Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "The REAL Operation Battleaxe 1941 | BATTLESTORM WW2 Documentary" video.
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@Neil
The British Army was in LOVE with direct fire artillery straight up into WWI. It was SO much more effective than indirect artillery... so much cheaper... and it worked like a charm against natives that only had small arms.
WWI changed Britsh doctrine. They adopted the Kaiser's solution: indirect fire.
( The BBC even ran a video documentary covering all of this. )
Niel, the 32pdr has been already discussed in a post stream right here, look for it.
BTW, the British converted the 32pdr to a true AAA role. Automatic gun-laying was the reason for British AA successes against the V-1. It couldn't be defeated any other way. ( save the RAF, itself )
The V-1 was engineered to defeat the gun-laying speed of all traditional AA. It was flying too low, too fast, requiring crazy levels of gun slew to get ahead of it. The Germans never conceived that the British had jumped to the next level, and on a mass production basis.
( AAA 32pdrs would've shot US 8th AAF and RAF Bomber Command to pieces. No wonder the British kept their stuff top, top secret.)
( The British were so obsessed with radar that they built 'Elephant' to jam German long range radar. This was another top, top secret project. It turned out to be totally unnecessary. It radiated insane amounts of microwave power towards the German radar set -- to flood its electronics. No-one knew that the Germans had shut it off due to lack of performance. It, the German radar, was sucking down crazy amounts of electric power while not providing ANY additional information on Allied bombers. Their own coast watchers cost nothing and were more accurate. All they had to use was the human ear. Bomber streams are both loud and comparatively slow. )
BTW, the radars that adjusted the fire of the 32pdrs were TOP SECRET for years and years. You just won't find any reference to their employment from period documents. Instead, the V-1s just seem to fall out of the sky by brilliant crew training. Heh.
The fact remains: the WDF and 8th Army simply refused -- for doctrinal reasons -- to use 25pdrs as PAK. One wonders if PAK rounds were even in the theatre.
It boggles the mind, but the nation that invented armored warfare managed to be WAY behind Germany and the Soviet Union. The contrast with the RAF and RN is stark. The British Army was simply the step-child of the military services. That may well have been the correct decision, strategically, but it sure produced poor results in North Africa and Malaya.
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@Neil
The British Army just didn't do it.
The very idea of using their howitzers as PAK was well nigh universally rejected.
Finding last-gasp defenses in the archives is irrelevant.
The idea that a single man can pivot a 25pdr makes all of us giggle.
How in the world is that relevant to combat?
How in the world is he actually supposed to AIM the dang thing?
FLAK guns can easily be re-purposed towards ground targets. Everyone knows that.
Everyone also knows that the American, German and British armies would rather pull their eye teeth than commit their indirect howitzers to a direct fire role.
[ Yet sometimes this had to be done. Famously the USA brought up its most awesome 155mm Long Tom self-propelled gun to fire flat trajectory into German bunkers on the far side of the lower Rhine. The gunner got a medal for it. He was aiming at vision slits, as even the 155mm round was too weak to bust the German fortification. ]
This is still true.
The Americans still have direct fire rounds for their M198 and M777 howitzers. The LAST thing they wish to do is to use them.
As for footage of 25pdrs rolling up ramps, there is too much out there.
Ramps as an expedient for the WDF seems to have been universally adopted. Considering the terrain, it's easy to see why.
The discussion is about what the WDF found to be practical, to be doctrinal, not what some armchair historian might conjecture could pencil out.
The number of German panzers knocked out by 25pdrs and other howitzers is trivial.
The number of British (and other) tanks knocked out by 88s is legendary, epic, history-making.
There IS a difference.
It actually would've made more sense for the British to use their 32pdrs -- FLAK -- but such a scheme was rejected out of hand -- regardless of what the Ordnance boys thought.
No, the evidence is crystal clear: the WDF favored the 6pdr PAK. It did the job, and did it well.
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@Neil
Point-blanc defense or a deliberate trap?
It's plain on the record that no nation deliberately used howitzers as PAK fronts -- with the possible exception of the Soviets.
Rommel, and other German commanders, routinely used FLAK 88s as PAK fronts, as doctrine. It was nothing exceptional for them.
Whereas, for the British it would appear that direct fire missions for the 25pdr were strictly desperation fire. If the gunners could shoot directly, then the enemy panzers could shoot directly, too.
The universal problem for all artillery is that it can dish it out, but can't take it.
The universal doctrine is to keep one's artillery at a safe remove or cleverly hidden at all times.
One starts popping off direct fire missions only when caught by surprise and conditions are dire.
Neil, you're trying way too hard and not really advancing the ball.
To what purpose?
It's a FACT that the 25pdr was not seen as a decent PAK. Its entire layout is in dramatic contrast with the German FLAK 88 -- which can slew rapidly in all directions.
If the WDF had any confidence in what you're pitching here, they would've adopted such PAK fronts as doctrine, too. But, they didn't.
BTW, ENDLESS film footage of 25pdrs bouncing up recoil ramps makes your assertions rather humorous. The was a real reason that the British army stayed with that system... starting with the fact that you couldn't really dig-in in the desert.
The German 88 had a steady base that didn't require its crew to dig it in to speak of at all. Indeed, it was common for 88 crews to fire it while it was limbered. ( ie while still towed or ready to tow -- up on its wheels.
Go to Google Images to see endless photos of same, with many showing the German crews actually firing the weapon while limbered.
The 25pdr had absolutely no recoil system comparable to the Swedish--German weapon. Without the recoil ramps, the 25pdr had to be seriously dug in. Fat chance of doing that on the quick and dirty in the Western Desert.
Your supposition must be rated, then, as a fail.
The 25pdr was rejected by the British Army as a PAK. Fact.
The PAK of choice was the 6pdr, of which the British built many.
It was an extremely popular size for a time.
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@Neil
But it DOES.
In WWII just about every dang thing could happen ONCE.
But such expedients did not amount to doctrine.
You, yourself, are going to great lengths to find extreme circumstances that show this or that occasion that goes against doctrine.
That's known as 'try-hard.'
The 25pdr was a howitzer, and intended to be used as such.
Absolutely no-one is ever going to corn fuse it with a PAK.
It didn't have ANY of the features deemed essential to a PAK.
Well, other than it had a big gun.
Howitzers are intended to be fired as batteries -- and to lay down patterns of indirect fire. They are ONLY supposed to fire in direct fire when circumstances are dire... things have truly gone sideways.
It's a testimony to the uselessness of the 2pdr that we even hear of 25pdrs being used as an expedient in front of Tobruk -- an occasion so rare that it's never come to my attention before.
Do tell us if said howitzers actually knocked out any panzers. I would expect them to be ineffectual, more as a psychological buttress for the troops.
Much more likely, they fired HE straight at German infantry and in so doing caused any assault to flag. Howitzers make for crappy PAK.
If this were not so, we'd be reading endless accounts of howitzers stopping panzers straight through '41-'42. Instead, panzers ate howitzers as appetizers. All that they had to do was to come at them from an off angle. In real life, gun crews just dropped everything and ran for their lives.
BTW, Tobruk deserves a TIK video all by itself.
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@Neil
You're not going to be able to jump back 75 years in time and make the British Army fall in love with the 25pdr as a PAK.
Other than (weird) expedients, (actually doubtful) you've only established that the British Army HATED to use 25pdrs in such a manner.
Saying that this or that unit used 25pdrs as PAK ... what's telling is that the BA categorically refused to adopt such a use for said gun.
It SUCKED. That's why. You can't slew it, properly, as a PAK.
In contrast, the BA loved the 25pdr in its howitzer role.
That puppy was everywhere the BA was.
&&&
In a studied contrast, the Soviets loved their 76.2mm howizer --they produced scads of them.
The Germans and the Americans adopted the SAME howitzer: the German 105mm gun.
Yes. Patton's army even captured an entire German battery of 105mm howitzers -- and then turned them upon the Germans. Yes, they were listed in 3rd Army's TO&E in late 1944. (!) The German-American howitzer was SO identical that Patton could shoot American ammo straight through his captured German guns. Patton thought this was a laugh riot.
[ This latter trait had Family significance. My Uncle was given up to the Gestapo by a French traitor precisely BECAUSE she heard American 105mm howitzers and -- having heard the German version -- was convinced that the German army was winning in Normandy. It didn't matter how much my Uncle and his patron wailed, this traitorous bitch was convinced that the Germans were winning.
His patron was hanged -- after extreme torture -- by the Gestapo in Paris. The French traitor was nabbed by the French underground when the Gestapo fled Paris. ( France, like Germany and Italy, has astounding local accents. Her Normandy accent told every Frenchman that she was a Nazi collaborator of the most extreme sort when she rolled through eastern France. They grabbed her azz during a 'relief break.' She was shorn of hair and hanged as a traitor, ultimately upon the personal testimony of my Uncle.
( Her crimes were so astounding that she was not called to account until the war was over. )
He was rescued out of the SS so-called 'hospital' at Buchenwald. He was so weak that all he could do was whisper his name, rank, and serial number. The attending USA physician, a Jewish doctor, just about flipped out. He didn't expect to hear English at all... let alone run across a USAAF sergeant.
He weighed about 75 pounds. It took English doctors half-a-year to get him up to enough body weight to fly him back to the USA. Yeah, he was on IV most of that time.
During his stay in London he had to give two interviews WRT the French traitor. She'd managed to kill every other witness. His testimony hanged her. As he was the only surviving witness to her treason. The Gestapo had murdered (by torture) everyone else. I can't remember her name, but she's virtually at the top of the list of most hated Nazi collaborators.
Her Gestapo reward was the entire estate of my Uncle's patron. After it was all said and done, the reverse occurred. The traitor's land rights to her descendants were expunged -- totally. The patriot's family -- was endowed with everything -- tax free -- but of course.
This reward was for her silence as a member of the underground as much as anything. The Gestapo beat the crap out of her. Even so, she didn't give up anyone. Right there, she was remarkable. ]
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