No HE shells

[Guest Mike]

And indeed the British had a 2pdr Pom-Pom that fired HE - it WAS strictly a doctrinal matter.

[Mark Gallear]

Mike I'm fascinated by this British Army doctrinal

bias against HE. Can you explain it to me. In the Pre-War years the British Army was on a shoe string, it had fought the war to end all wars and had only to police the empire now. Most Officers were all for going back to real soldiering dumping these petrol run things and getting back on their horses.

If you read Rude Mechanicals - apart from a bit of practice on saliburys plain which took up the whole mechanised budget - they didn't have much of a doctrine. The premier WW1 armoured expert was more than slightly suspected of been a Nazi.

Ok, the Crusier 1 mounted a gun that couldn't fire HE but it was a bit better than a Panzer 1 - what. When war broke out they had to make do - not much of a doctrine but the Germans had to make do with their Panzer 1s as well.

The question is why are HE rounds appearing in 1943 when they have only just found the resources to fit the Little John at last?

Ok where are the Rexfords, Bastables and others with the low numbers and all the right answers when you need them.

Sorry for all the in advance!

[flamingknives]

AIUI, the need for HE was not appreciated by the people who ordered the equipment. The doctrine stems from the cavalry faction, who saw tanks as mechanical horsies. (eventually) The primary tank of the RAC, therefore, is the cruiser types - fast but lightly armoured - armed with a gun that traverses quickly, has a high RoF and good AP performance at close range, as a swirling melee is what they expect. It also mounts MGs for anti-personnel work.

In support of the infantry are mobile MG posts, slow and armoured to withstand enemy ATGs (the Matilda I) or more heavily armed infantry tanks (Matilda II).

Finally, though never introduced, there are the assault tanks that are intended to break through enemy defensive positions. They are to be armoured against ATGs, and mount large calibre HE chuckers to blast apart fortifications.

The shape of things to come emerges in France '40 - some lessons are learnt - the emphasis shifts away from tanks designed to fight a static war - but others are missed, and the military establishment rests of what few laurals it has won. The Matilda II, which did well, cannot be upgraded with either armour or gun, and the 2pdr is seen as perfectly good. While adequate in France, the Germans are quick to respond and their armour is soon improved while gun upgrades enable them to outrange the 2pdr. The lack of HE doesn't seem to figure in the face of all the other failings.

With invasion looming, all projects in development are shelved in order to concentrate on building up materiel, other than the Churchill, which won't see service for three years, and the Covenanter, which is a sheer waste of resources. The 6pdr is amoung those put on hold.

The real need for HE appears in the desert, where German ATGs outrange tank MGs.

Unfortunately for the men of the tank units, criticism of their kit is slow to reach those it needs to, although by the time 6pdr-armed and lend-lease tanks are arriving in any quantity, no more 2pdr armed tanks are accepted by the army in NA. Any that are sent are not offloaded (I don't know what happens then, but they may have been sent back)

That being said, some units (including 10th Royal Hussars) still fight with 2pdr Crusaders up to the end of the fighting in Tunisia.

At a rough guess, the problem with 2pdr HE is that it is needed to engage ATGs at very long ranges in the desert, but the 2pdr is a short-range gun (sighted out to 1200m, IIRC) and it most likely cannot place it's small HE round accurately enough at a distance enough to be useful. By the time they are moving through Tunisia and Sicily, the ranges are short enough that an HE round can be placed with sufficient accuracy. Now, however, only scout cars mount it.

When was the LittleJohn adaptor designed? AIUI, that also needs special ammo (APCNR) in order to work (you can't put regular AP through it, that would be... messy)

Perhaps '43 is when enough resources become available to increase the capabilities of a marginal weapon.

Perhaps the allocation for development resources is something like:

'40 Anything that can fight

'41 Better gun

'42 As above, plus better tanks

'43 Room for other stuff in addition to above

[Eddy]

A bit off topic but whilst trying to find out what a littlejohn adapter was/is, I found this site which may be of interest:-

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/GreatBritain/BritishLightTanks.html

Still don't know what a littlejohn adapter is. Anyone help?

Cheers

Ed

[MikeyD]

You can see the lengthened Littlejohn Adaptor barrel on a picture of the Techtrarch light tank on that site. Nice site, BTW.

Seeing the Littlejohn on the Techrarch might give a hint to its use. The Techrarch was one of only a handful of air-mobile tanks. This means at the landing zone the Techrarch would be the only armor asset available, which would necessitate squeezing (quite literally) all the anti-tank performance out of the 2 pdr gun as possible. So, after the Brits had seen the German 28mm heavy ant-tank rifle in action (another squieeze-bore design) the Littlejohn was probably designed to fill that specific nitch, and was eventually distributed more widely once it was in production.

My own speculation

[ December 04, 2003, 12:05 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Eddy]

An extension to the length of the gun, sort of tapered thing? Thus increasing the velocity and accuracy of the projectile? Or am I looking at the wrong thing?

And check out the multi turreted Light Tank A3E1, Carrier - Machine Gun No. 1 thing. A proper land ship.

Cheers

Ed

[flamingknives]

Yep, the LittleJohn adaptor is an additional gubbins that attaches to the end of the barrel to provide a squeezebore effect (tapered gun) There is a hard core (tungsten, usually) surrounded by a soft metal. The full force of the fullbore charge propels it down the barrel, but then only a small, high density core leaves (the soft outer case is stripped away by the adaptor) so velocity is maintained and impact occurrs over a small area (better penetration). It's a variation on APDS, but at the time it was more accurate and reliable than APDS.

Apparently, some crews removed the adaptor, but retained the special shells, which were then simply the APCR that crops up everywhere else. This also allowed them to use HE shells, as using HE with the adaptor would be more messy than plain AP

[Mark Gallear]

FlamingKnives is that really you Mike?

I will have ago at arguing with you about doctrine in a bit as this is turning into a real thread with real people posting. I think you have to get you head around the situation at the start of WW 2 and in the inter-war years to understand why things were done in the way they were.

As for the origins of the Little John it is described in A.J. Smithers Rude Mechanicals (One of the powers that be that made the decisions as to what the British Army should have). (Sorry got nothing to do with examining the German squeeze bore - who had control of the Czech factory?) Frantisek Janacek, a Czech arms manufacturer came to England in December 1938, and approached the BSA Company and said that he and his father had been working on a new type of armour-piercing ammunition for the Czech army and wanted Britain and France to have it. The War office were uninterested but BSA were impressed and gave him the necessary facilities, knowing that war and lots of orders were just around the corner. Before the Germans marched in to the Janacek factory, an English man had smuggled the prototypes to the British Legation.

A few months later Janacek could fire the projectile from a specially adapted 2pdr which had its penetration vastly improved. The shot had a band or skirting, near the middle, which was squeezed flat during its passage through an unrifled barrel. High velocity was thus obtained. The penetrator was made of tungsten carbide and could go through any known armour. (However tungsten is rare.)

The government set up special factories for the device and by mid-1942 was been produced in quantity and designs were made to fit the device to the 6pdr and 17pdr. (This never happened.) The converted 2pdrs were known as Littlejohn guns and were fitted to Tetrarch light tanks for airborne forces. (The crews were told they could pentrate a Tiger, which was widely disbelieved. My understanding is that the Tetrarchs used for D-Day had the 3inch gun and not the 2pdr anyway. This could point to something as the 3inch gun could fire HE by this time.)

Apart from the expense and rarity of Tungsten, the velocity wore out the barrels very rapidly. (This would explain why it was not in the event widely fitted and why standard 2pdrs were not converted. I think this is also the reason for the removal of the Littlejohn device to fire more conventional AP type rounds [see above for choices!] and this could not be done in combat anyway. I provided the link to that story in the first place - one of the few internet sites to even mention the Littlejohn.)

(I could be wrong but I know from an Ian Hogg book that 2pdr HE rounds were made and tested early in the war, that as the powers that be had decided the Littlejohn was a good idea and a squeeze bore cannot fire HE, it was pretty silly to waste resources tooling up and making 2pdr HE. This is just my interpretation/guess and I could be wrong - certainly lots of other people are guessing and making interpretation on just as flimsy information/evidence. If not how come Rexford isn't posting here with loads of evidence on 2pdr HE use and making me eat my posts?)

Sorry for all the in advance. I will do a perfect post oneday!

[ December 04, 2003, 06:11 PM: Message edited by: Mark Gallear ]

[flamingknives]

3" howitzer is the CS varient and quite rare compared to the 2pdr armed one.

The Tetrach at Bovington is the CS version. (more info in the link)

[Michael Emrys]

Tungsten was not so rare for the Allies. Britain and the US were buying up all they could find, especially from Spain and Portugal, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Germans (who nevertheless got quite a lot from those two sources until late summer 1944 in the case of Spain and a bit earlier for Portugal). So the Allies had all they needed.

Michael

[Eddy]

Cheers for the answers, much appreciated.

Just out of interest was there any particular reason why they called it LittleJohn? Or was it just one of those things?

Ed

P.S. CMAK not arrived yet. Ho-hum

[ December 04, 2003, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: Eddy ]

[flamingknives]

Literal (or close to) translation of the designer's name from Czech to English.

[Guest Mike]

This Mike is not Flaminknives, despite his excellent answers!

BTW the soft jacket on a squeeze bore projectile is not discarded - it is squeezed sown to a smaller diameter, but stays with the projectile.

[Mark Gallear]

So FlammingKnives does not equal Mike then! Does Michael Emrys = Mike?

I don't know for sure but Little John is a character from Robin Hood - our bandit hero who robs from the rich to give to the poor, etc.

Little John is Robin's right hand man - a giant of man who wields a big stick - that's why Robin called him Little John, get it! No neither do I -medieval humour has gone off a bit over time! I sort of it get it for the 2pdr projectile.

Tungsten not so rare - well the rich Americans could only afford to give a couple of such rounds to their Tank destoyers facing Tigers. I suspect samething with Littlejohn 2pdrs a couple of rounds of the good stuff, the rest APCBC.

So Mike when you going to give me the low down on WW2 British Army doctrine?

[ December 04, 2003, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: Mark Gallear ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Mike:

And indeed the British had a 2pdr Pom-Pom that fired HE - it WAS strictly a doctrinal matter.

Hmm, seeing that teh British Army until the 1970s (at least, some say until today) would have refused to acknowledge the need for, much less the existence of, something as foul as 'doctrine', maybe saying it WAS strictly a 'bone-headed, haven't been out to fight Germans at all, but still know it all better, utterly dense civil servant in Whitehall decided it' - matter?

Then again, 'doctrinal' is somewhat snappier.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Mark Gallear:

Does Michael Emrys = Mike?

Aaaarrrrrrrrrggghhhhhhhhh!!! Don't hang that on me! I hate being called Mike! Makes me feel like I should go out and mug an old lady...

:mad:

Michael