Re: Operating Tanks at Omaha first 6 hours

"Rich" <RichTO90@xxxxxxx> wrote

By "all this" do you mean the following paragraph? Since I would
assume that the battle did actually "went as historically"? But
"parachuted"? Frankly you have me somewhat confused.

By 'parachuted', I meant 'arbitrarily inserted without reference to
context', rather than falling to earth on a big white silk sheet.

My sentence might better have read: "Your account of the likely outcome of
the battle for Omaha beach if Crocodiles had been employed does not take
account of the wider ramifications of the presence of heavily-armoured gun
tanks on the beach, but is simply a narrative of the historical battle with
the arbitrary insertion of Crocodiles without reference to those wider
ramifications".

Er, sorry, but no Crocodile, which were Churchill Mark VII equipped
with the flame projector, were operationally used on D-Day and only
three were landed. None were in the assault waves, all three landed
with the reserve follow-up waves. So there cannot be any "as indeed
happened on the BCE beaches."

Sorry, but you are wrong, according to the Tank Museum which has the 141
Regiment RAC documents. The six (not three) Crocodiles landed on D-Day did
indeed see action *as gun tanks* on 6 June, which is precisely what I said.
The only reason why they did not use their flamethrowers until early on 7
June (not, incidentally, 8 June as I believe you have said previously), was
because by the time the two troops landed, there were no fortified positions
left to assault in their immediate areas, due to the success of the initial
assault waves.

I'm afraid that your argument here thus has no foundation. The facts support
my original claim that, as a heavily armoured gun-tank as well as a
flame-tank, the Crocodile's superior armour might well have enabled it to
survive long enough to use its 75mm gun against the strongpoints so that the
combat engineers would have had a better environment in which to work and
thus may have been able to clear the mines and anti-vehicle obstacles
preventing the close approach of tanks to the pillboxes. And then the flame
would have had utility.

Of course, a mix of gun, flame, and armoured engineering vehicles would have
served even better...

And if you are referring to the AVRE,
they were all based on Mark III and IV conversions, so had only 4-inch
verticle armor rather than than the 6-inch of the Mark VII, so were
nearly as vulnerable practically as the M4.

At least some and perhaps all of the Mk 3/4 chassis AVRE Petard tanks used
on D-Day had an armour upgrade to Mk 7 standards - 20mm appliqué armour to
the sides, glacis increased to 2 1/4 inches and a new visor (Tank Museum).
This was done to avoid the obvious flaw of up-grading the old 6-pounder Mk
3/4/5 while ignoring the rather more pressing needs of the AVRE. AFAIK, this
upgrade was not carried out on the engineering vehicle variants of the
AVRE - the Ark and Bobbin so on.

This meant that the AVRE Petards had the same frontal armour as the
Crocodile (also a Mk 7) - 152mm.

Further, the record shows that the AVRE were not used as you describe
on the "BCE beaches" and that where they did encounter well-emplaced
antitank defenses as were found at OMAHA they cam off rather the worse
for it.

I have never claimed that the AVRE was a wonder weapon. It was a specialised
engineering vehicle, intended to be used alongside other armoured vehicles
as part of infantry-armour tactical assault task forces. To properly assess
the utility of the AVRE, one must look not exclusively at the tank itself
but also at the success of the task forces which included it. You have done
the former, but not the latter.

I'm not sure how I would feel as an infantry section commander if I
was "supported" by a Croc setting a hillside alight so that I could
advance under the smoke produced? I think you are going for a bit of a
stretch at this point.

116th RCT on Omaha were helped to advance off the beach precisely *because*
they had cover from smoke from burning grasses accidentally set alight by
gunfire. In later 21 AG attacks, Crocodiles (and Wasps) were frequently used
to set fires to generate local smoke cover.

My original comment doesn't seem like any sort of stretch, actually.

A rather amusing use of Occam's razor that. I could as easily declare
that it was due to the LCA (H), were also weren't at OMAHA, or the
even more likely and even simpler reason that they weren't as heavily
defended, which I can demonstrate as easily for JUNO and SWORD as I
did for GOLD.

Why not actually address my point rather than attempt to avoid it?

Is putting specialist assault armour - as part of all-arms tactical task
groups - onto a heavily defended beach more likely than not to improve the
chances of a successful assault?

I see, so the example of the _single_ AVRE that successfully got off
the beach at JIG GREEN and supported the attack on Le Hamel is your
"proof"? So ignoring the other 40 that did not do so? And ignoring the
8 lost (1 to the 75mm at Le Hamel and 1 to the 88mm at La Riviere,
with 5 drowned and 1 overturned on a fascine) and 2 damaged to
gunfire?

You have again ignored my argument. I said: that "the AVRE was a
heavily-armoured MG platform (used to splendid effect on Gold...". That is
perfectly true. In fact, I could have pointed out the textbook employment of
the AVRE Petards of 81 Sqn 6 Assault Regt at Hable de Heurtot (west of la
Rivière), where several pillboxes were knocked out and the fortification
stormed - precisely the sort of infantry-armour tactical assault envisaged
by Hobart and the 21 AG planners.

What you have done is highlight a single battle on a single beach sub-sector
in which the AVRE was not successful - failing to point out that, as is well
known, the absence of the planned DD gun tanks on Jig Green exposed the
AVREs and Flails to unsuppressed fire from the gigantic Le Hamel defensive
complex, which is why so many of them were knocked out. This is not the way
to properly assess the worth of the AVRE; indeed it seems to amount to a
rather academically disreputable attempt to smear it rather than any
worthwhile analysis.

And again, the AVRE was not nearly as "heavily-armoured" as you seem
to believe and could be defeated from the front by both the German
75mm and 88mm pieces in use on the beach at the ranges encountered.

See above.

.