Rommel vs Montgomery: The Legendary Tank Battles Of The WW2 Desert War | Tanks! | War Stories

The western allies first encountered the legendary Tiger tank here in Tunisia in December 1943. Rommel's desert war had been going from bad to worse for the hard-pressed men of the Afrika Korps and they urgently needed a morale booster. They got it in the form of the new Panzer VI, the Tiger, the new German heavy tank weighing 56 tons and mounting a 88 millimeter gun. The Tiger tank was of course would have been the heavy tank component in the modern German Panzer divisions, made up of course from the battle tanks, the medium battle tank, the Panzer, number five, and number six, the Tiger. As it turned out of course the Tiger reached the battlefield well before the Panzer, which the Panzer was a totally new concept The Tiger boasted a squat purposeful shape and its deadly high velocity gun attained such notoriety that soon the mere appearance of the Tiger on the battlefield was enough to cause panic in the allied forces. Given the relative inferiority of British tanks to German tanks during much of the desert war, the British actually invested a considerable intelligence effort in ensuring that they had advanced warning of any new German type of tank that they might be meeting in battle soon. This meant that in fact that the British did gain advanced warning of the what they knew at the time as the Panzer Mark VI, later known as the Tiger, for the campaign in North Africa. The Russians had first met the tank in September 1942 but the British had gained actually very little in the way of intelligence from the Russians about the nature of this tank but through various intelligence sources by August-September 1942 the British were actually well aware that a new type of German heavy tank might be used against them in North Africa and by October-November 1942 British Enigma decrypts made it quite certain that a new type of tank had actually been delivered to Rommel and was about to be used against them but at this stage beyond various technical details the British really had no clear idea about how effective a tank it would be. The psychological power of the Tiger legend was so powerful that soon the mere approach of any German tank force was enough to set the rumor running that Tigers were machines that was actually sent to Tunisia in early 1943 to try and resist the Allied landings which had taken place in the Operation Torch campaign. As you can see it's a huge and imposing sight and it represented quite a shock for the Allies to suddenly be confronted with armour of this size and this kind of potency. Up to this point in the campaign the Allies had had to face the Panzer II, III and IV, all of which they had an answer to and they had anti-tank weapons which they could knock out. This was completely different, it was hugely armoured and it was very very dangerous on the battlefield. The reason for that is this enormous high velocity 88mm gun which you can see here. This was completely capable of taking out any Allied armour at any distance, any sensible distance you could care to mention on the battlefield and really they had no answer to this. For the crew of the Tiger it was a slightly different experience. What we've done here is to recreate how a Panzer crew might have looked on the Tunisian campaign in 1943. Behind me here you can see the driver in his position. It was his job to steer the vehicle and obviously to make sure it went where the commander wanted him to go. Tucked away behind him in the mucky depths of the interior we can see the radio operator. It was also his job to man the machine gun in the hull. History Hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans. By subscribing to History Hit you can access hundreds of hours of military history documentaries on demand. Following the footsteps of the Essex Dogs with Dan Jones, we'll discover the history of archery with Ray Mears. We've built up an extensive library of history programmes, hundreds of hours of documentaries, exclusive original films, interviews and ad-free podcasts made for proper history fans. Sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code warstories at checkout. Moving along we have the very important position. This is the the gunner. His job was to lay the gun and make sure that they were on target and that they actually hit any enemy vehicles they were firing at. Above him is the most important man in the tank. He's the commander. It's him that's making the decisions. It's him that's deciding which targets to engage and where they're going to go. Tucked into his right we have the loader also up there in the turret. So as you can see it's a fairly cramped interior. You've got five men in a very small area. In addition to that they also had to make room for at least 92 of these. This is a replica of an 88 millimetre shell. Obviously there were a few decisions that had to be made. The commander for example had to decide whether to load with high explosive or with armour piercing. High explosive would be used against other infantry and armour piercing would be used against other tanks. The thing they were terrified about obviously was running out of ammunition because even a machine as big and imposing as this without shells it's almost impotent. What many crews would do was actually to lay shells on the floor of the tank so they can sometimes get more than 100 rounds because in those kind of actions every single round counted. So you can imagine it was a very claustrophobic, a very dim and in the desert a very hot interior to be in. With the very limited numbers which actually reached Tunisia, the Tiger menace was in some respects as much psychological as physical. Nonetheless their rarity was no consolation for the Allied tank crews who actually had the misfortune to meet the Tiger. Tank crews of the Allied forces were disadvantaged by the superior range, killing power and armour of the Tigers. Allied tank men watched in horror as their own shells simply bounced off the thick armour plate of the Tiger. Although there were very few in number, one or two Tigers became worth a tank squadron in their morale effect upon the Allies. There were never any shortage of volunteers to man the Tiger tank and one of the reasons for that lies up here. You can see here in profile the frontal armour of the Tiger I. This is a hundred millimetres thickness of armour and when you think that in 1939 they were sending tanks into battle which had only 15 millimetres of armour, you can see how quickly the designs have progressed over the war years. This was almost completely impervious to any Allied gun on the battlefield during 1942 and 43 and it certainly gave the crew a feeling of immense security. As a piece of tank design it's not perfect because really the armour should be sloped which would give it the effectiveness of almost doubling the armour. However this was such an incredible thickness of metal at that time that there was nothing that could get through it so despite the very flatness of the frontal armour it worked perfectly. Of course under these conditions a setup like this looks very tame and calm but it's not too difficult to imagine in action what something like this would have been. You had the roar of the engine, you had the gun firing, you had gases escaping from the gun into the driving compartment. The crew had to communicate by means of headphones because there was so much noise within the tank. In action you would also have the commander calling out his targets, the loader trying to do his work, possibly the radio operator firing the machine gun, the driver reversing, moving and responding to the commands of the commander. So it would have been a very claustrophobic world of heat and noise and sweat. This was not the kind of calm interior that we see here today. In response to the Allied landings under Operation Torch in November 1942, the German high command had at last sent reinforcements to the hard-pressed German forces in Tunisia. At an earlier meeting Hitler had personally promised Rommel that he would have the new Tiger tank as soon as it was available. Sure enough it was among the reinforcements to arrive in Tunisia, but as with all of Hitler's pledges, there were certain omissions. The actual Tiger strength was just two companies of Schwerpanzer Abteilung 501 with 18 Tigers each and one company of the Schwerpanzer Abteilung 504 with eight machines. These units later merged to form one Abteilung. The miracle machines were in such short supply that it led to a certain amount of unseemly squabbling among the German commanders. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel recorded that before the start of his thrust towards Tebessa, he had asked General von Arnim to send him the 19 Tiger tanks that were the 5th Panzer Army. Von Arnim refused on the grounds that all Tigers were undergoing repair. Rommel later pointed out with some pique that this statement was patently untrue. Against all expectations, a British army unit, 48 Royal Tank Regiment, actually captured one of the precious Tigers at Medeth el-Bab on 21st April 1943. The Tiger, in company with supporting Panzer III and IV tanks, had already knocked out the leading machines in a formation of Churchill tanks when a shot from one of the remaining Churchill's six-pounder guns hit the bottom of the Tiger's gun mantlet. The shell was deflected into the turret ring, which jammed the gun turret. When another shell then hit a turret lifting bracket and wounded the Tiger's commander, the German crew then abandoned the Tiger, allowing the British to thus capture an intact tank. Shipped back to Britain, the tank was stripped down and provided much intelligence on German tank technology. This is the hull of the Tiger tank, number 131 of 504 Schwerpanzer Abteilung. It rests today in Bovington Tank Museum, Dorset. We've come here today to the Muckleborough collection in North Norfolk to have a look at this. This is the British Churchill tank and this was the kind of vehicle that the British armed forces hoped would provide the antidote to the Tiger. Certainly the early signs were not good. These machines were first used in earnest on the raid in Dieppe, where they'd proved very unsuccessful and in fact none of them had even really managed to get off the beach and all were knocked out. Nonetheless, they were taken to North Africa where they did prove rather more successful and ultimately they were used in action in Italy and right through the European campaign into the final battles in Germany. In theory, the Churchill should have been the equal of the Tiger but in practice that never really happened because the Tiger was a far more mobile machine and the high calibre 88 millimetre gun was always going to come out on top in a battle against the Churchill who, although they used the very effective British six-pounder gun, couldn't match the Tiger for mobility or armour protection. The Germans were absolutely horrified by the Churchill. They thought it was something left over from the First World War. They couldn't believe that the British had built this tank and I think the very fact that it turned up at Dieppe must have made them imagine that it was something we were trying to get rid of. They criticised nearly every aspect of it. Don't forget by this time they were beginning to get experience of the Russian front and there they were meeting some mean tanks and their view of the Churchill was so dismissive that beyond testing a few they never even bothered using them. Interesting that in the end of course the Churchill comes back to haunt them right to the end of the war. By comparison to the Tiger, the humble machines which had begun the desert battles only two years earlier were so primitive as to be almost comical. The North African desert was in many respects the ideal battlefield for tanks but the desert was to prove a harsh mistress. It offered the tantalising promise of success only to withdraw its promise just at the point where victory seemed within reach. In turn the Italians, the British, the Germans and finally the Americans each experienced the thrill of conquest followed by an unexpected defeat. The first to experience the roller coaster ride of ebbs and flows of tank warfare in the desert were the Italians. Italian tanks were no match for the British tanks and tactics and in consequence the British army enjoyed great success against the Italians. In particular the Italian light tanks were ineffective in the extreme. Even the Italian medium tanks had their limitations. What you've got here is something that in the pre-war days was known as a tankette, a rather twee word for a lightweight fighting vehicle. In the case of the M1340 you have at least a sensible medium tank which is comparable in many ways to its British counterparts 1939-40. It's powered by a V8 diesel, it's got a reasonably powerful anti-tank gun mounted in a fully rotating turret and twin machine guns in the front of the hull. Being Italian, as you would expect, the automotive package is good. It was something they're masters of, always have been, but the construction of the tank, even by British standards at that time, and that's not saying much, is grim. It's not even riveted, the whole thing is bolted together and the risks of rivets breaking up are bad enough. Bolt heads are bound to break up. All you need is an impact from a high explosive shell and this thing would probably disassemble itself before your eyes. In contrast to the Italian tanks, the British Matilda tank was very slow but effective. The Matilda was an infantry support tank with a top speed of just eight miles per hour. For that reason it had excellent armour plating which was up to 80 millimetres thick. The Matilda was so heavy that two Leyland diesel engines had to be coupled to a single propeller shaft to push the Matildas along. The tank gun was the standard British two-pounder which was then the best anti-tank gun on the battlefield, but it was Matilda's ability to absorb punishment that earned it the nickname Queen of the battlefield. The unmistakable squat shape of the Matilda fought throughout the desert campaign. Some captured Matildas were even used by the Germans against their former owners. While the Matilda took on the job of supporting the infantry, the armoured punch of the British tank brigade was provided by the Crusader tanks. It was their job to engage enemy tanks. The Crusader turns up in 1941 and initially it is an impressive looking machine. It's a five-man tank, that's three men in the turret, a driver and the little kind of box thing on the right and another poor wretch in a small machine gun turret to his left. This first feature was the thing they rapidly got rid of. The chap in there was nearly cooked in the desert heat and after you'd fired off a belt or two of ammunition you'd virtually gassed yourself to death anyway, so it became very uncomfortable. They tended to remove that turret and use the area beneath it for ammunition stowage. The gun at that time was the 40 millimetre, the British two-pounder and certainly as anti-tank guns went it was probably the best on the battlefield in the North African desert at that time to go through anything that got in its way. The drawback was that the Crusader was woefully unreliable. The engine is a First World War V12 gasoline aviation engine built in the USA but modified by a British company. The engine tended to shake to pieces in a tank that could quite comfortably do about 30 miles an hour on Christie suspension. This ended up leaking oil, leaking water until the tank would break down. You had problems with the fan drives, they were chain driven and you either had the chains too weak for the fans or the fan was too weak for the chain, one or the other, and they fell apart. You got sand into the coolant water, that got into the white metal bearings of the water pump, et al up and you have more cooling problems. You reach a point when the Crusader has such a dreadful reputation that the crews are beginning to dread going out in it and yet it's the first tank the British choose to fit a bigger gun to. No one when they designed the Crusader had any idea that it would be working in a desert environment. There's an example of that, the air cleaners are actually on the wings as it were outside at the back. It's the last place you want them where sand is about because they came clogged up very easily and it wasn't a good tank, it was never a good tank but what its faults were, the desert exacerbated and turned it into a disaster. British forces had been stationed in Egypt since 1815 and they knew the desert. As a result of their superior training, the smaller British forces took the fight to the Italians and appearing from nowhere with aggressive tactics soon won the day. The British success was so swift and comprehensive that the campaign was nearly over when Hitler at last decided to help his Italian allies. German forces entered the campaign in February 1941 and their tactics, leadership and superior weaponry immediately changed the status quo in the desert. Rommel was an aggressive commander and exploited any weaknesses in his enemy to the full. The entry of the Afrika Korps into the North African theater heralded a new phase of the conflict. Now balanced tank forces backed with artillery fought each other head-on in what ultimately was to become a war of attrition. The objective was to knock out the other side's tanks, deny the enemy the battlefield so he couldn't recover and repair losses. At the same time, it was necessary to attack his supply routes and bases making difficult the maintenance of his mechanized forces. Tanks of each side took fearsome toll of each other and contrary to popular belief, British tanks gave as good as they got. In the early months of the campaign, the British in fact had the advantage in the ever-changing balance between armor and armament. The most numerous German tank was still the obsolete Panzer II. This is the Panzer II. This was the tank which was the most numerous in the Afrika Korps. As you can see, it's by no means a big machine, neither is it very formidably armed. It has this fairly small caliber 20 millimeter cannon. It was a three-man machine with the commander in the turret who also operated the main armament and down here in the hull we had the driver and the radio operator. It's by no means a formidable vehicle but this was the mainstay of the Panzer force in 1939 and 1940 and it was still used extensively in 41 and 42. This particular machine is done out in the Afrika Korps color. We can see here the symbol of the Afrika Korps in front. This 20 millimeter cannon wasn't nearly as effective as the main armament of the British tank so to an extent the Panzer II was outclassed as a battle tank. However, they were superbly handled and handled in mass under the generalship of the famous Erwin Rovell and what that meant was that the Panzer II along with fairly good numbers of Panzer III's and IV's were able to hold their own in the desert campaign. One of the main tactics used by the Germans in North Africa was to use machines like this to lure the British tanks into a charge against prepared defences so the 88 millimeter anti-tank guns would lie in wait and little tanks like this would lure the British into battle to find that they'd been dragged into a killing zone which had been prepared with anti-tank guns. In 1941 if you were in the the Panzer Corps you would and a driver would sit in here. As you can see again he's got a very limited view of the world. In action this would actually be closed down and the driver would rely on these two tiny holes here for his view of the world. The commander had a reasonably good view in normal situations but again in action both of these hatches would be closed and the commander would rely on a little periscope in the middle here for his view of the world. So vision as always in armour is very limited and the main thing about this tank is it has very very thin armour for the period. It was already effectively obsolete by the time in the desert campaign. In the early phase of the desert war the German Panzer III had only 30 millimeters of frontal armour and the Panzer IV had even less at 20 millimeters. Both of these machines could easily be pierced by British anti-tank weapons. In contrast the early Crusaders enjoyed 40 millimeters whilst the doughty Matildas had double that at 80 millimeters. The 50 millimeter gun of the Panzer III could not pierce the armour of the Crusader except on the side while the armour of the Matilda could not be penetrated even at ranges as close as 500 yards. Despite the limitations of his armour Rommel's conduct of battle was bold and resourceful. In panzer attacks the tanks would be used as a wedge, the panzer keil, closely supported by other services. Artillery to soften the objective, pioneers to deal with obstacles, infantry to take and hold ground and of course the Stukas to act as supplementary artillery. Rommel led from the front and specialized in the concentration of a superior force against a single point saying Kotzen nicht klecken, in other words spew, don't dribble. Where the Afrika Korps had the definite edge on the British was in anti-tank guns. By 1941 the early war 37 millimeter anti-tank gun had been replaced with the larger 50 millimeter PAK 38. The Germans also employed the famous 88 millimeter anti-aircraft gun in the anti-tank role. This gun could take out the sturdy Matilda at ranges of up to 2,000 yards. Placed defensively Rommel could use a screen of 88 millimeter guns to knock out British tanks before the panzers were even engaged. This innovative use of weapons substantially reduced the advantages which came from superior numbers of British tanks. A major difficulty experienced by the British tanks in the desert was the lack of a dual purpose gun which could fire high explosives as well as armor piercing shells. The two pounder anti-tank gun which was standard in the British tanks could not fire the effective high explosive shells which were required to deal with anti-tank guns and infantry on the battlefield. This problem had actually been foreseen prior to World War II and the interim solution was to provide two close support tanks for each squadron. Fitted with a three inch howitzer the gun was of low velocity and short. Used mainly as a means of laying smokescreen the close support tanks carried a few high explosive shells on board. Generally the Crusader was used in this role. Instead of the normal two pounder gun which you found in every British cruiser tank of this period this one is fitted with a rifled breech loading mortar and it's known as a close support tank that means it's there to give support to the fighting tanks. Now close support in British terminology developed before the war meant literally firing smoke shells. The gun is perfectly serviceable it's quite capable of firing a high explosive round but for reasons of tactical dogma as far as I can see they were actually provided with only four high explosive rounds and 20 or 30 smoke rounds. So here you've got a tank the whole purpose of which is to trundle about the battlefield making clouds of smoke. It really does seem a bit ridiculous. In the desert the battlefield was now dominated by the tanks. Infantry were helpless without armoured support. The balance of power between the Allied and Axis forces tended to be measured by who could field the most tanks. Keeping these tanks in the field was another matter altogether. They required intensive servicing and repair. The harsh activities of the desert exacerbated this problem and the supply line organisation assumed vital importance in bringing forward vital fuel, ammunition and spare parts. This overextended supply line also dealt with replacement vehicles and all of the myriad requirements for an army in the field. Attacking supply lines on land, sea or air became of crucial importance to both sides. The more equipment and backup stores one could destroy meant less to face on the battlefield. The importance of the supply system extended to the recovery of tanks from the battlefield. Not all tanks knocked out by enemy fire were actually destroyed. Often they were brought in to be repaired. Those not immediately repairable provided much needed spares for others. At the same time the enemy had to be denied the opportunity to use the battlefield losses in this way. Repaired enemy vehicles could be pressed into service against their original owners and enemy equipment salvaged from the battlefield provided intelligence on the latest vehicles, armour, weapons and ammunition. This is the back of the Tiger and obviously this is the place where the enemy would most like to get to, where the armour is thinnest and where the machine is the most vulnerable. It also has some quite interesting features because behind me here you can see this massive steel tow rope which would be used either to pull this vehicle out if it got bogged down or on occasion another vehicle, although technically they were forbidden from doing that because the strain of pulling another Tiger on a tow rope would often ruin the engine of the first Tiger. The official regulations that they were supposed to wait for the breakdown truck to come and tow them out but there were very few of those and in any event they were unlikely to get into a minefield or into action. So the crews of the Tiger were very concerned about breakdowns and how these vehicles would be retrieved so they actually often hung these steel ropes in position ready to pull their own vehicle or to give assistance to another vehicle in action. The recovery mechanics and tank transporter drivers of both sides often plied their trade under fire. In the event that your Tiger did break down this is what you needed to be able to move it. This is a FAMO prime mover. In addition there was also a recovery version of this which had a huge spade on the back which would dig into the ground and give it the anchorage it needed to pull the Tiger. In practice what they found was you actually needed three of these vehicles linked together to effectively move a Tiger so it was a difficult operation and as you can imagine these were in fairly short supply and a big target like this isn't necessarily going to be taken onto the battlefield with any degree of safety or certainty so it was a real problem if they did bog down or couldn't be moved for any reason. These were always in short supply there were never enough for them to go around and there were a great deal of other tasks that they were required for. They were the prime movers for example for the biggest guns in the army and they needed to manufacture as many of these as quickly as they could to make the army as mobile as it needed to be. In the Halfaya Pass battles the British lost 91 tanks which included 64 Matildas. A considerable number of these were due to mechanical breakdowns but a combination of time and shortage of transporters meant most ended up being left on the battlefield. In this instance the Germans were able to utilize the captured vehicles. Rommel himself utilized this captured British armored command truck which he named Mammoth. In August 1942 General Sir Bernard Montgomery took over as commander of the British Eighth Army. He was to reap the benefit of new equipment and reinforcements pouring into the desert campaign but Monty as he was known to his troops was a different breed of commander. He had taken the lessons of World War I and the opening phase of victory in France to heart. He talked to his men, was seen by them and gave them a victory at Alam Halfa. He soon stamped his positive personality upon the Eighth Army. His son, the present Viscount of Alamein, recalls the galvanizing effect of his personality. When my father, better known as Monty, went to the desert in August 1942 he found a demoralized army which was standing on the brinks of the delta. They were very battle-hardened. They'd been there for a long time. They were quite tired and they needed a new pace and they were very suspicious of this new general who'd arrived but he quickly inspired confidence by going around and talking to the officers and I think that probably his initial address to the officers of the Eighth Army was probably one of the most inspiring addresses that has ever been recorded. He wanted to make sure that every single person in the desert, in his army, knew what was required of them. This was extremely important. As he said at the beginning, he said we are going to stand here and fight and if we can't fight here we will die here. This was something very novel to the soldiers under his command. In 1942 there was more good news for the British. The American M3 medium tank, known to the British as the Grant, was introduced to the campaign and first used at Gazala. We've come here to Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset to have a look at the World War II hull and where we'll find this, the M3, known to the British as the General Grant. This was a very welcome addition to the desert war because at that stage the British certainly felt that their tanks were outclassed by the German machines and the emergence of the General Grant into the desert began to redress the balance in the desert war. At that time we were in Valentine tanks, which was a British tank, which was completely outgunned, I'm afraid, by the German Tiger tanks, which are pretty well known. Fortunately very soon these were switched and we had a number of different tanks then, all from the United States, all named after American generals. Starting off with the General Stuart, which is quite a small tank, up through the Lee and the Grant and finally the Sherman, which was the latest tank that we had in Africa. The Grant mounted two tank guns to provide the solution to the need for a gun to fire high explosive and armour-piercing shells. The 75mm howitzer was placed in a sponson on the right-hand side of the tank. This gun was a welcome upgrade to British firepower. At last the British tank forces had a good high explosive capability, which could be used against German anti-tank guns and their crews. The other gun on the Grant was the anti-tank weapon. It was mounted in a small turret perched on top of the tank, which produced a dangerously high silhouette. For the very first time the British had a tank mounting a gun that could fire armour-piercing or high explosive rounds and this made a terrific difference. It meant that things like anti-tank guns, which are tiny little targets, could be fired at with a high explosive shell, you've got the chance of a bang going off pretty close and if it doesn't actually kill or wound the crew it puts them off. Whereas you can spend all day shooting the shield of an anti-tank gun with armour-piercing rounds and really you've just got to hit it direct on to do any damage. So yeah, the presence of that gun made a tremendous difference. But the big disadvantage of the tank is of course its size. It towered over nearly everything else in the desert with that little 37mm turret up the top there. This meant that it was always a very obvious target. Now one of the great ploys of tank warfare is to adopt what is known as a hull-down position, that is you hide as much of the tank as possible behind we'll say a sand dune, with just the turret poking over the top and you can pick off the enemy tanks, they don't know where that shot's coming from. Obviously if you try and adopt a hull-down position when the main gun is already in the hull, as this 75 is, you've still got a lot of tank sticking up in the sky so that advantage is lost. The other problem in a manoeuvre fight, when you're actually on the run, is that the driver has to play a much greater part in the proceedings in this tank. He's got to swing the tank onto the target to a much greater extent than he would if there was a fully rotating turret. And since the British liked to fight driving, this also became a bit of a problem. The Grount was very much an interim solution. The most important American tank to enter the North African campaign was the M4A1 medium tank, the Sherman. Sherman's first appeared in action at El Alamein in November 1942. This tank would eventually become the mainstay of the Allies on all battlefields. It was not a particularly heavily armoured tank, but its real strength was derived from the sheer quantity manufactured. In a war of attrition, the US manufacturing muscle would beat German technical superiority. The Sherman suffered the terrible attribute of bursting into flames even when hit by a non-explosive anti-tank shell. This led to its being given the nickname of Bronson, because as the soldiers quipped with macabre humour, it lights first time. It always had a bad reputation for bursting into flames, but in fact most British and American tanks used in the desert in particular had the same problem. It's always blamed on fuel, and it has led to a belief, a completely inaccurate belief, that German tanks were diesel fuelled. They were not. Every single German tank that saw service in the western desert had a petrol engine, a gasoline engine in it. The reason our tanks caught fire, and a lot of ours were diesel fuelled, was because the ammunition was not safely protected inside the tank. It meant that the smallest shard of hot metal coming through the armour, getting into one cartridge case, igniting the cordite, and the tank's gone like that, so quick it was darn difficult for the guys to get out. And all of our tanks, up until the time we introduced protected ammunition stowage, suffered from that one way or another. The German nickname was equally cruel. Because of the number they saw catch fire, they christened it the Tommy Cooker. Despite its limitations, the volume of Shermans on the battlefield was ultimately to prove to be a deciding factor. Until the advent of the American tanks, which generally speaking were more reliable and had superior firepower, it was only the fact that we tended to outnumber them. Courage has come into it. A lot of people who know their tank is inferior are still going up against tanks that could theoretically destroy them. There's no doubt about that at all. But numbers have a great deal to do with it, and the statistics of almost every one of the major North African battles is one where the British in particular have the advantage in numbers, and that must count for a great deal. The US was not the only producer of new tanks in 1942. The British had introduced the A-22 named the Churchill. This tank first appeared in March of 1942, armed with the standard British two-pounder gun. Mark III and IV were upgunned to a six-pounder 57-millimeter gun. Churchill weighed in at nearly 40 tons and was powered by a 350 BHP Bedford engine. Although it was a slow tank, reaching only 18 miles per hour on a good day, its frontal armor was a massive 102 millimeters, which gave a great deal of comfort to the five-man crew. Three Churchills took part in the Battle of El Alamein for evaluation purposes. They passed the test, and the British 21st Army Tank Brigade, which arrived in North Africa in March 1943, was fully equipped with Churchills. Tank strength of the Eighth Army had, by August 1942, reached 935 machines, with an effective strength of tanks fit for action of 762. The numbers game was running against the Germans. Rommel could field only 200 tanks, but their qualitative situation had improved. A hundred of the tanks were now Panzer III, with the long-barreled, high-velocity 50 millimeter gun, and 50 were the Panzer IV, with the even more powerful 75 millimeter gun. At the Battle of Alamhalfa, the main contest was between upgraded Panzers and the American-made ground tanks. For once, the British refused to be drawn into Rommel's carefully prepared anti-tank killing zone, and fought on ground of their choosing. This time it was the Afrika Korps who withdrew, leaving as casualties nearly 3,000 men, 49 tanks, 400 vehicles, 17 artillery pieces, and 38 anti-tank guns. The tide had turned. Ahead lay the Battle of El Alamein, after which the Afrika Korps would be pursued to the final battles in Tunisia. As the Afrika Korps began to retreat, they also lost the battle for another important aspect of desert tank warfare, recovery and repair. Tanks knocked out in battles by shells, mines, or breakdown, could not now be rescued on the retreat. The German response to the superior numbers of Allied tanks lay in the development of more new tanks and upgunning of existing models. The Panzer IV was now the mainstay of the German tank divisions, and it was found to be capable of further development. Only a few modifications were required to upgrade the tank to accept the The gun itself had to be fitted with a muzzle brake in order to prevent the gun recoil from taking off the breech block. The muzzle brake on a gun is fitted on the barreled end to allow gases to vent from behind the shelf before it leaves the muzzle, thus reducing the recoil force. Many of the early Panzer IVs were actively fitted with the new long L43 gun in the field. The last variants of the Panzer IV to appear in Africa were fitted with an even more powerful gun, the L48, which fired a shell at even higher velocity. The Panzer IIIs were also modified. Increased use of the Panzer IV in the anti-tank role left a need for infantry support tanks. The British called these upgraded tanks the Specials. As the Panzer III was being fitted with the short-barreled infantry support gun which had originally equipped the Panzer IV, in effect the two tanks had swapped roles in mid-campaign. Rommel had wished to concentrate on the Akeret line, which could not be outflanked, but his superiors thought otherwise. On February the 15th, 1943, the rear guard of the 15th Panzer Division took up these positions in the Mareth line. The long retreat from El Alamein was over. After the retirement from Libya, the German forces gained some breathing space in and around Mareth. Rommel knew that Montgomery was a cautious commander, and he used the time to concentrate the mass of his remaining motorized forces and attack the British-American forces in western Tunisia, with the aim of forcing withdrawal. This operation was codenamed Spring Wind. The Kasserine battles began with an attack on February the 14th, 1943. The 21st Panzer Division was now up to strength once again, and was the lead formation. Their attack was a success, and resulted in the capture of over 1,600 American prisoners and 150 tanks, including 86 US medium tanks lost. With the sudden movement of the Germans, the Allies threw all the forces they could muster into northern Tunisia. Fighting came down to control of the passes. The weather made the going bad for vehicles, but at the same time kept the Allied air force at home. Air attacks would have been disastrous within the confines of the narrow passes. Rommel thought the Allies weakest at Kasserine, and continued to focus the weight of his attacks there. Nebelwerfers were also deployed for the first time in Africa, and proved very effective. By 1700 hours on February 20th, 1943, the Germans controlled the Kasserine pass. Driving through the debris of the aftermath of the battles, Rommel was impressed with the Americans, who the Germans described as fantastically well equipped. One commented that we the Germans had a lot to learn organizationally. One particularly striking feature for Rommel was the standardization of vehicles and spare parts. The success at Kasserine was to prove a Pyrrhic victory. With the prospect of real success opening up, Rommel pushed his meager resources beyond their capabilities. The advance was pursued too far, and the Allies were able to exploit their superior numbers to turn the tables on Rommel. In the wake of his failure, Rommel rushed south to join his remaining forces in the Marath line, and once more confront Montgomery's Eighth Army. While both von Arnhem and Rommel wished to mount some kind of offensive to disrupt and delay the Allied advance in Tunisia, the Kasserine battles were in fact characterized by muddle and indecision and confusion within the German high command. With the rivalry between Arnhem and Rommel, there was never the coordinated effort which might have turned these tactical successes into something much greater. This meant that von Arnhem's battles around Sibaitla, while tactically very impressive and causing a panic amongst the Americans initially, were quite easily held due to their piecemeal commitment of German armor. And when Rommel mounted his attack on the Kasserine Pass in February 1943, again due to the dispersal of his armored spearheads, the veterans of the Afrika Korps and the newly arrived 10th Panzer Division were unable to convert tactical success into operational victory. And when his last attack began to peter out on the 18th of February, it really was Rommel's last glimpse of glory in North Africa. The Marath line lay 80 miles inside the frontier of Tunisia, between the sea and the Matmata Hills. It was overrated as a defensive line. The original defenses were a line of antiquated block houses built by the French, of little use in modern warfare except for sheltering from artillery fire. The French had hoped that the salt marshes and steep wadis to the south would prevent the position being outflanked. Rommel's inspection of the area led him to believe that well-trained soldiers could surmount these difficulties. The British forces' advance proved him correct. This is Rommel's command position, from which he commanded his last action in the desert war, the unsuccessful German assault on the British forces opposite the Marath defenses. This time, it was the German tanks which were smashed by British anti-tank guns. After the German defeat at Marath, the German-Italian forces concentrated in Tunisia and were being threatened from the north and west, and British Eighth Army from the east. To the north, the sea, controlled by the Allies. To the south, the Sahara Desert. By the 13th of May 1943, all was lost. 230,000 German and Italian soldiers were captured. Only 700 escaped to fight another day.