans that they faced. The armor protection of the Panzer IV and Sturgeschütz left a lot to be desired, you are still dealing with the problems of thinner armor protection all around.

It would make sense that they would try to take out the Fireflys first since they posed the greatest threat to the German armored forces, over half of all the tanks used by the Germans in the Western front during 1944 were Panzer IV. As the Normandy campaign dragged on the German Armored forces were also receiving Sturmgeschütz IIIs and IVs as replacements for the tanks they lost instead of Panzer IVs or Panthers, a self propelled gun is not equal to a tank in terms of manuverability and effectiveness.

[palo5]

The biggest problem with tanks is they break down too often. No one wants to admit it, but it's true. And you don't always get spare parts (or mechanics) when you need them, which is often

Don't allow your sons to serve in tanks. Tell them to serve in signals or intelligence or something else. They'll be better paid and less frustrated