Simon_Jester wrote:Thank you, Stuart and Marcus.
The real question to my mind is whether this doctrine was valid. Because if it was, then the Matilda was a pretty good infantry tank, being better protected than any of its contemporaries on the field and better armed than most of its contemporaries on the field.
If it wasn't, then the Matilda suffered, as I said, a crippling flaw in its low top speed (and lack of HE shell for long range antipersonnel work).
The doctrine was certainly valid to some degree, although the lack of useful HE shell made the Matildas less well suited to the role than they could have been. The later Churchill tried to mimic the Char B1bis and M3 Medium by putting a 75 mm howitzer in the hull, but unfortunately the field of fire was so limited that it was nearly useless. Often the howitzer was removed and replaced with a machine gun. Later marks of the Churchill deleted the howitzer.
The final evolution of the infantry tank was the Churchill VII, which finally gained a 75 mm gun in the turret and a useful HE capacity. The Churchill was in general well liked by British troops since it could go almost anywhere, albeit very slowly. The Mark VII also had heavy armor, which made it frontally nearly invulnerable to the German 75 mm L/48 guns.
As a side note, there was also a Valentine model with the same 75 mm QF gun, the Mk. XI, but nearly all of them were send to the Soviets, who actually liked the little Valentine tank. After the Sherman it was the best liked Western tank. The Valentine was also probably the most reliable British tank of WW2.
Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Up until the end of the War, the Soviets still employed ISU-152s, and ISU-122s and JS-1/2/3 tanks to support infantry, and to attack enemy tanks. The ISU-152 in particular, had a huge 152mm gun for the purpose of hurling a huge HE round to crack open bunkers (or, in some cases, crack open Tiger I and maybe Tiger II tanks.). So the strategy of infantry support tanks was a good idea, but in the case of the Matilda, her armament was lacking by the end of the war, as others have pointed out.
The Soviet ideas were similar but not quite the same as the British infantry tank. Well, to be entirely correct the Soviets also envisaged tanks co-operating with infantry closely, but originally they wanted to use light tanks for that. T-26 was such a tank and it was supposed to be replaced by the T-50, but after an initial production run the Soviets realized that a light infantry support tank did not really make sense any more and the T-50 was abandoned in favor of more T-34s. To complicate things even more the Soviets did use a large number of T-60 and T-70 light tanks for infantry support, but these tanks were in fact derived from the T-40, which was originally conceived as a
reconnaissance tank. The T-60 and T-70 were manufactured in large numbers, because the factories making them did not have the tooling to make medium tanks. The final evolution of that line was the SU-76 assault gun, which was the most numerous Soviet assault gun made during the war. All of these vehicles are quite poorly represented in general military history books, since they were not glorious in any way, but numerically they were an important part of the Soviet war effort.
Back to doctrine: the Soviet KV series, JS series, (I)SU-152 and (I)SU-122 are best described as
breakhrough vehicles. The Tiger I was also, although it ended up doing a lot more defense than intended. They were used to supply heavy firepower at the intended breakthrough point while still being as well armored as possible. They had to be able to duke it out with any enemy tanks attempting a counter-attack and they also needed heavy firepower to take out enemy tanks and strongpoints. It is telling that already in early 1941 the Soviets wanted to put a bigger gun on the KV-1, but such a gun did not exist, so they had to settle for the 76 mm (there was the KV-2 with a 152 mm howitzer, but that was a separate case).
A good indication for the need of such vehicle is that the US Army developed the M4A3E2 "Jumbo" Sherman. It was basically a Sherman with as much armor as the suspension could take. The M6 heavy tank was never quite satisfactory and it was much more difficult to transport than the Sherman Jumbo, so the latter had to play the role of breakthrough vehicle for the US Army.
A minor correction: the JS-3 was not really used in WW2, although there are unconfirmed reports of them being deployed against the Japanese in August 1945.
Simon_Jester wrote:Should I take this to mean that they were supplied with HE shells in France, or is that not what you meant?
It appears that they really were, but proved to be of very limited utility, which probably lead to the decision to delete them. It was a two-fold problem: the high muzzle velocity necessitated thick walls for the shell and it also made it difficult to design a properly functioning fuse for the shell. The shell buried deep into ground before exploding and the small amount of HE meant that the exlosion was very underwhelming. Later there were attempts to developed a HE shell for the 6 pounder (57 mm) gun, but they met with similar difficulties. Of course it all should not have been impossible, since there were perfectly good HE fragmentation shells for the 40 mm Bofors AA guns, which had a high muzzle velocity as well, but it appears that the British did not really put much effort into it.
He tries to do a better job later with the analysis of what amount of T-34 losses came from what caliber fire, but he still doesn't explain which amount came from tanks par se, which is critical. To say that Germans used guns better is not the same as to say the T-34 was inferior. So yeah, the guy's methodology is one big huge error. But then, what should one expect from "mythbusters", heh.