The Use of British Tank Smoke Mortars and the fictional HE rounds

Started by Ariete, 02 September 2021, 10:58:55 AM

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Ariete

A9 CS, A10 CS & A13 CS tanks are listed as having a 3.7" Smoke Mortar. There is no evidence that a HE round was ever produced for it. Theres an interesting thread here http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/3in-and-3-7in-cs-tank-howitzers.52013/page-5
The Matilda CS, Valentine CS, Covenanter CS & Crusader CS were equipped with the smaller 3" Tank Howitzer which also didnt have HE until after the end of the North African campaign when the Australians started demanding it for their Valentines and Matildas  in the jungle fighting to strip away the cover.
As an aside 2pdr HE seems to appeared around Gazala time (from memory) but was restricted to the armoured car regiments or the Royal Armoured Corp and the Reconnaissance Corp units due to it's short supply and the British doctrine that tanks and AT guns are there to fight tanks whilst Recce vehicles often fight soft targets or opportunity.

Orcs

Yes what you say is correct,  although there are some reports of the American 37mm in North Africa having an HE round.
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sultanbev

Australian 2pdr ATG had HE in 1941 in Tobruk (and Malaya), there's photograph evidence out there. Also a gun collector has a 2pdr HE shell case date stamped 1941. So the 2pdr HE certainly existed prior to 1942.
What was "doctrine" in any war is quickly thrown out by the squaddies themselves if it doesn't work. Who is to say that tankers in night time laager didn't blag some HE rounds from adjacent ATG units in return for swag stowed on the tank? And why does anyone expect me to believe that the British who invented tank guns with AP and HE, would suddenly un-invent them in 1939 and stay un-inventing the concept right through to mid 1942? There is anecdotal evidence that Matilda crews short of HE in 1942 blagged 40mm Bofors shells from the depots and made their own.

Regarding the 3.7" CS-howitzer HE the thread you quote states back in 1929 they had HE and smoke, in a 30-70% ratio for the Vickers II CS tank of the time, and still had HE in 1935. So if the CS tanks in 1940-41 didn't have HE in the desert, it was a logistical thing rather than a design flaw.

I am convinced the "no HE in the desert" is a myth. The winners get to write the history in war. The British generals and regimental commanders cocked up in the desert by failing to implement combined arms tactics but the establishment wouldn't want to admit and take the blame for that, so what better way to get round it than to blame the tools?

As for the American Stuarts, they came with pre-packaged ammo sets of AP and HE, straight from America, so according to the narrative of 'the doctrine' the fitters in Cairo would have had to unpack all the ammo sets, remove the HE and hide them somewhere, then repackage them before giving them to the tank units. Do you really expect anyone to believe that actually happened? After 15 months of tank fighting experience?

37mm M6 gun Lendlease deliveries to the UK/Commonwealth in WW2 totalled:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/LL-Ship-3C.html
421,000x M2 canister
2.5 million x M63 HE
15,000x M54 HE
11.7 million M74 AP and M51 APC
65,000x M80 AP

So if you take the 2.5 million HE and 11.7 million AP/APC, you can average a Stuart, M8 Greyhound, M3 Lee tank in British servicxe load out at 17% HE, 83% AP/APC. So again, likely to be small amounts of HE per tank, but not NONE.

I have a note that Uk based Covananter-CS tanks in 1942 had 20x HE, 38x smoke rounds for their 3" CS howitzer.

In practice I suspect there were times when tank units had some HE, then other times they had none, then back again in small amounts, and so on.
Consequently I allow my desert British to have small amounts of HE for their 2pdrs and CS tanks. Perhaps only 1-2 shots per game, but not NONE.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

This keeps cropping up. British tanks did not carry HE for the 2pdr but it did exist. The logic of it was that the MG's were more effective.
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Steve J

IIRC from another thread on this same subject, the HE for a 2 pdr was about the same as a normal hand grenade. I could be wrong of course.

hammurabi70

Quote from: Steve J on 03 September 2021, 07:15:10 AM
IIRC from another thread on this same subject, the HE for a 2 pdr was about the same as a normal hand grenade. I could be wrong of course.

FWIW at Singapore AP was used like solid shot against the Japanese.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

Quote from: Steve J on 03 September 2021, 07:15:10 AM
IIRC from another thread on this same subject, the HE for a 2 pdr was about the same as a normal hand grenade. I could be wrong of course.

Looking at relative weights Steve it seems about right. Ranges - 2pdr no more than 2000m?, the Vickers/BESA's 1800 m to trace birn out. Effect of the MG's would be better on soft targets, hence no HE on tanks. The same applied to the 37mm in Stuarts, was seen as an unnecssary logistic complication.

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Steve J

We have some spent shell casings that my grandfather picked up off the ranges in South Wales after the war. I was amazed at how small the actual 2 pdr 'exit hole' is compared to the main casing, which makes you realise that any HE round wouldn't have space for explosive, talk less of 'shrapnel'.

pierre the shy

Going back to the original point about A9 CS, A10 CS & A13 CS tanks, the overall material effect of any HE or smoke fire by the CS tanks would be fairly low as there are, at least in 1940, only 6 CS tanks in an armoured regiment's establishment, with two in each tank squadron's HQ:

http://www.niehorster.org/017_britain/40_org/armd%20div/ad_arm-bn.html

The lack of 2pdr HE in France in 1940 probably did not help 1st Armoured Division's costly attack on the Abbeville bridgehead on May 27 1940, when they were badly shot up, mainly by well dug in German 37mm AT guns.

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Ariete

2pdr HE rounds.
Its quite clear that there was major problems with the 2pdr when used against unarmoured targets. The prewar period they made AP SHELLS, that is an AP round filled with a tiny HE amount [This was Lyditte weighing 0.04 of a Ib eg 18.4 grams.]
They produced 562,000 of the AP Shells before WW2. The AP Shell was considered inadequate and AP SHOT was requested in 1938 and they produced these by filling empty AP Shells with solid material as production of AP Shot started and 337,000 AP Shot rounds were produced by August 1939.  Any mention of 2pdr HE rounds may well have been pre=war stocks of AP Shell being issued to use it up. Certain it would be perfect for units training gunners to fire off old shells.

Dedicate HE rounds are listed as being produced FROM 1942 - only 40,000 rounds. which when you look at how many 2pdr guns [12,000 produced 1936-44] there were in AT units, tanks and Armoured Car regiments 40,000 HR rounds isnt very much at all

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:2-pounder-anti-tank-gun&catid=40:anti-tank&Itemid=58

The unit histories make it clear that tanks didnt have 2pdr HE until 1942. It might have appeared by Gazala [May 42] or El Alamein [Oct 42]

The provision of only 2 CS tanks equipped with the 3" CS Tank Howitzers, which could fire Smoke and HE, to the Armoured Brigade and Divisional HQ shows that British tank doctrine at this time gave them a different role to 2pdr armed tanks.
This is from Joslen which shows the official WD Establishments.

toxicpixie

Quote from: Lord Kermit of Birkenhead on 03 September 2021, 06:10:06 AM
This keeps cropping up. British tanks did not carry HE for the 2pdr but it did exist. The logic of it was that the MG's were more effective.

Found an interesting tidbit on that the other day.

Astonishing amounts of 2pdr HE rounds shipped to Alex.

Never issued to the tank regiments because... the racking in the tanks fitted either HE *or* AP shells, them being of different sizes. You had to replace the whole ammo racking in order to carry different ammo type, precluding mixed loads.

That's bad enough, but due to the awful ergonomics of UK tank design, that took the crew *twelve hours* as they had to painstakingly dismantle it piece by piece, pass each bit on a convoluted path out the turret and then do the same in reverse for the new racking, then load back up. It was just ignored, oddly enough.

I suspect the arrival of better designed tanks/refinement of design & ergonomics by '42 meant they started issuing HE rounds then?

Bit of discussion here - https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=28565
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hammurabi70

Quote from: toxicpixie on 08 September 2021, 12:32:10 PM
Found an interesting tidbit on that the other day.

Astonishing amounts of 2pdr HE rounds shipped to Alex.

Never issued to the tank regiments because... the racking in the tanks fitted either HE *or* AP shells, them being of different sizes. You had to replace the whole ammo racking in order to carry different ammo type, precluding mixed loads.

That's bad enough, but due to the awful ergonomics of UK tank design, that took the crew *twelve hours* as they had to painstakingly dismantle it piece by piece, pass each bit on a convoluted path out the turret and then do the same in reverse for the new racking, then load back up. It was just ignored, oddly enough.

I suspect the arrival of better designed tanks/refinement of design & ergonomics by '42 meant they started issuing HE rounds then?

Bit of discussion here - https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=28565

I have just been reading that in the mid-1930s armies abandoned including a small amount of HE in an AP round as being inferior as an anti-tank round, changing  to 100% solid shot as it proved more effective.  Presumably they would have retained large stocks of the old ammunition, more than would be used on the firing range before war started.

toxicpixie

It's a given no one would have thought to check and specify that the ammo racking be checked and set up for the use of discontinued ammo... 
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steve_holmes_11

I can see how a co-ax machinegun would be superior at shooting up enemy foot troops compared to a 37mm HE round.
This might work at effective ranges, but shows a lack of foresight.

ie What happens when Jerry deploys a bigger AT gun with longer reach?

It does illustrate that the UK arsenal lacked something equivalent to the Short 75 of the Pz IV, or a light portable infantry gun.
I'm sure doctrine had the Royal Artillery covering that gap, and doing an excellent job in most situations.
But dropping HE onto individual gun scrapes isn't what the R.A. were set up for in 1940-41.

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