Perplexed about the Valentine

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Thanks for the info. Simon.

Blacker Bombard? Oooooow....do tell. If it ended up in Russia I want it in CMBB! BTS, please fix or do sumfink!

Regards

Jim R.

[flammenwerfer]

What are the odds of BFC adding the Matilda CS in the final patch? It would use the same model.

I think 130 vehicles delivered is signifacant... I wonder if this was covered in the beta boards.

Please. Pretty please.

[MikeyD]

Chances for a CS Matilda are zero. They'll merrily revise, reskin, & repolygon existing units in the game but no new vehicle types.

[flammenwerfer]

Thanks Mikey..Do you know if it came up during beta?

[ February 28, 2003, 05:54 PM: Message edited by: Flammenwerfer ]

[MikeyD]

Never heard a peep about the CS Matilda in the Beta. The game's got 300 vehicle types and probably could've added another 200 if you wanted to wait! I was holding out for the SU-57 (White H.T. with Brit 6 pounder) but my wait was in vain.

[SgtMuhammed]

I want the old WWI tanks that the Poles had. I don't think any actually saw combat but they still had them.

[gibsonm]

Just some first hand data.

David Craven (Tp Ldr, B Sqn) has told me more than once, that the two 2pdr Matildas in each troop (note not the CS version nor the Frog flame thrower) in our operations in New Guinea and Borneo were issued with both HE and AP ammunition, more of the former due to the limited number of hard targets.

[ March 01, 2003, 03:41 AM: Message edited by: gibsonm ]

[Mark Gallear]

That info from gibsonm is very interesting indeed. Are we talking about a British or ANZAC unit?

My understanding until now was that no 2pdr HE was put into production in Britain because

A the blast would be very small

B the Little John Adapter prevented their use anyway.

C in the early war year’s production and development effort would have been better placed elsewhere. The British Army wanted to replace the 2pdr with the 6pdr at the start of the war but as production such as it was geared up to 2pdr and the Germans were banging on the door it was decided to produce as many 2pdrs as possible. Most of these were lost in France and the first forces to go to North Africa were equipped with 40mm Bofors guns that were termed 2 pdrs partly for Battlefield propaganda purposes.

It may have been that Australia made some 2pdr HE rounds at the end of war. Be interested if anybody from Downunder has heard about this?

I cannot remember when the 3inch HE was developed exactly, however I suspect it was before the Russians got their Matildas. Looking at Johns figures - I suspect that the high number of Matilda CS tanks and the Tetrarchs are due to the British Army been told to send the Russians some tanks and they seem to have opted to send them training tanks that were obsolete and probably fairly clapped out as well. The Matilda would have been replaced in the Desert war by mid 1942 and would have been considered an obsolete vehicle for combat. No wonder the Russians were less than impressed until Canadian Valentines started to arrive!

They may have cannibalise some of them to keep the 2 pdrs tanks going or used them for training themselves. Even when HE rounds were supplied to British CS tanks they would have made a small fraction of the load out with the majority been smoke.

(The number of vehicles sunk in the early period also looks low to me – I know that for a merchant seamen been put on convoy duty to Russia was considered a death sentence. Is there an element of propaganda here?)

[ March 01, 2003, 10:04 AM: Message edited by: Mark Gallear ]

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

The photo of the Russian IX Valentine is very interesting – the gun is clearly much longer than a 2pdr and has a muzzle break. However it is not an IX model as it appears to have a co-axial MG gun and the IX didn’t. It is not an XI because co-axial is on wrong side. In fact it appears to be on wrong side for all Valentines! Am I imagining that co-axial? The dates are probably wrong as well? I will look through my picks and try and identify it.

Just to clear this up:

What appears to be a co-ax MG port is actually the vision slit for the targeting sight, which is indeed on the left side of the mantlet. (By comparison, you can find the same sort of vision slit even more evident on the Challenger). Also, the under-slung (closer to the bottom of the mantlet, than the top) mounting of the gun in the turret is characteristic of the 6pdr in the Valentine.

[Mark Gallear]

The British Army Handbook 1939-1945

George Forty

P230

“Hidebound both by the choice of the 2pdr as the main tank gun and by building tank rings that were too small to accept anything larger, the resulting small calibre main armament was far too small to produce an effective HE round, although its AP performance was reasonable.”

OK you can take it to mean both ways!

Sorry I don’t have the Hogg book that says an experimental 2pdr HE round was developed but never produced.

I found this NZ armoursite on NZ 2 pdr use in the late Jungle war. This suggests to me that the 2pdr He rounds they are using were home-made by the unit – also Valentine CS use must be peculiar to this unit as well.

“Their stay in Guadalcanal was not without its problems. On the 13th of October during a demonstration to some visiting British Officers a 2-pounder HE round became stuck in the breech of a gun. The Squadron Workshops had to manufacture a special clearing rod to remove the round and then go through the painstaking task of modifying each round. This involved reducing the length of the case by 1/1000 of an inch, reassembling the round and chamber testing it.”

This quote although not gospel suggests that some 6pdr HE shells were home-made by their units in the Desert War.

“The 6 Pdr. tank gun and the anti-tank gun listed below did not have H.E. shells issued for them. This meant that these guns could not be used for close defence against infantry or provide fire support during assaults. Why this was, nobody knows, but there are accounts of British anti-tank gun crews making their own case shells for close defence against infantry assault. This was done by removing the A.P. shell head, filling the cartridge with a suitable piece of cloth, filling the shell case with stones and gravel, and sealing it with another piece of cloth or encasing the shrapnel content in thick axle grease. This tactic was quickly improvised in the North African campaign, and there is some indication that tank crews employed it with the 6 Pdr. L.45 as well.”

I have failed to find any information on 3inch or 3.7inch loads outs – I did keep notes which are on CD somewhere but have not had time to go through them.

My SPWAW oob has 42 rounds of smoke for the Matilda CS against 92 AP for the 2pdr. Cannot remember if I changed these figures or not as there was some guesswork by the original expert. (The game system does not differentiate between HE and smoke rounds so I was never able to get this right anyway and I cannot simple find the date of HE inroduction either from it.)

Thanks Von Lucke for identifying the vision slit correctly - the coaxial MG gun barrel does stick out a long way on the Valentine which is not always the case on British tanks.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

The British Army Handbook 1939-1945

George Forty

P230

“Hidebound both by the choice of the 2pdr as the main tank gun and by building tank rings that were too small to accept anything larger, the resulting small calibre main armament was far too small to produce an effective HE round, although its AP performance was reasonable.”

OK you can take it to mean both ways!

I would have though that the best way to take it would be to assume that George Forty means exactly what he says. If he had intended to say that a 2-pounder HE round was never produced or never used, presumably he would have done; as he doesn't say that, it's hard to see how it supports your mistaken belief in the matter.

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

Sorry I don’t have the Hogg book that says an experimental 2pdr HE round was developed but never produced.

What Hogg book is that? "British and American Artillery of WW2" doesn't say that the round was experimental, nor does it say that it was never produced (the fact that it was assigned a mark number suggests rather that it was). Assuming that this is the book in question, and as you say you don't have this book, on what basis to you claim that it says these things?

Consider also this, from Peter Beale's "Death by Design" (Alan Sutton, 1998), page 90:

"An evaluation of the performance of British tanks in the Mediterranean was written by Lt Col F.W.S. Gordon-Hall in 1945. In his comments about tank guns he says:

The British conception of a tank action before the war envisaged short-range battles on the move. The idea of performance of the tank gun at long range was hardly ever considered. Thus it came to be thought that provided the tank gun was capable of penetrating enemy armour at 500 yd or so, nothing else was required. This idea persisted and made the British Army slow to anticipate the need for a larger tank gun.

In addition, the earlier British tank guns were designed solely for their armour-piercing qualities, and although high-explosive shells were provided, they were a very secondary consideration."

On page 94 Beale says that "the two-pounder high-explosive shell was so small as to be useless", which would be a very odd thing to say if there were no such thing.

All the best,

John.

[ March 01, 2003, 12:42 PM: Message edited by: John D Salt ]

[Stalin's Organ]

Somewhere there's a book about Australia's involvement in hte disastrous Malayan Campaign of 1941 - in it there's a bit about the Aussie 2 pdr AT regiment sent there - since Malaya wasn't "tank country" they were issued with HE ammo to be used in an infantry support role - they kept the AP too tho - which camein handy when the Jap tanks came down the road!

Unfortunately I last saww this about 20 yrs ago, but perhaps it will strike a chord with someone?

The British knew well the uses of HE - it was solely their DOCTRINE that prevented them from issuing the ammunition to tanks - the gun was an anti-tank gun, and infantry and other "soft" targets were for the machine gun(s).

Statements like that of George Forty above that the 2 pdr was too small for an effective HE round smack far too much of post hoc reasoning to me and never sem to be accompanied by any actual official policy that supports the statement.

[Mark Gallear]

The 2pdr shell is very small and really is not big enough to get a sufficient explosive charge into it. German Armoured cars were given auto-cannons with no HE potential either. Some modern vehicles that use auto-cannons are not issued He rounds because the blast is so small the effectiveness is marginal compared to fire solid shot.

The 2pdr AT gun all though obsolete at the start of war carried on in the Far East until the end of it. As you point out targets here were mainly infantry, although the Japanese used armoured warfare in their blitz across the Far East and so it had a role. Better guns were sent to the West to match better German tanks.

The 2pdr lingered into the post-war/cold war period in some Armoured Cars, they did not have HE rounds either.

I don’t think it was a thought out tactical doctrine by the British Army but more it’s the only thing we have got.

[flamingknives]

Some modern vehicles that use auto-cannons are not issued He rounds because the blast is so small the effectiveness is marginal compared to fire solid shot.

Could you specify? I'm not aware of any weapon over 20mm that isn't issued HE.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

The 2pdr shell is very small and really is not big enough to get a sufficient explosive charge into it. German Armoured cars were given auto-cannons with no HE potential either. Some modern vehicles that use auto-cannons are not issued He rounds because the blast is so small the effectiveness is marginal compared to fire solid shot.

Production of German 20mm HE rounds (in 1,000):

1939 - 5 532,2

1940 - 14 609,0

1941 - 8 353,8

1942 - 6 726,5

1943 - 861,0

1944 - 0

These rounds were useable for the 2cm KWK in the ACs and Panzer II, and presumably also in the 20mm AA gun.

In 1988 I was trained on the modern 20mm AA gun from Rheinmetall which fired 'Sprengbrand' (HE/Incendiary) rounds. I am quite sure that the 20mm gun on the Marder to this day fires HE, since there is little that it could do with solid shot.

Mark, I must say your statements get increasingly bizzare. How about you just acknowledge that you seem to have little idea what you are talking about?

[Panzer76]

Doesnt also the 12,7mm modern heavy MG come with HE rounds, I seem to recall that from my time in the army.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

The 2pdr AT gun all though obsolete at the start of war carried on in the Far East until the end of it. As you point out targets here were mainly infantry, although the Japanese used armoured warfare in their blitz across the Far East and so it had a role. Better guns were sent to the West to match better German tanks.

While we are at it, which better guns were sent to the West? AFAIUI that 2-pdr ATG was a perfectly adequate gun at the beginning of the war. Most certainly beat the German 37mm, and the Soviet 45mm that suffered from ammo quality problems. I would assume it would beat the Polich and French 25mm ATGs as well. At the time, the mainstay of the German armoured force had 30-50mm armour, if not less. The 2-pdr could easily get through this at 500 yards. The letdown was the behind-armour effects, due to it being solid shot. But to call the 2pdr gun 'obsolete at the start of the war' when everybody else thought that 37mm guns made perfectly adequate tank and anti-tank guns, and 30-50mm armour @ 0° was sh*thot, is a bit, errr, quaint...

[manchildstein (ii)]

if HE in the german 37mm and soviet 45mm is 'better than nothing,' i think the same could be said for the british 40mm...

in sl/asl the british 40mm had no HE...

...and i think this was 'actual british doctrine' (abd) at the time...

isn't the main discussion here though as to whether or not the british sent a fair amount of 40mm HE to the soviets?...

if so it would seem someone already posted a source to document this contention... is anyone disputing that source?...

[Simon Fox]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organ:

Somewhere there's a book about Australia's involvement in hte disastrous Malayan Campaign of 1941 - in it there's a bit about the Aussie 2 pdr AT regiment sent there - since Malaya wasn't "tank country" they were issued with HE ammo to be used in an infantry support role - they kept the AP too tho - which camein handy when the Jap tanks came down the road!

That would be the 2/4th AT regiment. In fact when they encountered Jap tanks near Bakri, Malaya in 1942 they found that the tank armour was so thin that the 2-pr shot was going straight through causing insufficient damage and they had to use their HE rounds to effectively knock them out.

Reference to that can be found in David Horners "The Gunners" and Neil Smiths unit history "Tid-Apa" the extract below is from the latter:

"At dawn on the 18th five Japanese tanks leading infantry advanced down the road to the positions now occupied by McCure and fellow Australians from the 2/29th Battalion at Muar. McCure had sited one section of C Troop guns with one gun on the road opposite Headquarters 2/29th Battalion and the other about 600 yards towards Muar. The forward Australian anti tank crews under Sergeants Freddie Peake and Clarrie Thornton engaged the enemy tanks with armour piercing shells which again appeared to have little effect. The tanks continued to advance, firing with all guns as they came. Veterans recall the rapidity of the ensuing action. Fear did not seem to be a factor, rather they were too busy getting on with the job of fighting armoured vehicles. This was exactly what they had trained for and they knew their work well.

The leading tank was level with the foremost anti tank gun when the gun sergeant, Clarrie Thornton from Berrigan, NSW calmly changed to high explosive as the tanks passed by; the troop thus knocked them out one by one. Although he was wounded in the thigh by shrapnel during the engagement, Thornton prepared his gun for further action and three more tanks that followed were also destroyed. Lieutenant McCure and his batman Tich Morley repeatedly carried ammunition forward by hand to Thornton's gun under heavy fire. Any tanks that started to pass through the defensive position were finished off by the two guns sited further to the rear and manned by Sergeants Harrison and Parsons."

Note: Lt McClure, the troop commander, was never captured by the Japanese and spent the next 3 1/2 years in Malaya with guerrilla forces. From his own account of the action:

"In the early morning light, all hell suddenly broke loose. Clarrie had opened fire on a convoy of Jap tanks moving along the road and his crew were pumping armour-piercing shells into the tanks as fast as he could fire them. The shells disabled the tanks, but their crews were still able to use their guns.

Captain Bowring of the 2/29th Infantry Battalion, then came running over to me, calling out that Clarrie wanted high-explosive ammunition, and to hurry up with it.

My batman, Titch Morley, and I raced over to Clarrie's gun, with the containers of high-explosive shells. Each time I dumped a container at their gun, I gave Clarrie a slap on the shoulder and urged him on. He was doing a great job and his crew seemed to be crazily enjoying the action, completely ignoring of the dangers of the battle raging on around them.

It was our first encounter in action. Everything was happening so fast, gunfire and explosions were going off all around us, mortars were falling everywhere, we didn't have time for things to sink in. There was no time to be afraid.

Clarrie kept pumping the high-explosive shells into the tanks as fast as he could. Titch and I just kept on running to his gun with containers of ammunition until he had knocked out all the eight tanks.

The first two tanks which Clarrie had hit with armour-piercing shells had rolled on toward Charley Parson's gun in the cutting, where Charley finished them off with high-explosive shells."

From Sgt Thornton's account:

"As members of 13th Battery it was our job to stop any enemy tanks from breaking through our lines. My gun crew - Claude Brown, Ray Cooper, Jim Flowers, Lance Gilbert and Keith Fletcher, was assigned to support Colonel Robertson's 2/29th Infantry Battalion to hold off the Jap assault. On our way north, the 2/29th Battalion decided to rendezvous on the road between Bakri and Muar for the night.

Under the direction of our Troop Commander Bill McCure, we set up our gun emplacement well concealed behind a mound, on the corner of a bend facing straight down the road with an uninterrupted view of any Jap tanks that might come toward us. The intermittent rattle of gunfire warned us that the Japs were not far away and we settled down to a rather restless night.

As the day dawned, we heard the rumbling and clanking of tanks moving slowly down the road. Our hearts thumping, we quickly but quietly manned our gun, aligned our sights, loaded and were ready for action. As the tanks moved slowly toward us, I let them clank noisily past our gun position. When the first three had turned the bend and were side on to our gun, we gave them a burst of fire, hitting all three with armour piercing shells and stopping them in their tracks.

The armour piercing shells however went straight through the tanks but did not destroy them so I promptly sent a runner to Bill who quickly arrived with a container of high explosive ammunition which we hastily pumped into the Jap tanks, demolishing them. The tanks were closely followed by another two, which we briskly dispatched with the high explosive ammo. It was all very thrilling and the adrenalin was coursing fast in our veins.

By the time we stopped firing, the harassing Jap forces we had been sent to halt, turned out to be 12 000 select troops from the crack Imperial Army Japanese Guards, who were turning everything they had at us. Shells and mortar bombs exploded all around and we were under heavy fire and sniping from their infantry.

Suddenly we saw three more tanks heading toward us. This time one attacked us on our flank from the jungle. The situation was tense and frightening, for we knew that the Japs were now fully aware of our position. After an exciting duel with them, we managed to knock out the three of them too. When all eight tanks had been destroyed and were burning along the roadside in front of us, we just had time for a short breather as the Jap infantry began to close on us.

Throughout the action, my gun crew had performed magnificently, madly excited and cracking jokes as they loaded and fired the gun."

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Seems pretty conclusive then that 2pdr HE amuunition was available even in late 1941, early 1942.

Regards

Jim R.

[manchildstein (ii)]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

Seems pretty conclusive then that 2pdr HE amuunition was available even in late 1941, early 1942.

Regards

Jim R.

at least for aussies and soviets

[Mark Gallear]

Sorry I think a civil servant made a mistake and the Russians didn't get HE, or that there is a big element of propaganda in John’s document. I think this idea that the British Army didn't get HE because it didn’t fit in with their doctrine. But at a time of economic crisis Britain produced them by the thousand so they could give them to Russia with Home Guard crap like the Blacker Bombard is more than a little strange!

I would much prefer to see in the patch Matildas and the early Valentines with a 2pdr without the later Little John Adapter and a lower penetration and points cost.

[Andreas]

Well Mark, since you won't be swayed by any evidence, I guess the discussion is a bit pointless, especially since you have not provided a shred of evidence to support your own claim. It is useful though for future reference when you have questions again, as for the need to answer them.

You are ruling yourself out as a serious participant in any discussion by your behaviour here, as far as I am concerned. It appears to me that the documents you read are being interpreted by you in a way that suits your personal prejudices, and that you give at best cursory glances to responses you get here, if any. The document was from Simon, not John. Your idea about home-made manufacture of 2-pdr HE sits very badly with the combat reports that were posted a few posts up. You are still claiming that non-issue of 2-pdr HE to British tank formations in the Western Desert equates to non-existance. Your off-the-planet statement on German 20mm HE has also not been retracted or rephrased. How do you address any of that. I guess we can all consider ourselves lucky that standards of evidence for CMBB are higher than what you are willing to accept.

Your argument about economic crisis also does not wash. By the time the HE shipments occurred, home-guard did not even need pointed sticks to defend against a German invasion - we are talking 1941-3. What if the Soviets requested the ammo - ever thought of that? What if shipping constraints to the middle east made the War Office decide that the space taken up by 2-pdr HE was better used for something else?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

Sorry I think a civil servant made a mistake and the Russians didn't get HE,

Which seems more likely -- that a civil servant should make a mistake that evades detection to find its way into a public record, or that you would make a mistake on an electronic forum?

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

or that there is a big element of propaganda in John’s document.

Why would anyone conduct propaganda (meaning "that which is propagated") in a document that was presumably protected by the Official Secrets Act (and so specifically intended not to be propagated beyond very narrow limits)?

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

I think this idea that the British Army didn't get HE because it didn’t fit in with their doctrine. But at a time of economic crisis Britain produced them by the thousand so they could give them to Russia with Home Guard crap like the Blacker Bombard is more than a little strange!

We know what you think. What you have yet to provide us with is the slenderest shred of evidence for your thinking what you think.

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

I would much prefer to see in the patch Matildas and the early Valentines with a 2pdr without the later Little John Adapter and a lower penetration and points cost.

What game are you talking about that has Littlejohn Adaptors in? CM certainly doesn't, as a swift visit to the unit editor would tell you. I have never heard of Littlejohns being either supplied to the Soviet Union or fitted to infantry tanks on operations. Do you have any evidence of either of these happening, or is this another of your outlandish fantasies like the non-existence of 20mm HE?

All the best,

John.

[Mark Gallear]

"You are ruling yourself out as a serious participant in any discussion by your behaviour here, as far as I am concerned. It appears to me that the documents you read are being interpreted by you in a way that suits your personal prejudices, and that you give at best cursory glances to responses you get here, if any."

I am sorry that you don’t like my tone/behaviour – I happen to think your tone has been a bit threatening, when I said things that you did not want to here and yes there is a lot of prejudice in the arguments here! This does seem to be the beta group who want HE in the game against me or am I wrong about that?

I am sorry that I got confused between Simon and John. Does this mean that I am going to be wrong about everything else for the rest of my life?

There does appear to be a German 20mm gun in the game with only AP ammo. I was just pointing out that not having HE ammo for all AT weapons is not totally unheard of. You seem to have accepted that the British Army did not use HE with the 2pdr at this time?

Ok, the sources such as they are do not say if Little John Adaptors were fitted or not. If you believe they were not fitted then I think the AP penetration of the 2pdr game should be reduced downward for all vehicles. I have come across info on the different marks of 2pdr both tank and AT – some have the Little John others do not – they are listed as distinctly different weapons but to a soldier in the British Army they were all 2pdrs. (I will point out again if it's got the Little John it cann't fire HE anway.)

I am not a historian but everybody is subject to bias and can make mistakes. I am well aware that I am subject to these factors.

All wartime documents are subject to propaganda. What was and was not sent too Russia would have been politically sensitive at that time even for internal documents.

I can not really comment on the info in the document that says HE rounds went to Russia, as I have not seen it or even a copy of it. My feeling is that it can not be right because it does not fit in with the knowledge that British troops did not have such a round at the time. So I do think it fairly likely that a civil servant who had never seen a HE or AP round ticked a wrong box.

Think I have had my little say – not up to me what happens - not my game, I just play it.