Michael Green - Axis Tanks of the Second World War

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM WARTIME ARCHIVES

Michael Green

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

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Copyright Michael Green, 2017

ISBN 978-1-47388-700-8

eISBN 978-1-47388-702-2

Mobi ISBN 978-1-47388-701-5

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The author would like to dedicate this book to fellow tank buff Ian Wilcox for all his help with this title and others.

M ichael Greens comparative study of Axis tanks demonstrates well the unique military situations of the three largest nations starting the Second World War. Germany, Japan and Italy had conducted their rearmament programmes in advance of their opponents and enjoyed certain advantages for a limited period of time. However, upon closer examination each encountered fatal weaknesses, even though the war continued for several years.

Japan and Italy both began their rearmament programmes early in the 1930s, and the development of their respective tank arms demonstrated a great deal of progress over the crude tanks of the First World War. In particular, lighter and handier machines with modern diesel and gasoline engines incorporating automotive advances in suspensions and more effective weapons served very well in the incipient warfare of the 1930s. However, the costs of the wars of the 1930s inhibited further progress to a considerable extent.

Italian forces participated in General Francos eventual victory of his Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Hundreds of light tanks, armoured cars and aircraft were sent with their own forces and most of the equipment was lost, worn out or left behind for the use of their Spanish compatriots. On the ground, Italian forces eventually demonstrated a form of mechanized warfare novel for the time, emphasizing mass and rapid movements to exploit enemy dispositions and affect a pursuit. Although doctrine and organization for their armoured division showed evident promise, the general staff did not allocate resources for the medium and heavy tanks it required and in 1940 most armoured units were of the paper form.

Japanese tanks proved useful in their expansion into China, and in the opening months of the Pacific War, the Japanese army put them into operation in their rapid conquest of Dutch and British colonies. Frequently they appeared in campaigns where the Allies had judged armour unsuitable for employment, much to their surprise and demise. On the other hand, the brief combat encounters with tanks of the Soviet Union during border conflicts in Manchuria demonstrated that Japanese armour remained demonstrably inferior.

In the end, only Germany of all the Axis powers had the economic, industrial and technological bases for advanced tank development. Despite its limited experimentation with tanks before the Nazi seizure of power, the German army had sound doctrine for manoeuvre warfare using motorized troops, and German industry overcame initial handicaps to begin production of two medium tank designs by 1938 that greatly facilitated success in battle in the opening years of the war. Ironically, these tanks displayed neither the best armament nor armour nor speed among their contemporaries. However, what they did incorporate in their designs proved decisive: a three-man turret and a radio. They also were of sufficient size that their weapons and armour could be augmented as the gun/armour race of the war evolved.

The German tankers of 194041 encountered tough opponents in those years mounted in British Matilda, French Char B or Russian T-34 tanks. They managed to outfight them thanks to superior organization and tactics, aided by the fact that the vehicle commander had no duties serving the gun and he had radio contact with all his tanks and his higher commander.

By the end of 1942, however, the Axis reached the limits of their initial advantages and no new tanks, be they Panthers or Tigers, could counter the crushing superiority of the three major Allied powers that caught up with and surpassed them in technology and organization.

Kenneth W. Estes, PhD.

Lieutenant Colonel, US Marine Corps

Author, Marines Under Armor

A s with any published work, authors must depend on a great many people for assistance. These included, over many years, my fellow author and long-time mentor the late Richard Hunnicutt. Other friends who kindly supplied pictures for this work are credited in the captions.

Both the paid and volunteer staff of the now-closed Patton Museum of Armor and Cavalry provided the author with a great deal of assistance over many years. For the sake of brevity all images from the former Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor will be credited to the Patton Museum.

I am also indebted to David Fletcher, fellow author and the long-time former librarian at the Tank Museum located in Bovington, England. He has greatly assisted the author in locating photographs for many of his books. All images from the Tank Museum in Bovington will be credited to just the Tank Museum for brevity.

Due to the size and format restrictions imposed by the publisher on this series of books the author will concentrate on the gun tank versions of the vehicles described in the text. Those tanks converted to support-based versions such as self-propelled artillery or anti-aircraft vehicles will be covered in a subsequent title.

Prior to the Second World War and during the conflict armies generally classified their tanks as light, medium or heavy, based on the weight of the tank. The weight classifications of what constituted the breakdown between the different types of tank varied from one country to another, with one armys heavy tank being anothers medium tank, for example.

The quality of some images in this book is rather substandard. However, they have been included due to the historical rarity of the subject pictured.

Both the Waffen SS and the Luftwaffe field divisions employed tanks during the Second World War. For the sake of brevity the author will put these under the umbrella term of German army in this work.

I n the 1920s, the German army began thinking about the need for tanks. Undecided at that time was whether light or medium tanks were a better choice. Some thought that large numbers of small and cheap light tanks could overwhelm an opposing enemy by sheer force of numbers. In 1930 a German army officer wrote that the proposed light tanks should be supported in battle by a smaller number of better-armed and armoured medium tanks.