The next generation AT guns were too large to make the 360 degree mounts feasible. Such a mount would need to rival the AA gun mounts in the space it would need and the work needed to prepare it.
British Army 'sanity options 2.0', 1935-43
- Thread starter tomo pauk
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Also, by the time the 6pounder was introduced technology had improved to the point where an impressive 45 degrees traverse right and left could be achieved on a split trail.
So one view is that the 6 pounder didn't have an all round carriage because it didn't need an all round carriage.
I'm now thinking that the sanity option could be that somebody realises that while all round traverse is good, 30 degrees or so is good enough. The high traverse split trail carriage gets introduced for the 2 pounder saving money speeding production and making a lighter more easily handled gun.
Oh I agree the 3 and 2 pounders always seemed like a mistake. I'm all for a better 6 pounder in use sooner. At the least it'll have a better hole puncher, and a way better HE round.Welcome to the alternate history site
It is/was actually there - predates even the 2pdr; it throws a 3x heavier HE shell (very important for a tank gun, and very handy to have on an AT gun), and it will offer better AP performance than the 2pdr, without the need to weight much more, or to be more complex .
These were the advantages required back in 1930s, too bad the opportunity was not acted upon.
(note that the Naval 6 pdr from the 1930s was more powerful that the ww1 6pdrs)
IMO, a mistake was made with going with a 3pdr in the 1st place, and then going further lower with the 2pdr.
I have nothing against a 12 pounder (there was several guns of nominal 12-13 lbs, differing in, lets say, power); British designs were no worse than the French 75 or the Soviet 76mm/02.
The 6 pdr should be lighter, and easier to install on a tank.
While it would probably take some time to sort out using it on a tank, one would presume it could be ready by 1940 service. From there I'd go for a 12-13 pounder as next step. The 12-13 pounder should at least be able to match the eventual 75mm. 17 pounder.... I mean I love the firefly but... honestly the comet's 77mm likely would have been fine for regular service. Once centurion arrives the 17 pounder and eventually 20 pounder and L7 make more sense.
Some other ideas. While I don't think pre war the SMG will see much usage, I do think rifles could be improved. While I would love the army using 8mm Mauser and SLEM-1 I can't see the rifle getting designed in time nor swap over in ammo either.m
No.4 lee enfields were pretty heavily based on later evolutions of prototype SMLE, so by late 20s-early 30s it should have begun entering production. Bren was excellent, though I think the efforts to lighten it shoulda been a tad sooner.
SMG... while finns and Italians have excellent designs, I just can't see the British army endorsing them. When SMGs do take off, while I get the advantages of the STEN, I'd prefer a little less bare bones version then MkII and especially avoid Mk III from being issued. A tad better quality would probably have paid off. Ideally I'd like the Stirlong sooner but don't think it would be possible. Owen gun could be interesting but time it would likely be tested the decision was made to mass use the STEN
No.4 lee enfields were pretty heavily based on later evolutions of prototype SMLE, so by late 20s-early 30s it should have begun entering production. Bren was excellent, though I think the efforts to lighten it shoulda been a tad sooner.
SMG... while finns and Italians have excellent designs, I just can't see the British army endorsing them. When SMGs do take off, while I get the advantages of the STEN, I'd prefer a little less bare bones version then MkII and especially avoid Mk III from being issued. A tad better quality would probably have paid off. Ideally I'd like the Stirlong sooner but don't think it would be possible. Owen gun could be interesting but time it would likely be tested the decision was made to mass use the STEN
Thanks. I've forgotten how the 25 pdrs (etc) and their fire control were supposed to keep pace with an advance in the general doctrine - how was it supposed to work?
Hobart's view of the importance of tank killing and his neglect of HE rounds would seem to be a product of his view that tanks and armoured vehicles were almost the only significant part of the ground forces. He saw infantry as good for little more than collecting prisoners and urban warfare. Given that it follows that he wasn't interested in getting them out of trenches, and since IIRC he didn't think that unarmoured A/T guns mattered he wouldn't have cared about zapping them.
It seems significant that Hobart didn't want a 6 pdr until 1938, and that in 1943 Fuller admitted that he was wrong to not realise that mass armoured armies were possible, that as a result his belief that speed was protection was wrong; and that he did not realise how armour would increase and therefore how gun size would have to increase. So even the "tank prophets" didn't realise that the 2 pdr was too small for a long time.
If even the futurists who were too radical didn't think something was needed then it appears that either EVERYONE was brain dead, or the need for a bigger gun is only easy to see in hindsight. Arguably that doesn't mean that a thread like this can't call for one, but it does indicate that it's a-historical and illogical to imply that the need was obvious. Perhaps what is needed to accompany the calls for a bigger gun is a reasoned discussion of how the need could have become apparent, when it wasn't apparent even to Hobart, Liddell Hart and Fuller. Maybe if Fuller had concentratred on his calls for Operational Research, rather than his later and more extreme views on armour.......
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On traverse and A/T guns - in "To change an army", Harold Winton notes that the A/T guns of the British divisions in the 1930s were pack howitzers (which had little penetrating power) and 18 pdrs had a technical problem because "without a pedestal mount (they) could not traverse quickly enough to hit a fast-moving tank". So it appears that the silly Brits actually based their desire for a pedestal mount on logic.
It would be interesting to see the development of A/T combat ranges over time. If range increased the training speed would seem to obviously decrease. Traversing speed would also obviously change depending on the battlefield.
It would be interesting to see the development of A/T combat ranges over time. If range increased the training speed would seem to obviously decrease. Traversing speed would also obviously change depending on the battlefield.
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The thing that's interesting here is that the British army (Matilda1 and 2 and Vals) and to a lesser extent the French (S35 and B1) did recognise the value of having a tank proof against the main AT guns of the time [1].
But that imples a need for bigger guns for when the enemy cottons on and comes up with the same idea. So the case for a bigger - or at least a more powerful - gun was staring them in the face. Hence the 6 pounder and the 17 pounder designs being ready more or less when needed.
So it's a mix of theorists getting it wrong [2], while the designers were doing the right kind of thing, but maybe not coordinating very well.
For me, the real tank sanity options are
1) recognise that an infantry tank needs a CS version to blow things up when an mg isn't enough, and accept that until you can get a dual purpose gun, you need a roughly even mix of AT and HE tanks, and that smoke is a good supporting tool but not the primary purpose of a CS tank.
2) Recognise that tank AT capability needs to more or less match current armour schemes because if you can do it, then so can the enemy. However, a short delay is reasonable as the bad guys need to identify the problem and then fix it.Really that means 57mm AT guns about end 1940 and tank mounted 6 months later. Dunkirk will muvk up thd timetable in several. ways, but won't alter the need, especially once a few I tanks are captured.
[1] I'll assume the soviet designers also did too.
[2] for reasons that look daft to us, but probably looked OK at the time
Calls for bigger guns and ability for both tank guns and AT guns to fire HE shells were apparent to the tank boards/committees in France, Germany and Soviet Union in the 1930s. Need for the bigger guns was also apparent to the British Army back in ww1.
What is the evidence that the Germans, Russians and French were more aware of the need for a big high velocity tank gun with a large HE round? As far as I can see their equipment went like this;
France - The French tanks in general were extremely limited by their guns; the 47 SA34 was, I understand, almost useless against armour, the Purteaux (sp) wasn't at all good, and the 47mm SA35 L/32, which was a much better gun, only came out in 1937 and only equipped some 515 out of the 2,400 modern-ish French tanks.
The 37mm SA38 had good A/T capacity but a HE capacity of 60g - the same amount as contained by the HE version of the 2 pdr shell. The effectiveness of such a small amount of HE at significant range is widely considered to be negligible. The 47mm SA35 L/32 had 164g of filler, which also seems to be very low and it came in later than the 2 pdr so it could not have guided the British. The French do not seem to have had much understanding that one needed bigger A/T guns that could fire effective HE shells before the Brits did. They did have bigger low-velocity guns, but that's what the British CS tanks had too (although with hindsight I agree that they should have had more attention to HE accuracy and loadout).
Germany - They started the war with tanks armed with 20mm or smaller guns, the Pz IV with a low-velocity howitzer, and the Pz III with a 37mm which seems to have had a whacking 25-45g of explosive filler in the HE shell. It was meant to have a 50, of course, but only 347 of that type was made even by the end of 1940.
Russian - they don't seem to have had a bigger high-velocity gun until 1938, and that went into the T-35 which was doctrinally a very different vehicle to anything the British had. Apart from that they don't seem to have fired any high velocity tank guns with more than 118g of HE (in the 45M 1932) in the early war.
There were basic physical problems with the small amount of filler that 40mm shells could carry, which meant they would never be very effective, As "WO 291/496 Anti-personnel effect of small HE shell" shows, the vulnerable area of a 40mm (a Bofors round in this case) was 500 sq ft compared to 900 sq ft for the standard British grenade, 1430 sq ft for a 6 pdr HE, and 3000 sq ft for a 25 pdr or 75mm. And of course fitting a bigger high velocity gun was not easy in the pre-war economies, either.
So if the other countries were more aware of the need for a larger high velocity gun with more HE in the 1930s, why didn't any of their tanks (apart from a tiny proportion of Russian ones) carry them at the time?
So where's the evidence that other nations saw the need for a larger high velocity HE shell at the time, and that such a need could be filled in any typical late '30s tank?
France - The French tanks in general were extremely limited by their guns; the 47 SA34 was, I understand, almost useless against armour, the Purteaux (sp) wasn't at all good, and the 47mm SA35 L/32, which was a much better gun, only came out in 1937 and only equipped some 515 out of the 2,400 modern-ish French tanks.
The 37mm SA38 had good A/T capacity but a HE capacity of 60g - the same amount as contained by the HE version of the 2 pdr shell. The effectiveness of such a small amount of HE at significant range is widely considered to be negligible. The 47mm SA35 L/32 had 164g of filler, which also seems to be very low and it came in later than the 2 pdr so it could not have guided the British. The French do not seem to have had much understanding that one needed bigger A/T guns that could fire effective HE shells before the Brits did. They did have bigger low-velocity guns, but that's what the British CS tanks had too (although with hindsight I agree that they should have had more attention to HE accuracy and loadout).
Germany - They started the war with tanks armed with 20mm or smaller guns, the Pz IV with a low-velocity howitzer, and the Pz III with a 37mm which seems to have had a whacking 25-45g of explosive filler in the HE shell. It was meant to have a 50, of course, but only 347 of that type was made even by the end of 1940.
Russian - they don't seem to have had a bigger high-velocity gun until 1938, and that went into the T-35 which was doctrinally a very different vehicle to anything the British had. Apart from that they don't seem to have fired any high velocity tank guns with more than 118g of HE (in the 45M 1932) in the early war.
There were basic physical problems with the small amount of filler that 40mm shells could carry, which meant they would never be very effective, As "WO 291/496 Anti-personnel effect of small HE shell" shows, the vulnerable area of a 40mm (a Bofors round in this case) was 500 sq ft compared to 900 sq ft for the standard British grenade, 1430 sq ft for a 6 pdr HE, and 3000 sq ft for a 25 pdr or 75mm. And of course fitting a bigger high velocity gun was not easy in the pre-war economies, either.
So if the other countries were more aware of the need for a larger high velocity gun with more HE in the 1930s, why didn't any of their tanks (apart from a tiny proportion of Russian ones) carry them at the time?
So where's the evidence that other nations saw the need for a larger high velocity HE shell at the time, and that such a need could be filled in any typical late '30s tank?
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Some approches resulted in tanks with low velocity 75mm HE throwers and MGs (T28, Char 2C) or mgs and a smaller calibre AT weapon (T35, Char B1, M3 Lee). Other approaches resulted in smaller AT weapons on some tanks and HE throwers on other tanks (panzer 3/4, CS and standard on commonwealth tanks)
The general upsizing of guns for better AT performance - seen early with the Soviet adoption of the 76mm calibre - allowed DP tank guns, but then we see the HE thrower/AT combo re-emerging in the Sherman 76/ 105 pairing, Cromwell/Comet and Firefly/sherman pairings, and then DP guns re-emerging as calibres increased.
My rather unimaginative conclusion is that multi-gunned tanks are better than tanks with only one type of gun, but are less useful than tanks with a mix of guns, while a big DP gun is usually better still.
I think there is a reasonable ccase for the British army to stick with 57mm guns in interwar years to avoid the cost of developing a new gun [1], and then develop first the shells and then the gun as tank armour improved. This might get around the difficult times in the desert, since rushing out a longer barrelled HV 57mm towed AT gun should be relatively easy if already making LV 57mm infantry and tank guns. A 57mm solid should be less likely to shatter against face hardened armour than tbe 2 pounder.
The main advantage is that this uses existing equipment and saves development costs for the 2 and 3 pounder, and removes the main driver for separate CS and other tanks.
[1] AT performance should be similar to the Japanese 57mm - ie pretty rubbish, but then against most interwar tanks that would still usually be adequate.
I think Tony Williams has propsed this previously.
The general upsizing of guns for better AT performance - seen early with the Soviet adoption of the 76mm calibre - allowed DP tank guns, but then we see the HE thrower/AT combo re-emerging in the Sherman 76/ 105 pairing, Cromwell/Comet and Firefly/sherman pairings, and then DP guns re-emerging as calibres increased.
My rather unimaginative conclusion is that multi-gunned tanks are better than tanks with only one type of gun, but are less useful than tanks with a mix of guns, while a big DP gun is usually better still.
I think there is a reasonable ccase for the British army to stick with 57mm guns in interwar years to avoid the cost of developing a new gun [1], and then develop first the shells and then the gun as tank armour improved. This might get around the difficult times in the desert, since rushing out a longer barrelled HV 57mm towed AT gun should be relatively easy if already making LV 57mm infantry and tank guns. A 57mm solid should be less likely to shatter against face hardened armour than tbe 2 pounder.
The main advantage is that this uses existing equipment and saves development costs for the 2 and 3 pounder, and removes the main driver for separate CS and other tanks.
[1] AT performance should be similar to the Japanese 57mm - ie pretty rubbish, but then against most interwar tanks that would still usually be adequate.
I think Tony Williams has propsed this previously.
What exactly do you need to "blow up", and at what range?
Direct fire HE falls out of favour because gun crew are vulnerable to medium machine gun fire. Putting it in tanks solves that problem but still gives you an issue with identifying targets. It's arguable that tanks as artillery OPs would be more effective . Alternatively develop the A20 with a HE gun in the hull front.
EDIT: The "difficult times" in the desert were due to a combination of factors:
Panzer IV short 75mm could be used against 2pdrs AT guns when out of their effective range. German 88mm could be used against British tanks as they tended to operate independently of artillery.
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You have either misread or misunderstood my post. I have not mentioned a 'high velocity tank gun with a large HE round' in the post #488.
Problem with the small amount of filler that 40mm shells had would've never arose for the British army if they went for a bigger tank and AT gun in the 1st place.
'And of course' sequence was probably okay in the books about technical matters back in 1930s-40s, but it is badly outdated in 21st century - what might look as 'of course' thing for a person A, might not be the case for person B.
You could say that for every single army in the late 1930s. All of them were fielding tanks with guns in the 20mm to 45mm range. The British Army, along with others, were also fielding CS tanks with larger calibre weapons to deal with AT weapons and dug in infantry.
What's the driver to a gun bigger than the 37mm - 45mm ones fitted to the huge majority of European front line tanks before late 1940/41? The guns fitted to the majority of German, French, British and Soviet tanks are perfectly adequate to kill the majority of tanks they're likely to face until the Germans start meeting Matilda/Char B1. For the British, the 2 Pdr is perfectly serviceable until the up-armoured Pz. IVs start coming into service and, in an ideal world, the 6 Pdr would have been well established in service both as a tank gun and towed weapon by then.
When were the HE shells issued to the CS tanks?
How many CS tanks were in service before 1940?
Bigger gun, say in 45-57mm bracket, allows for sufficient AP performance and that the HE shell is useful.
(added: guns with useful HE shells in that bracket mean that dedicated HE and smoke throwers are not that badly needed )
The 2pdr was wrong choice as a tank gun in 1939-42 due to not having a HE shell, and that even the HE shell that would've been fired had it have been available, would've been small and weak.
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When you spoke of the 'recognised' need for "bigger guns and ability for both tank guns and AT guns to fire HE shells" it did seem that you were saying that tanks needed bigger guns, and that tank guns (big or small) needed to fire HE shells. If you say that tanks need bigger guns, and tank guns need to fire HE shells, then surely that is saying that tanks needed bigger guns (and with tanks that almost inevitably means high velocity) with HE.
I'm not sure what else you meant to say., unless it was that tanks needed big guns that could fire HE, but that these guns didn't need to be high velocity. In that case the British 3" CS weapon surely fits the bill.
Whatever the case, it seems that a need for bigger guns and tank guns with HE (of significant size) wasn't so apparent to the Russians, French and Germans that they did much more about it than the Brits did. None of them seemed to have provided their tanks with a larger proportion of big guns or a larger amount of guns with significant HE than the Brits did. So if the need was so apparent to the Russians, Germans and French, why didn't they do more to give their own tanks bigger guns and effective HE shells? If the Brits were stupid to use a gun of around 40mm capacity and 60-100g of potential HE, then so was every other country.
A few pages back, it was noted that the 6 pdr, compared to the 12 pdr, was lighter and easier to install in a tank. So if it w s said that reductions in weight and installation problems were positives for a 6 pdr over a 12 pdr, why are these same factors of reduced weight and installation problems not also positives for the 2 pdr over a 6 pdr?
If weight and installation problems are not considerations, why stop at 6 pdrs? Wouldn't the Vickers 3-inch 20 CWT, aka the 3" 16 CWT A/T gun, be far superior with its muzzle velocity of 2,500 fps with the 12.5lb shell and range of 9,250 yards? Even the 13 pdr 9 CWT has better stats than the 6 pdr, which had a mere 1818 fps muzzle velocity even in the long version. So at what stage does one stop saying "just upgun it!!!!"????
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Like, you, I respect the idea that the Brits should have kept on developing the 6-pdr, but I've been trying to find out why the 6 pdr was dropped for the 3 pdr when the Vickers Medium was designed. Tony Williams says that metallurgy had improved enough by the '30s to allow the 6 pdr's muzzle velocity to be increased enough to give adequate penetration. Was the 3 pdr chosen because 1920's metallurgy was unable to improve the 6 pdr's muzzle velocity enough to allow the gun to achieve the required penetration of all tanks at 1000 metres?
I'd never thought about the way "paired" guns came and went as calbre increased; it's a very interesting note, and one which reminds us that technological development often leads us down more convoluted paths than many allow for. I see the same sort of thing in the main technological area I study; design in one aspect will often loop around in some ways as a result of technological changes on other aspects of the device.
They always carried a small number of HE rounds for emergency use. Hindsight would suggest that they should have carried at least 2/3rds HE to 1/3rd smoke instead.
A Matilda II CS so armed would have been a formidable infantry support tank.
I've long thought that an A10 CS tank with a true 3.7" Mountain Gun rather than the version fitted would have been ideal for 1940. Though a Howitzer it did have a HEAT round.
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Though it will take a bit of finding, there is some information on CS tank loadouts, that went from something like 2 HE per tank for the 3.7" to about 90% HE for 3". If I can track down the source in a reasonable time I'll add a link, but I remember it being quite well hidden.
I know the Australians made a lot of use of Matilda CS tanks in the Pacific and they weren't firing smoke rounds, and the Kiwis converted Valentines to CS tanks using scrounged (or stolen) 3" CS Howitzers from the Australians.
The design requirements??
Tank penetration.
The Ordnance QF 3 pounder 2 cwt gun was a 47 mm British tank gun based on the Ordnance QF 3 pounder Vickers naval gun, mounted on Vickers-built tanks in the 1920s and 1930s. The gun was produced in 31 calibre (59 inch) and 40 calibre (74 inch) versions. The weapon only fired a solid shot, and was stated in the requirements of the A6 series of Vickers Medium tanks to have the ability to penetrate the armour of contemporary hostile tanks at a range of 1000 yards. The Vickers Medium Mark I was equipped with the Ordnance Quick Firing 2cwt Mark I version of the weapon, whilst from the Vickers Medium Mark II the Mark II version of the 3-pounder was utilized.