Famous Tank Battles & Air Combats

56 Pages·2014·0.52 MB·English

by  Jenkins

World War 2

Famous Tanks Battles of WWII

Ryan Jenkins
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or
otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.
Copyright © 2014
Table of Contents
World War 2 Famous Tank Battles
Introduction
Chapter 1: Origins
Chapter 2: The Inter-War Years
Chapter 3: Blitzkrieg 1939-40
Chapter 4: El Alamein
Chapter 5: Kursk
Conclusion

World War 2 Famous Air Combats
Introduction
Chapter 1: Origins
Chapter 2: The Air Forces of WWII
Chapter 3: Douglas Bader
Chapter Four: Erich Hartmann
Conclusion
Introduction
Thank you for downloading this book, Famous Tank Battles of WWII.
The Second World War ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the culmination of a two-fold revolution in
warfare, high altitude saturation bombing of both military and civilian targets,
and the birth of the nuclear age.
But the war had begun with another revolution in war: armored warfare.
By the time the war ended, the use of the tank in war had become second nature,
but when the conflict began in 1939, the use of the tank was a novel and
revolutionary idea.
This e-book will be a brief overview of some of the most well-known
and important tank battles of the Second World War. Included will be a
discussion of some of the men behind the theories of armored warfare, the
leaders in the field, some of the most successful tank “aces” of the war, and the
tanks of World War II.
We hope that by the time you finish this e-book about armored warfare
in WWII, you will continue to a more in depth study of this fascinating and
influential topic in military history.
Please feel free to share this book with your friends and family. Please also
take the time to write a short review on Amazon to share your thoughts.
Chapter 1: Origins
In the late 15th or early 16th century, Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
conceived and drew up blueprints for a human powered, armored vehicle.
Shaped vaguely like a native North American teepee, the vehicle was to be
powered by hand cranks turned by men sitting behind the walls of the machine,
which were of armored plate. Light cannons were to be placed on the inside and
fired into enemy ranks when the armored plating in front of it was lifted. The
motive behind this vehicle was to break up enemy formations and overawe the
foe.
Three hundred years later, on the battlefields of the northwestern
Europe during World War I, a stalemate had developed between the combatants
after initial advances by the Germans into Belgium and France. Grinding into a
battle of attrition behind walls of barbed wire, mines, strong-points, and (most
obviously) trenches by the winter of 1914-15, World War One became a
slaughterhouse of immense proportions. Advances were not measured in miles,
as they had been before and as they would come to be in World War II, but in
yards, if at all.
Though the trenches of WWI initially were dug with the intention of
providing minimum cover until the offensive could be resumed or started and
were, in many cases, simply relatively shallow holes in the ground, they soon
developed into elaborate fortifications which housed millions of men, provided
them with headquarters, communications, hospitals, and homes. The trench
warfare of WWI was dominated by one weapon – the machine gun.
The machine gun enabled a crew of two men to stand off hundreds at a
time. The massed firepower of hundreds of machine guns, all with overlapping
fields of fire, enabled armies to withstand the massed attacks of thousands.
Additionally, the development of mass production on a huge scale of
artillery meant that not only were attacks sometimes broken up before they could
even start, but that the trenches that protected the men of WWI had to be deeper
and more elaborate than anyone had thought necessary. Even today, almost
exactly one hundred years later, some of the trench lines of WWI can be seen in
the pastures and farmland of northwestern Europe.
Life in the trenches was more than miserable, and thousands of men,
even those few who were perhaps untouched by bullets or shrapnel, suffered
horrors beyond measure in them. Vermin, bad water and food, dirt, disease, lack
of light, exposure to all kinds of weather, mud... the list goes on and on.
Artillery barrages could last for days. In the days before the Battle of
Passchendaele between the forces of the British Empire (England, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia) and Germany, approximately four million shells were
fired in the preparatory bombardment of the German lines by the British and
Dominion forces alone. Trenches were dug so deeply that very few casualties
from direct impact from shells or shrapnel were caused. However, many
hundreds of German soldiers were buried alive, and many experienced what
came to be known as “shell-shock,” a physiological or mental (or both)
breakdown due to the intense stress of the bombardment. This could last
temporarily – or permanently. Years after the war, cities, towns, villages, and
hospitals all over Europe had legions of shaking, shambling, and incoherent men
in them.[*]
For these reasons, and to perhaps achieve the breakthrough that the
infantry could not, the British and the French began work on an armored fighting
vehicle.
In England, the military/civilian committee that was appointed (1915) to
develop the tank was called “The Landships Committee”[ǂ], and this is what the
first tanks were called – “landships.” Soon, however, out of a desire to disguise
the development of the vehicles from German spies, and because workers on the
vehicles thought they bore a resemblance to water storage tanks, the vehicles
were referred to as “tanks.” The French had their own version of the committee,
and soon both nations had working versions of the weapon.
The first use of tanks in battle took place near the French towns of Flers
and Courcelette in Flanders, part of the Somme Offensive of September 1916.
The forty nine British tanks, dubbed the “Mark I,” were rhomboidal, with two
sets of treads moving on the outside of a central engine, crew, and weapons area.
There were two versions: “male” and “female.” The male was heavier by a ton
(twenty eight), carried two six-pounder (57mm) cannons and three eight
millimeter machine guns. The female carried five machine guns and no cannon.
Both had a crew of eight, and could achieve a top speed (on level ground) of
four miles per hour. Their armor was a quarter to a half inch thick, and their
range was twenty-six miles. The temperatures inside, where the unprotected
engine was inches from the crew, could reach over one hundred degrees, and the
exhaust sometimes leaked into the crew cabin, leading to sometimes deadly
results.
These were the machines that the British hoped would change the war.
The French constructed similar machines, including one that carried a
75mm cannon (this would be the largest fielded on a tank until 1941). However,
the French light tanks were of a different design, and anyone viewing the French
Renault “FT” would recognize it as a modern tank, with a rotating turret above a
crew cabin and treads below.
On September 15th, 1916 forty-nine British tanks were supposed to
move forward towards German lines. Many believed the move to be premature,
and they turned out to be correct. Seventeen broke down almost immediately. Of
the remaining thirty-two tanks, only nine made it across the “no man’s land” of
shell holes, barbed wire, and other obstacles into the German lines. They could
cross over most trenches, and crush barbed wire, but larger shell holes proved a
problem, and so did mud, into which the tanks sank.
However, the tanks that worked properly did achieve a localized
success and moreover, were able to break into German lines, where they terrified
and intimidated the defenders. Though the actual effect of the tanks in the battle
was negligible, many saw that they had great potential.
Today, many history buffs believe it is the Battle of Cambrai, not the
Battle of Flers-Courcelette, where the tank made its debut in battle. This is not
so, but the Battle of Cambrai did see the first massed use of tanks in a
coordinated and successful way (the French and British both had used massed
tanks earlier in the year, but to little effect), and was the battle in which most
people came to realize that the tank was going to remain in the modern military
arsenal.
The Battle of Cambrai was fought near the French town of the same
name, not too far from the Flers-Courcelette battlefield. Rapid developments and
improvements in British models resulted in a new “Mark IV” tank, and it was
some three hundred of the machines which achieved a breakthrough of the
German lines on the first day of the battle, November 20, 1917. On the second
day, German resistance stiffened, and many of the tanks were destroyed – either
by artillery or specialized infantry (after all, a man could run faster than a tank
could move).
However, the battle of Cambrai was a tactical success, and some modest
gains were made, which showed, in league with new artillery tactics, that the
tank held promise but still needed much development. Slow speed and weapons
which could not be brought to bear on close and low targets were two of the
major weaknesses, and gave many in the military pause in their use. Add to this
the problem of communications – how were tank crews to communicate with
each other? This was a problem that was not solved until the beginning of the
next war twenty some odd years later.
Throughout the rest of the war, the tank would see periodic use, and the
Germans developed their own model, the “A7V,” a sort of land battleship (of
which only twenty were built), which fought with British Mark IVs in the first
tank versus tank battle during the German offensives in the spring of 1918. The
results were highly inconclusive, many of the tanks being damaged, not
destroyed, and withdrawn from the battlefield.
Chapter 2: The Inter-War Years
During the years 1919-1939, many changes occurred in both tank
technology and tactics that were to have direct effect on the battlefields of World
War Two.
Firstly, the rhomboidal versions of the tank and the “land battleship”
were phased out, and the French version became the model upon which the tank
would be based to the present day.
Though today we look at the Second World War, and especially its
start, as being dominated by German tanks, it was the French that were building
the better and more powerful tanks heading into WWII.
The reason for the stunning success of the Germans in the first years of
WWII was not in their machines (some military historians even go so far as to
say that the Czechoslovak LT vz. 38, which the Germans then used as the “t38”
when they overran Czechoslovakia, was a better machine than the German Mark
I and IIs that they began the conflict with). It was in the use of their tanks that
the Germans were superior.
By the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans could not have a
large military, nor an air force or tanks, but they found ways to circumvent the
rules. One way was to undergo secret training programs in the Soviet Union.
Another was very simple: men would be equipped with cardboard tank costumes
and simulate the ideas that their tacticians developed.
In each of the major European countries (Germany, Britain, France,
Russia), and in the United States, military theorists developed new ideas about
how the tank should be used in the conflicts of the future. Many of these ideas
were remarkably similar. What was different was the reception that greeted these
new ideas on the part of the military establishment.
In the years between the wars, military figures who were to play major
roles in the coming conflict all began to develop ideas about how the tank was to
be used. These were: JFC Fuller and Basil Liddell-Hart of Great Britain, Charles
DeGaulle of France, Heinz Guderian of Germany, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and
Georgi Zhukov of the Soviet Union, and George S. Patton of the United States
(who commanded the first American tank school).
There were subtle differences in the ways that these individuals viewed
the use of the tank and the best design for the use intended, but essentially, two