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    Churchill Tanks: British Army, Northwest Europe, 1944–45
    Churchill Tanks: British Army, Northwest Europe, 1944–45
    Churchill Tanks: British Army, Northwest Europe, 1944–45
    Ebook149 pages1 hour

    Churchill Tanks: British Army, Northwest Europe, 1944–45

    By Dennis Oliver

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    About this ebook

    This fully illustrated study of these iconic WWII tanks will be “of great interest to history buffs and an inspirational aid to modelers” (Toy Soldier & Model Figure).

    Designed as a heavily armored tank which could accompany infantry formations, the Churchill Tank’s ability to cross rough ground and climb seemingly unassailable hills became legendary. The tank first saw action in 1942 and the basic design was constantly reworked and up-gunned, culminating in the Mark VII version which was capable of taking on the heaviest German tanks.

    In this volume of the TankCraft series, Dennis Oliver uses archive photographs and thoroughly researched, vividly presented color profiles to tell the story of these fearsome British tanks. A full color section features available model kits and accessories as well as aftermarket products. In addition to the color profiles there is a gallery of expertly constructed and painted models.

    A separate section explains technical details and production modifications giving the modeler all the information and knowledge required to recreate an authentic reproduction of one of the tanks that contributed so much to the British effort in the battles for Normandy and the liberation of Europe.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 30, 2017
    ISBN9781526710079
    Churchill Tanks: British Army, Northwest Europe, 1944–45
    Author

    Dennis Oliver

    Dennis Oliver is the author of over twenty books on Second World War armored vehicles.

    Read more from Dennis Oliver

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      Book preview

      Churchill Tanks - Dennis Oliver

      INTRODUCTION

      From the end of the First World War and the formation of the Royal Tank Corps in 1919, British military thinkers, strategists and politicians argued over the role that armoured vehicles would play in any future conflict. By any measure the first tanks had been a contributing factor in breaking the stalemate on the Western Front and by the last year of the war carefully planned and co-ordinated operations utilising large armoured formations with infantry, artillery and air support were becoming commonplace. In the post-war world, however, no one was exactly sure as to how the five remaining battalions of the Royal Tank Corps would be employed or how they should be equipped. That these battalions had been busily developing the tactics of mobile warfare seems to have had little, if any, effect on the debate.

      Guided by hindsight it is easy to believe that the outbreak of the Second World War was somehow inevitable but it should be remembered that in the Britain of the 1920s most of the nation’s political leaders considered the possibility of another major European war within the space of a single generation unlikely, if not impossible. If one were to accept this view then the British Army’s role, in the near future at least, would surely be restricted to what was essentially colonial policing, as it had been before 1914.

      Reading the literature of the time, both official and anecdotal, one almost feels that the army had come to accept the existence of the Royal Tank Corps, for the most part grudgingly, and so something had to be found for it to do. The consensus of opinion among most senior officers was that the tank would be best employed in supporting the infantry and the role of exploiting any resulting breakthrough should then be left to the cavalry. The government was quick to accept what seemed to be a tidy solution to the debate and thus, by 1933, the concept of the Infantry Tank was born (1).

      A busy workshop in northern France photographed during late 1944. Closest to the camera are two Churchill Mk IV AVRE tanks and behind those can be seen a Mk III fitted with the Ordnance QF (quick firing) 75mm gun. Behind the Churchills are a number of Sherman tanks and at least one Cromwell.

      The question of how best to equip the proposed tank battalions and brigades was never satisfactorily addressed and this was due, once again, to the conflicting schools of thought within the army, the government of the day and the armaments industry. Many felt that the deployment of vast numbers of fast, small vehicles, which would prove difficult to hit, was the best way to support an infantry assault while others suggested that a vehicle capable of protecting the infantry from the enemy’s tanks was called for. The latter, of course, meant the development of a flat-trajectory weapon capable of penetrating the armour of most tanks then in service. Proposals drawing on the experience of the First World War recommended a tank with good trenchcrossing ability and heavy armour, armed with a gun which could neutralise enemy strongpoints and fortifications (2). The advocates of small, heavily-armoured tanks initially prevailed and the first Infantry Tank was the diminutive A11, or Infantry Tank Mark I, which came into service in 1937, carrying just two men and armed with a single machine gun. These early tanks were in effect little more than heavily-armoured, mobile pillboxes. This was followed in early 1939 by the Infantry Tank Mark II, better known as the Matilda. In July of the same year design work began on the Infantry Tank Mark III, or Valentine, and as the war began in September 1939 work had begun on another new vehicle, designated the A20, which would eventually enter production as the Churchill.

      Notes

      1. This was not a peculiarly British innovation and tank design within the French army was proceeding along similar lines. Within the armies of the future combatants only a very few relatively junior officers advocated the doctrine of fast-moving armoured formations working closely with mobile infantry units, supported by airpower in place of the slow-moving artillery. That the Germans developed this into official policy was due in large part to Hitler’s attraction to any form of gimmickry.

      2. It seems almost incredible today that the idea of a multi-purpose gun capable of firing both high explosive and armour-piercing rounds was not explored and would not enter service until late 1942 with the introduction of the American Sherman.

      CHURCHILL UNIT TANK STRENGTHS, JUNE 1944

      In many ways reminiscent of the tanks of the First World War the A20 was characterised by a large longitudinal frame with the tank’s tracks running around the top of the hull. The prototypes, produced by Harland and Wolff Limited, were armed with two 2pdr guns fitted to sponsons on the vehicle’s side, each with a coaxial BESA machine gun. However, the hull sponsons were very quickly dropped and a turret, based on the design of the A12 Matilda and mounting a single 2pdr gun, was introduced.

      During development the possibility of supplementing the turret gun by replacing the hull machine gun with either a British 6pdr or a French 75mm gun was explored and a 3in howitzer was eventually chosen. As the 300 hp engines fitted to the test vehicles were considered underpowered for such a heavy tank, the firm of Vauxhall was approached to supply an alternative and in an effort to speed production, as almost every facet of the Churchill’s development was, an engine based on the company’s Bedford six-cylinder lorry was used.

      The solution to the underpowered engine coincided almost exactly with the British Army’s withdrawal from the continent where the tanks and other heavy equipment of the BEF had either been abandoned or destroyed meaning that Britain was now largely undefended (1).

      Due to the counsel of Dr Henry Merritt, the Director of Tank Design at Woolwich Arsenal, and the initiative of Vauxhall’s designers the original concept was pared back to create a tank which needed to be available to front-line units within twelve months, an incredibly short period of time in terms of armoured vehicle production. The official designation of the re-designed vehicle was A22 and in June 1941, by now christened Churchill, the first of the new tanks left the production lines.

      The haste with which the Churchill had been designed and built ensured that mechanical and technical problems were inevitable and each tank was accompanied by a user’s handbook prepared by Vauxhall which quite openly and honestly detailed the known faults (2). Most of the problems that Vauxhall were able to identify were, however, remedied over time. Some complications inherent in the tank’s design were not so easily rectified and the crews found that maintenance was difficult and time consuming requiring the checking and greasing of the tank’s twenty-two bogies, usually in darkness after moving or fighting for most of the day. The noise level within the tank, caused by the arrangement of the tracks, and the inability of the extractor fans to clear the fighting compartment of fumes were also concerns which were never eradicated. However, the best armoured vehicles are not without their defects and whatever shortcomings the Churchill may have had it was appreciated by its crews who valued its thick armour, its ability to climb seemingly insurmountable obstacles and to negotiate the muddiest fields or forest tracks as it proved in early 1945 during the battles in the Reichswald. By the time of the Normandy landings in June 1944 the Churchill equipped three army Tank Brigades and the 1st Assault Brigade of 79th Armoured Division, the latter made up

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