British Armour in the Normandy Campaign

304 Pages·2004·2.53 MB·English

by  John Buckley

BRITISH ARMOUR IN THE
NORMANDY CAMPAIGN 1944
The popular perception of the performance of British armour in the Normandy
campaign in 1944 is one of failure and frustration. Despite overwhelming
superiority in numbers, Montgomery’s repeated efforts to employ his armour
in an offensive manner ended in disappointing stalemate. Indeed, just a week
after the D-Day landings in June, the Germans claimed to have halted an
entire British armoured division with one Tiger tank. Most famously of all,
in July, despite a heavy preparatory bombardment, three British armoured
divisions were repulsed, by much weaker German forces, to the east of Caen,
suffering the loss of over 400 tanks in the process. Explanation of these and
other humiliating failures has centred predominantly on the shortcomings of
the tanks employed by British formations. An orthodoxy has emerged that
the roots of failure lay in the comparative weakness of Allied equipment, and
to a lesser extent in training and doctrine.
This new study by John Buckley challenges this standard view by analysing
the reality and level of the supposed failure, and the causes behind it. By
studying the role of the armoured brigades as well as the divisions, a more
complete and balanced analysis is offered in which it is clear that while some
technologically based difficulties were encountered, British armoured forces
achieved a good deal when employed appropriately. Such difficulties as did
occur resulted from British operational techniques, methods of command and
leadership, and the operating environment in which armour was employed.
In addition, the tactics and doctrine employed by both British and German
armoured forces resulted in heavy casualties when on the offensive. Ultimately,
the experience of the crews and the effects of the fighting on their morale is
studied to provide a complete picture of the campaign.
This groundbreaking new study of the Normandy campaign will be an
essential reading for all military historians and general readers with an
informed interest in the subject.
CASS SERIES: MILITARY HISTORY AND POLICY
Series Editors: John Gooch and Brian Holden Reid
ISSN: 1465–8488
This series will publish studies on historical and contemporary aspects of land
power, spanning the period from the eighteenth century to the present day, and
will include national, international and comparative studies. From time to
time, the series will publish edited collections of essays and ‘classics’.
1. ALLENBY AND BRITISH STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1917–1919
Matthew Hughes
2. ALFRED VON SCHLIEFFEN’S MILITARY WRITINGS
Robert Foley (ed. and trans.)
3. THE BRITISH DEFENCE OF EGYPT, 1935–1940: Conflict and Crisis
in the Eastern Mediterranean
Steven Morewood
4. THE JAPANESE AND THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH ARMIES
AT WAR, 1941–1945
Tim Moreman
5. TRAINING, TACTICS AND LEADERSHIP IN THE CONFEDERATE
ARMY OF TENNESSEE: Seeds of Failure
Andrew Haughton
6. MILITARY TRAINING IN THE BRITISH ARMY 1940–1944: From
Dunkirk to D-day
Tim Harrison Place
7. THE BOER WAR: Direction, Experience and Image
John Gooch (ed.)
8. CAPORETTO 1917: Victory of Defeat?
Mario Moreselli
9. POSTWAR COUNTERINSURGENCY AND THE SAS 1945–1952: A Special
Type of Warfare
Tim Jones
10. THE BRITISH GENERAL STAFF: Reform and Innovation 1890–1939
David French and Brian Holden Reid (eds)
11. WRITING THE GREAT WAR: Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories,
1915–1948
Andrew Green
12. COMMAND AND CONTROL IN MILITARY CRISIS: Devious Decisions
Harald Høiback
BRITISH ARMOUR IN
THE NORMANDY
CAMPAIGN 1944
John Buckley
FRANK CASS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2004
by Frank Cass, an imprint of Taylor & Francis
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
©2004 John Buckley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to
the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any
legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Buckley, John (John D.)
British armour in the Normandy campaign, 1944/John Buckley.
p. cm. — (Cass series—military history and policy, ISSN 1465–8488;15)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7146–5323–3
1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—France—Normandy. 2. Great
Britain. Army—Armored troops. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Tank
warfare. I. Title. II. Cass series—military history and policy;no. 15.
D756.5.N6B83 2004
940.54 ′2142—dc22
2004001402
ISBN 0-203-49498-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-58182-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–7146–5323–3 (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
Series editor’s preface vi
List of illustrations ix
List of figures, map and tables xi
Acknowledgements xii
List of abbreviations xiv
1 Introduction 1
2 Fighting the campaign 11
3 Operational technique 45
4 Fighting the battle 70
5 The tank gap 105
6 Design and planning 135
7 Production and supply 160
8 Morale and motivation 178
9 Conclusion 209
Notes 219
Bibliography 256
Index 271
v
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
Campaigns are the building blocks of war, and none of the campaigns
fought during the Second World War surpasses the Normandy campaign in
importance – or in controversy. Field Marshal Montgomery’s personality and
style provided ample grounds for dispute while the campaign was still under
way, and the methods employed by him and by his commanders in Normandy
during the months of June and July 1944 soon gave rise to criticisms which
have provided the basis for decades of historical dispute. The critics, whose
numbers include Chester Wilmot, Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Carlo d’Este, Sir Max
Hastings and Sir John Keegan, are many and distinguished and the multiple
grounds on which they have found fault with the campaign have included
almost every aspect of its conduct. Among the plethora of issues which have
been raised in this debate, none is more fundamental than that of the fighting
power of the British Army, apparently condemned to a place in the military
league table far below that of the German Army despite the fact that it was
victorious in Normandy.
Condemned from start to finish – indeed from before its start – Normandy
can all too easily become a litany of failures. Sent across the Channel to
fight in inferior tanks as a result of a policy of tank procurement which
had been going wrong ever since 1940, British tankers justifiably developed
‘Tiger-phobia’ as they came to grips with the enemy’s Tiger and Panther
tanks, greatly superior to their own Shermans, Churchills and Cromwells in
both armour protection and gun power. Worn down by months of combat
before they arrived in France, crack units such as 7th Armoured Division
performed badly, while new formations lacked the ‘do and die’ attitude to
combat displayed by their enemy because, as senior British commanders
privately confided to one another, ‘Tommy is no soldier’. Doctrinal con-
fusions and battlefield flux were alike papered over by Montgomery’s
assertions that all was going according to plan. The result, exemplified
in Operation GOODWOOD (18–20 July) when British armour was
committed on a front only two thousands yards wide and some 400 tanks
vi
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
were lost in a failed breakthrough attempt, can be made to appear almost
inevitable.
As John Buckley shows in the pages that follow, almost every one of these
received truths is at the very least an over simplification and many are so
misleading as to amount to misapprehensions. Mistakes were undoubtedly
made: the successes that were hoped for and expected on the first day failed to
materialise in part because planning took too little account of terrain and
rested on over ambitious expectations about the ability of armoured forces to
drive swiftly inland. The methods of fighting applied at the outset of the
campaign were, however, logical; the high premium placed on movement
reflected the desire to avoid being caught up in wasteful slogging matches
and an acute awareness of a manpower problem which meant that human
resources had to be carefully nurtured. Similarly, the weapons with which
British armour entered the campaign made good sense: the fighting in the
Western Desert had shown the anti-tank gun to be the prime enemy of the
tank and had therefore demonstrated the importance of a ‘dual use’ tank gun
which could fire both armour-piercing and high explosive ammunition. In
Normandy, however, Tiger and Panther tanks and self-propelled artillery
turned out to be the major threat and dealing with them required an HV gun
and not a medium-velocity one.
Normandy turned out not to be quite what anyone expected. Criticisms
based on lack of foresight can only justifiably go so far, and it is perhaps more
important to understand how logical methods could have consequences
no-one appreciated until they transpired. As John Buckley demonstrates,
there was a defensible logic behind the design for combat which informed
the minds of British commanders as they crossed the Channel on 6 June
1944. Unhappily, it was not one which fitted well with the defining features
of the battle they were about to enter. Perhaps the most important finding of
this book, however, is that the British Army demonstrated a high degree
of adaptivity to the combat conditions it faced once it came to grips with
the enemy in Normandy. The lack of a centrally imposed tactical doctrine
uniformly followed by all, which Montgomery incorrectly claimed to have
introduced, allowed the space for experimentation and adaptation as the
inadequacies of the early methods of combat became evident. This led to such
successful innovations as the brigade groups composed of mutually supporting
infantry battalions and armoured regiments introduced by 11th Armoured
Division and the Guards Armoured Division. On this count alone, the British
Army in Normandy turns out to have had more ‘fighting power’ than some of
its critics have allowed.
Revising the judgements of history, and of historians, both deepens our
knowledge and sharpens our understanding of the past. Here, it takes us
through critical issues of doctrine and method, design and planning, produc-
tion and supply, morale and motivation as John Buckley’s careful, thorough
and illuminating research corrects many of our assumptions and conclusions
vii
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
about the Normandy campaign – and about the men who fought it. The
campaign itself will doubtless remain a battleground for controversy, but in
many respects we shall now be able to make wiser judgements because we are
better informed about how and why British armour performed as it did in the
bocage during the summer of 1944.
JOHN GOOCH
University of Leeds
viii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Between pages 152 and 153
1. M4 Sherman. Plentiful and reliable, but weak in firepower
and prone to ‘brew-up’ when penetrated. (IWM B6130)
2. A30 Challenger. A flawed and compromised tank which
attempted to mount a 17-pdr in an elongated Cromwell
chassis. It was effectively superseded by the Firefly,
and saw only limited service in 1944–45. (IWM 9331)
3. A22/42 Churchill. Carrying heavier armour than
the feared German Tiger, the Churchill was
the epitome of the infantry support tank. (IWM 8568)
4. M10 17-pdr. The British boosted the hitting power
of their M10 tank destroyers by equipping a proportion
with the potent 17-pdr gun. (IWM 8303)
5. M3/5 Stuart (Honey). With a near worthless 37mm gun,
in Normandy the Stuart acted as little more than
a tracked reconnaissance vehicle. (IWM 5608)
6. A Cromwell crew prepares a meal. Tank crew usually lived
in and around their vehicle, often forming closer working
relationships than in other sections of the army. (IWM 5681)
7. Tank crews endured the added burden of constant
maintenance of their vehicles, often at the end of the day.
(IWM 9043)
8. Panther. Manoeuvrable, with a hard hitting 75mm gun
and tough frontal armour, the Panther was
a formidable opponent. (IWM 5769)
9. Percy Hobart (l), GOC 79th Armoured Division,
and Pip Roberts, GOC 11th Armoured Division,
with Monty in 1945. (IWM BU 10669)
10. Allan Adair (l), GOC Guards Armoured Division,
with Second British Army Commander, Miles Dempsey.
ix