Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.
- Thread starter allanpcameron
- Start date
Those are a bit more useful, not so much as tank-destroyers (I'm not sure the idea was ever that practical, given they were cut from the same mould as the battlecruiser) but as self-propelled guns.
Yep, although the M36 hung around a bit after the war, seeing service with the USA right up until the Korean War. Hells, in some places M36s hung around until the 90s.
In some desperate place that couldn't get real tanks like Taiwan or Yugoslavia...
Not true, Taiwan kept them as its terrain does not favour heavier tanks, the deal to buy M1's has been criticized due to the inability to operate in all areas. Yugoslavia basically hoarded everything due to its total defence doctrine, they did not scrap any WW2 or later kit. They had lots of T55's for the regular forces, it was the people's militias that would use the old stuff.
Mark1878
Donor
Yes in the long term.
However here we have only really seen that the British split of Cruisers and Infantry tanks and the similar German split of Panzer III and IV aren't needed you can have one tank to do both roles.
What we have not seen is no need for a heavy tank or tank destroyers as they have not been tried.
In OTL the JS-II and III, King Tiger, Conqueror were all produced and the Victor does not replace them.
The Victor does not have the full 17pdr yet so to get that gun mobile you need tank destroyers or self propelled artillery.
The thought about having to do heavy assaults still exists so the work for Tortoise will still be thought about.
Yes the Victor can do all the roles that the British, Germans and Russians have done so far in OTL and TTL but all the powers are thinking how to defeat their own current tank as they will assume that their opponents will produce something similar.
This does mean that a beefed up Churchill (e.g. Black Prince with a Meteor engine) might make sense but then again a new design might be just as easy. What does Carden do to replace the Victor?
The UK has three current designs of tank that might be built on. The Matilda is a dead end.
The Victor has successful predecessors and is the best at the moment and could be improved.
The Churchill has problems
The Nuffield line runs but is not currently powerful enough but we know from OTL that it can be developed
Would the UK risk going down to one design?
The problem with the Churchill was the fact it was an obsolete concept. It was an Infantry Tank in it's purest form and as envisioned was literally obsolete. The Black Prince was conceptually the best variant and would have scared the crap out of the Germans if built pre D-day. The Churchill was underarmed and decently armored but suffered from speed of upgrades. In the current situation the desperate need to get any tank into production is gone, this means the Churchill can be done right and tested properly. The latest battlefield situation could be worked into the design. I am also honestly thinking the ideal gun for the Tank is the 25lb gun/howitzer due to it having the HE capacity the tank needs along with a decent AP round for emergencies. BTW if a 25lb gun fits in the turret the 17lb gun will also.
I would like to point out that, at this time (December 1941), the Tiger I is about eight months away from service, the Panther a-year-and-a-half, and the Tiger II is about two-and-a-half years away. Likewise, the IS-2 is something around two years away, while the IS-3 is three-and-three-quarter years away. Of all of the heavy tanks, only the Tiger I is likely going to be available in the same timeframe as the Victor, and will only be produced in small numbers.
See above, the Victor is contemporary with the Tiger I, and well ahead of any other competition.
Anything Carden designs is highly likely to be superior to anything anyone else can come up with.
Well so far Carden and Vickers seem to have rolled sixes, while everyone else is rolling twos or threes.
Basically they are relying on experience and their own thinking where as the Carden of this time is being guided...
That's kind of the crux....
They still have time during the end of the Churchill production run to explore what a larger turret ringed/turreted Churchill variant could look like. The trade-off being that clearly the final design will not be the all-round performer that the Victor is....but it may be worthwhile to use an in-production chassis to develop a TOG-lite, along with "funnies variants" as you would get more of them faster, than the other options....which give ln the balance of power and target theaters, I assume would be a significant advantage.
Of course, I could be totally misreading Allan's timeline, at which point I'm a totally fanny (this time used in the British context).
marathag
Banned
December 1941, the US had the first M6 Heavy arrive at Aberdeen Proving Grounds for testing
Black Prince existed for very specific reasons.
First of all, it is anachronistic to say Centurion was going to replace both Infantry and Cruiser classes in 1945. A41 was purely the Heavy Cruiser here, and the follow-on to Comet and A27 series in production. A45, aka Infantry Centurion, was the entry for the Infantry role. It would definitely be a lot more unified with A41, finally achieving what A33/37 were too late to do on the A27 side. But it was still different, namely because the Infantry role required compatibility with flamethrowers and engineering equipment that Centurion was not suited to take at the time (especially the flamethrower since the specific type couldn't be adequately mounted in a sloped front, or at least that's what the British thought in 1944-45). The Universal concept is purely postwar.
The reason Black Prince still existed back then, and was even contemplated for a batch of 200 tanks (cancelled by the end of the war), is because it could act as a stopgap between Churchill VII and the A45 which was not ready, and could accomodate the necessary equipment (this is why a sloped front was also rejected).
It is also worth pointing out that even if the 17pdr was going to be a bit problematic against certain targets beyond 1945, it was still deemed relevant for normal vehicles and the 20pdr was barely entering testing, and the 32pdr was only for special vehicles. Which is why it was chosen on A41 and BP.
This doesn't really matter in the context of this TL, because Vickers designs are already used in the Infantry role, the flamethrower mount will have to be developped for sloped armor anyway, and the A27/33 or A41/45 combos can be easily replicated here on Vickers designs. OTL the designs used in the Infantry and Cruiser roles were not unified only because pre/early war designs could not be adapted to do both roles on a single starting platform (Cruisers were too light) and the mid/late war successors to Churchill were delayed or arrived too late.
The exact design of the Churchill proper was also not inevitable from an engineering standpoint, it existed due to a very specific set and timeline of requirements and developpers and was not the best solution available. See spoiler below
A22 started from A20, which was itself an Assault tank designed in parallel to the spec that led to TOG. Originally the Army wanted a turretless vehicle with sponsons and an unditching beam much like WW1, which required envelopping tracks to move the beam. It was also long because trench requirements were high. Infantry tanks like the Matilda II were not subjected to any of those limitations, and indeed the Churchill itself, once repurposed for the Infantry role was longer (and heavier) than necessary, but too short to meet the TOG spec.
At some point, sponsons were deleted and a turret added. This made the unditching beam impossible to achieve, so the envelopping tracks were not necessary anymore, but they were kept to not delay the design. Since Vauxhall inherited the program it also kept that arrangement and modified things elsewhere. At the same time, TOG knew that a turret was better and undicthing gear pointless, so they designed their tank with a normal track layout from the start, with only the high idler being necessary for wall climbing.
Of course, retaining the envelopping track layout meant that the turret ring was more limited than the total tank width would normally allow, but since more than 54" was not requested it was not considered a problem at the time.
The choice of engine by Harland & Wolff and Vauxhall on A20/22 was purely due to more than 10hp/t not being demanded and a lack of imagination or competence to design an engine beyond 350hp, which is understandable.
In any case, the track arrangement per se and the limitation on turret ring size were not inevitable. Someone with the same experience or imagination like TOG could have filled the requirement with tracks under the sponson and thus growth potential once 54" is deemed too small (unless the hull is really too narrow like Matilda II/early Cruisers, but at least it can be extrapolated). Indeed TOG met the requirement with a simili-Matilda II that just offered a longer track length to meet the trench requirement.
At some point, sponsons were deleted and a turret added. This made the unditching beam impossible to achieve, so the envelopping tracks were not necessary anymore, but they were kept to not delay the design. Since Vauxhall inherited the program it also kept that arrangement and modified things elsewhere. At the same time, TOG knew that a turret was better and undicthing gear pointless, so they designed their tank with a normal track layout from the start, with only the high idler being necessary for wall climbing.
Of course, retaining the envelopping track layout meant that the turret ring was more limited than the total tank width would normally allow, but since more than 54" was not requested it was not considered a problem at the time.
The choice of engine by Harland & Wolff and Vauxhall on A20/22 was purely due to more than 10hp/t not being demanded and a lack of imagination or competence to design an engine beyond 350hp, which is understandable.
In any case, the track arrangement per se and the limitation on turret ring size were not inevitable. Someone with the same experience or imagination like TOG could have filled the requirement with tracks under the sponson and thus growth potential once 54" is deemed too small (unless the hull is really too narrow like Matilda II/early Cruisers, but at least it can be extrapolated). Indeed TOG met the requirement with a simili-Matilda II that just offered a longer track length to meet the trench requirement.
allanpcameron
Donor
That makes it sound like it is an ASB Self-Insert, which frankly I've been trying to avoid like the plague. Part of where this whole story came out of was that Carden was described as a genius, and that what he had been doing before his death was, in some ways, visionary. We saw OTL the way the Leslie Little, who took over from him as Vickers chief designer went with the A9, A10, A11 and Valentine. With the exception of the A11 Infantry Tank Mark I or Matilda, which was limited by how much the War Office was prepared to spend on it, most of his tank designs weren't brought to the final product by the time of his death in December 1935. Here the A9, A10 were much the same, but a bit better, the A11 had a 40mm gun which Vickers had already put in a light tank for Latvia, and with a slightly better engine.
The main change is the Valentine, TTL Valiant. Better engine, because everybody could see that underpowered tanks were problematic. If I were to rewrite this I think Carden would have likely used the A9/A10 'bright idea' suspension as Little did but changed it to six equal sized wheels and strengthened, rather than what I went with when I was writing it at the time. The same situation that led to the Valentine, ie Vickers thinking it could do a better (and cheaper & easier to build) Infantry Tank than the Matilda II, would have led to something more like TTL Valiant.
The other big change is the capture of German panzers before Dunkirk, which gave designers a proper look at what they were up against. The Victor that is coming is somewhere between a Cromwell and a Comet, a heavy cruiser, which the A10 started life as.
I've been hammering home the message from OTL Royal Armoured Corps that the British tanks were unreliable, underpowered and undergunned, especially regarding HE. As far as my reading of the subject can tell me is that Vickers was good at listening to what the customer wanted, ie the War Office, and then gave them what they as a company they knew would be what the customer actually wanted.
The description of the other things like SPGs and SPAAGs, AVREs etc., were all around in one form or another. If Carden is designing them, then I am working on the principle what would a visionary genius design. A lot of logic is missing from OTL tank development. From what I can learn about Carden is that he was very good at what he was doing. The Venom that follows the Victor will be a bit like a Centurian, because that was the way tank development actually went. The fact that Woolwich designers were having to help Vulcan, Nuffield and Vauxhall to develop their tanks means that these haven't changed much. I've occasionally thrown in a bit of advice to improve things with the Churchill, but hey ho, author's privilege, which again I'm confident that if Carden lived he would have given similar advice. Because the A9/A10s were a bit better, a few more were ordered than OTL, so there has been a positive knock-on effect on avoiding some of the post-Dunkirk panic. The Valiant is developed earlier than the Valentine, so enters service a few months earlier, and because time and effort isn't wasted on trying to get the Covenanter to work, then Vickers are able to produce more Valiants than Valentines because Leyland is building them.
If I was writing this as an ASB SI, the Valiant would have been more like a Comet and the Venom more like a Centurian, because those were really good tanks, but too late. If in OTL the Covenanter, Crusader, Churchill had been able to be properly designed, tested and built then I believe the war in North Africa would probably have gone the way it has here. Can you imagine a good working Covenanter in Operation Compass? A good working Crusader in Operation Crusader? Compared with what O'Connor was using in Compass, beat up A9 and A10s, some Matilda IIs and lots of Mark VIB lights. What's ASB is The Great Tank Scandal of OTL.
Anyway, back to work...
Allan
21 December 1941. Kuala Krai. Malaya
allanpcameron
Donor
21 December 1941. Kuala Krai. Malaya
Sergeant Tommy Docherty could hardly keep his eyes open. The nightmare that had begun on the morning of 8 December just seemed to be getting worse. He’d watched his mate, Sergeant Bill Morris burn to death as fire took hold of his Matilda II tank. His own close encounters with fanatical Japanese troops had left him with a bandage round his shoulder from a sword cut of all things. The fighting along the River Kelantan seemed never ending. No sooner than one attack had been rolled back, his crew would hardly have had time to refuel and rearm the tank, when they’d be thrown into the fray to break up another attack.
The problem for Docherty was as soon as he closed his eyes to sleep, he could see that Japanese officer bringing his curved sword down towards his neck. Then he woke up screaming, he was desperately tired, but scared to sleep. The river line couldn’t be held forever, and slowly, but surely the three Brigades of 9th Indian Division were being pushed back. The railway at Kuala Krai was where supplies were brought forward and the wounded evacuated.
General Barstow had been husbanding his final reserves to hold the railhead. Docherty’s tank was one of six that had been withdrawn from the almost constant battles to with the Light Aid Detachment were waiting. For twenty-four hours everyone had worked on the tanks to make sure there were no defects, nothing that would go wrong. Like the men fighting the tanks, the machines had suffered. The Japanese had killed Bill Morris’ tank with petrol bombs. Most of the tanks being worked on had burn marks as well as dents in the armour in places where all sorts of weapons from rifle bullets to artillery shells had tried to kill the tank and its crew.
A broken track pin led to the death of Bill Morris’ crew. The track breaking meant they were immobilised, and despite the heroic efforts of the Indian troops protecting the tank, the Japanese had swarmed it, and at least six petrol bombs had been thrown over it. Docherty had watched in horror as a bottle broke on the edge of the turret covering Morris with dancing flames. Pat Currie, Docherty’s gunner had done his best to keep the Japanese off, but as the crew of Morris’ tank had tried to bale out, they’d been pulled out and hacked and bayoneted to death. Once it was clear that the whole crew were dead, then Currie made the Japanese pay, burning out the BESA barrel wiping them out.
Their own trial had been the day afterwards, and once again they’d supported an Indian counter-attack, but the Japanese didn’t back off this time. A fresh Company appeared from nowhere and hit the Indians in the flank. Docherty had the hatch open trying to communicate with the Major leading the Indians when a dozen Japanese soldiers rushed the tank. Docherty always had the machine pistol in his hand when he was out of the turret, and he fired off the full clip of thirty rounds. Still the Japanese came on, that one officer with the sword swinging down towards Docherty’s neck, until there was a great red blossom on his chest. The .455 round from the Major’s Webley saved Docherty’s life, though momentum brought the edge of the blade down on his shoulder. They’d managed to pull out, but the counter-attack had failed, and so, while Docherty was being fixed up at an aid station, the Brigade had to pull back another couple of miles.
Barstow’s reserve consisted of 2nd Bn, 18th Royal Garhwal Rifles, who’d arrived from Kuantan after a round about journey. 8th, 9th and 22nd Brigades were shadows of their former selves. The Indian State Forces had done much better than Barstow had feared, but they were now spread throughout the other Battalions as battle replacements. Lieutenant General Percival had asked Barstow to keep fighting as long as he could. The whole of 9th Australian Division were now arrived and working like mad with 8th Australian to be ready. The 18th Infantry Division were due to begin arriving within days, but those three Divisions needed as much time as possible to prepare themselves. The longer 9th and 11th Indian Divisions could hold the Japanese as far north as possible, the longer the Australian Corps had time to prepare.
The Japanese had forced a crossing near the Guillemard railway bridge and seemed to have a pontoon bridge over the river. Barstow’s plan was to use the six tanks and the fresh Garhwal Rifles to attack that position, hopefully with the tanks acting together as an unstoppable force, the Japanese foothold could be reduced or even eliminated. When Lt Col Guy Hartigan had briefed his men, and the tank crews, he noted that the RAF would support the attack. After the laughter had died down, he said he had been assured that a squadron of Buffaloes would be escorting a squadron of Blenheim bombers to try to destroy the bridge or at least give the Japanese something else to worry about.
For Docherty and most of the tank commanders, just having some friendly aircraft in the sky would make all the difference. Movement tended to happen at night to try to keep the Japanese aircraft off their backs. Promises of air support had never been kept in the past, and in their minds the British troops wouldn’t be planning on relying on the ‘fly-boys’ this time either.
With two troops of tanks, Lieutenant Bill McLennan was in charge, and he spent a good deal of time with the other tank commanders to go over how they were going to work together. All the tanks had been used singly, or at most in pairs. Having two troops was something of a novelty, but this was more like their pre-war training. All of the tank commanders wanted a bit more time to work with the Garhwal Rifles. There were a lot of lessons that had been hard learned, and the 2nd Bn 18th Royal Garhwal Rifles hadn’t had much training with tanks. The temptation was to delay the counter-attack for another day to allow more training and rehearsing. General Barstow had put a lot of effort into getting the timing for the artillery support, the RAF support, and putting as much of 9th Brigade together as possible to back up the counter-attack force and try to make sure that should the attack be successful there would be a follow-on force to hold the ground. It was the last throw of the dice, if this counter-attack failed in its objectives, then withdrawal south was the only option.
The bandage around Docherty’s shoulder meant that getting in and out of the turret hatch was always painful. The six tanks had driven the fifteen miles to the jump off point during the night. The whole Division’s artillery force were pounding the Japanese positions, hopefully hiding the sound of the tanks’ approach. Miracle of miracles, the RAF arrived on time, and the twelve Blenheim Is of 27 Squadron RAF managed to drop their bombs roughly where they were needed. Three of them didn’t return to but were victims of ground fire or were picked off by the fighters that the Buffaloes couldn’t deal with. The soldiers didn’t know it, but it was No 23 Sqn RAF that were providing cover for the attack. Both squadrons had flown the previous day to Kluang from where they had been able to fly with full fuel tanks and bomb loads. The Japanese fighters they encountered were Type 97 (Nakajima Ki-27) which the Buffalo, despite its own failings, got the better of.
For once therefore that Indian Division’s attack went forward under friendly air cover, at least initially. The concentration of the Division’s artillery provided the tanks and men of HartForce (as the counter-attack force was named) good cover and support. At the start point, Docherty’s tank, with a platoon of Garhwals began to move forward, the timing of the barrage lifting as the tanks and men advanced to contact. The direct of attack had been chosen to give the tanks as much room as possible to push forward together. One of the six Matilda’s was a Close Support tank, with a 3-inch howitzer, and the HE rounds were put to very good use. In the second miracle of the day, the British counter-attack ran into the Japanese who were themselves preparing to attack the 9th Infantry Brigade positions. Between the British bombers, the artillery and now the tanks, the Japanese 42nd Regiment found itself ill-placed to deal with the counter-attack.
By late morning the tanks and Garhwal Rifles had pushed the Japanese back to the river. Matilda II tanks normally carried 93 rounds for the 2-pdr and 2925 rounds of 7.92mm for the BESA co-axial MG. Each of the gun tanks had halved the number of 2-pdr rounds, and doubled the MG ammunition. This was the last of the 7.92mm ammunition held by the quartermasters, and once it was gone, the tanks would be pretty useless. Part of the build up for the Japanese attack was the arrival over the pontoon bridge of a tank company of ten Type 97 tanks and two Type 95 tanks. It was probably wasn’t the largest tank versus tank engagement of the Malayan campaign, but for the six British tanks it was quite a change from their normal experience so far.
The nature of the terrain meant that the two tank forces encountered one another a close range, nullifying the range advantage of the 2-pdr over the 57mm gun on the Japanese tanks. As often the case, when tanks engaged one another the advantage was with whichever tank saw, fired and hit first. Sergeant Docherty was the first of the British tank commanders to see the Japanese tanks, and his gunner, Corporal Pat Currie, who had a 2-pdr round ready in the main gun, was the first to fire, but it was only a glancing shot off the turret. The Japanese tanks all had the advantage of being faster and more manoeuvrable, but the armour on the Matilda II was effective, unless the Japanese could score hits at close range to the rear and sides where the armour was thinner.
With the tanks engaged in point blank fighting, the sepoys of the Garhwal Rifles struggled to keep up the momentum of the counter-attack, allowing the Japanese infantry to recover and begin to move up to support their tanks. Two of the British tanks were disabled within a few minutes of the fighting, but so were six of the Japanese tanks. The British gunners found that their machine gun ammunition could penetrate the Japanese tanks at the very close range they were fighting at, and it was easier to bring the co-axial machine gun to bear on the moving Japanese tanks that it was to lay on the 2-pdr gun. A third British tank was stopped with damage to its tracks, but the fifteen minute engagement finished as the last Type 95 tank was the focus of the fire from the remaining British tanks.
Docherty found himself back on the defensive. The Garhwal Rifles’ officers were trying to get their men back into some kind of order. Lieutenant McLennan had been killed along with his crew, so Docherty was now the senior surviving tank commander. A quick radio conversation with the other two tanks, noting they were both fully mobile and capable of continuing, the problem was trying to reach Lt Col Hartigan to find out what he wanted done. While still trying to figure reach him, Corporal Currie warned him that the Japanese infantry were on the move, the warning followed immediately by the co-axial MG opening fire.
The Japanese assault was what became known as a ‘Banzai Charge’. The three British tanks acted as three hard points to the Garhwal Rifles’ positions. Just as Docherty feared they would be overrun as the Japanese attacked without thought to their losses, the weight of fire from the Indian side increased dramatically. 3rd Bn 12th Frontier Force Regiment arrived and the Sikhs were delighted to find their enemy out in the open. Once more the balance of the battle swung back in favour of the Indian troops.
Lt Col Hartigan had been wounded, and command passed to Lt Col Jeffrey Blood, CO of 3/12th Frontier Force. Blood mounted Docherty’s tank and seemed to be in high spirits. Docherty reported the state of his troop of tanks, and the Lieutenant Colonel ordered him to advance. Blood and his men had been in East Africa where a small detachment of Matilda II tanks had made a big difference. His feeling was that the time was right to keep moving forward, keep the Japanese on the backfoot for a bit longer. Because Docherty’s tanks all had radios, Blood asked if he could attach the Royal Artillery Forward Observer to one of the tanks and for one of his rifle companies to support the tanks. Docherty agreed, he could hardly do otherwise. An RA Sub-Lieutenant Philip Scholes came aboard the tank and Docherty showed him the radio set-up. Jimmy McMahon, the loader having to make room for him wasn’t happy, but told to be quiet. Within moments, the Royal Artillery was starting lay ranging rounds, followed by a general barrage. Docherty and Currie couldn’t help wonder how he managed to do it so quickly, but the order to move forward gave them other things to think about.
With only three tanks in the vanguard, the rifle companies of 3/12 FF Regt formed a wedge shape, with Docherty’s tank at the point. The turret was very cramped with four men, and Docherty and Scholes took turns looking out the hatch and periscopes. The counter-attack, having regained its momentum, was beginning to run into the Japanese gun line, the artillery which they had managed to get over the river. This posed another threat to the tanks, while difficult to achieve a direct hit on a tank from an emplaced artillery piece, it wasn’t impossible. Once more Scholes played his role, calling down the British artillery on the Japanese gunners.
The advance with three tanks, armed effectively with only one machine gun each, was a real limiting factor. Docherty had trained on an A11 with the 2-pdr pompom gun, which he would happily have given his left arm for at the moment. Currie fired the 2-pdr occasionally, but the BESA was in danger of overheating, and every time there was a stoppage, it felt like the end of the world. McMahon began shouting out how many belts of ammo were left as he changed out the empty box. It was clear to Docherty that the forward momentum wasn’t going to last much longer. The word from the other two tanks was about the same, whenever Docherty could get through to them, which meant Scholes had to come off the link to the Royal Artillery.
Lt Col Blood reappeared on the back of Docherty’s tank. It was becoming clear that getting all the way to the river to destroy the pontoon bridge wasn’t going to happen. Casualties to the Frontier Force Regiment were mounting steadily, and even with the rest of the Garhwal Rifle’s support, there was no guarantee of success. Blood was happy enough with the spoiling attack, especially having knocked out the Japanese artillery unit. Scholes therefore called for another barrage and then smoke to cover their withdrawal. Knowing what the Japanese were like, the wedge was reformed heading back to 9th Brigade’s positions. They would likely have to fight as hard to get back as they had to get to where they were.
It was late evening before Docherty’s tank arrived back at the railhead, where instead of refuelling, the surviving three tanks were driven onto flat cars, and withdrawn towards Gemos. Whatever happened the rest of the night Docherty and his crew knew nothing about, they slept like babies all the way back to where they and their tanks could be fixed up for their next battle.
Sergeant Tommy Docherty could hardly keep his eyes open. The nightmare that had begun on the morning of 8 December just seemed to be getting worse. He’d watched his mate, Sergeant Bill Morris burn to death as fire took hold of his Matilda II tank. His own close encounters with fanatical Japanese troops had left him with a bandage round his shoulder from a sword cut of all things. The fighting along the River Kelantan seemed never ending. No sooner than one attack had been rolled back, his crew would hardly have had time to refuel and rearm the tank, when they’d be thrown into the fray to break up another attack.
The problem for Docherty was as soon as he closed his eyes to sleep, he could see that Japanese officer bringing his curved sword down towards his neck. Then he woke up screaming, he was desperately tired, but scared to sleep. The river line couldn’t be held forever, and slowly, but surely the three Brigades of 9th Indian Division were being pushed back. The railway at Kuala Krai was where supplies were brought forward and the wounded evacuated.
General Barstow had been husbanding his final reserves to hold the railhead. Docherty’s tank was one of six that had been withdrawn from the almost constant battles to with the Light Aid Detachment were waiting. For twenty-four hours everyone had worked on the tanks to make sure there were no defects, nothing that would go wrong. Like the men fighting the tanks, the machines had suffered. The Japanese had killed Bill Morris’ tank with petrol bombs. Most of the tanks being worked on had burn marks as well as dents in the armour in places where all sorts of weapons from rifle bullets to artillery shells had tried to kill the tank and its crew.
A broken track pin led to the death of Bill Morris’ crew. The track breaking meant they were immobilised, and despite the heroic efforts of the Indian troops protecting the tank, the Japanese had swarmed it, and at least six petrol bombs had been thrown over it. Docherty had watched in horror as a bottle broke on the edge of the turret covering Morris with dancing flames. Pat Currie, Docherty’s gunner had done his best to keep the Japanese off, but as the crew of Morris’ tank had tried to bale out, they’d been pulled out and hacked and bayoneted to death. Once it was clear that the whole crew were dead, then Currie made the Japanese pay, burning out the BESA barrel wiping them out.
Their own trial had been the day afterwards, and once again they’d supported an Indian counter-attack, but the Japanese didn’t back off this time. A fresh Company appeared from nowhere and hit the Indians in the flank. Docherty had the hatch open trying to communicate with the Major leading the Indians when a dozen Japanese soldiers rushed the tank. Docherty always had the machine pistol in his hand when he was out of the turret, and he fired off the full clip of thirty rounds. Still the Japanese came on, that one officer with the sword swinging down towards Docherty’s neck, until there was a great red blossom on his chest. The .455 round from the Major’s Webley saved Docherty’s life, though momentum brought the edge of the blade down on his shoulder. They’d managed to pull out, but the counter-attack had failed, and so, while Docherty was being fixed up at an aid station, the Brigade had to pull back another couple of miles.
Barstow’s reserve consisted of 2nd Bn, 18th Royal Garhwal Rifles, who’d arrived from Kuantan after a round about journey. 8th, 9th and 22nd Brigades were shadows of their former selves. The Indian State Forces had done much better than Barstow had feared, but they were now spread throughout the other Battalions as battle replacements. Lieutenant General Percival had asked Barstow to keep fighting as long as he could. The whole of 9th Australian Division were now arrived and working like mad with 8th Australian to be ready. The 18th Infantry Division were due to begin arriving within days, but those three Divisions needed as much time as possible to prepare themselves. The longer 9th and 11th Indian Divisions could hold the Japanese as far north as possible, the longer the Australian Corps had time to prepare.
The Japanese had forced a crossing near the Guillemard railway bridge and seemed to have a pontoon bridge over the river. Barstow’s plan was to use the six tanks and the fresh Garhwal Rifles to attack that position, hopefully with the tanks acting together as an unstoppable force, the Japanese foothold could be reduced or even eliminated. When Lt Col Guy Hartigan had briefed his men, and the tank crews, he noted that the RAF would support the attack. After the laughter had died down, he said he had been assured that a squadron of Buffaloes would be escorting a squadron of Blenheim bombers to try to destroy the bridge or at least give the Japanese something else to worry about.
For Docherty and most of the tank commanders, just having some friendly aircraft in the sky would make all the difference. Movement tended to happen at night to try to keep the Japanese aircraft off their backs. Promises of air support had never been kept in the past, and in their minds the British troops wouldn’t be planning on relying on the ‘fly-boys’ this time either.
With two troops of tanks, Lieutenant Bill McLennan was in charge, and he spent a good deal of time with the other tank commanders to go over how they were going to work together. All the tanks had been used singly, or at most in pairs. Having two troops was something of a novelty, but this was more like their pre-war training. All of the tank commanders wanted a bit more time to work with the Garhwal Rifles. There were a lot of lessons that had been hard learned, and the 2nd Bn 18th Royal Garhwal Rifles hadn’t had much training with tanks. The temptation was to delay the counter-attack for another day to allow more training and rehearsing. General Barstow had put a lot of effort into getting the timing for the artillery support, the RAF support, and putting as much of 9th Brigade together as possible to back up the counter-attack force and try to make sure that should the attack be successful there would be a follow-on force to hold the ground. It was the last throw of the dice, if this counter-attack failed in its objectives, then withdrawal south was the only option.
The bandage around Docherty’s shoulder meant that getting in and out of the turret hatch was always painful. The six tanks had driven the fifteen miles to the jump off point during the night. The whole Division’s artillery force were pounding the Japanese positions, hopefully hiding the sound of the tanks’ approach. Miracle of miracles, the RAF arrived on time, and the twelve Blenheim Is of 27 Squadron RAF managed to drop their bombs roughly where they were needed. Three of them didn’t return to but were victims of ground fire or were picked off by the fighters that the Buffaloes couldn’t deal with. The soldiers didn’t know it, but it was No 23 Sqn RAF that were providing cover for the attack. Both squadrons had flown the previous day to Kluang from where they had been able to fly with full fuel tanks and bomb loads. The Japanese fighters they encountered were Type 97 (Nakajima Ki-27) which the Buffalo, despite its own failings, got the better of.
For once therefore that Indian Division’s attack went forward under friendly air cover, at least initially. The concentration of the Division’s artillery provided the tanks and men of HartForce (as the counter-attack force was named) good cover and support. At the start point, Docherty’s tank, with a platoon of Garhwals began to move forward, the timing of the barrage lifting as the tanks and men advanced to contact. The direct of attack had been chosen to give the tanks as much room as possible to push forward together. One of the six Matilda’s was a Close Support tank, with a 3-inch howitzer, and the HE rounds were put to very good use. In the second miracle of the day, the British counter-attack ran into the Japanese who were themselves preparing to attack the 9th Infantry Brigade positions. Between the British bombers, the artillery and now the tanks, the Japanese 42nd Regiment found itself ill-placed to deal with the counter-attack.
By late morning the tanks and Garhwal Rifles had pushed the Japanese back to the river. Matilda II tanks normally carried 93 rounds for the 2-pdr and 2925 rounds of 7.92mm for the BESA co-axial MG. Each of the gun tanks had halved the number of 2-pdr rounds, and doubled the MG ammunition. This was the last of the 7.92mm ammunition held by the quartermasters, and once it was gone, the tanks would be pretty useless. Part of the build up for the Japanese attack was the arrival over the pontoon bridge of a tank company of ten Type 97 tanks and two Type 95 tanks. It was probably wasn’t the largest tank versus tank engagement of the Malayan campaign, but for the six British tanks it was quite a change from their normal experience so far.
The nature of the terrain meant that the two tank forces encountered one another a close range, nullifying the range advantage of the 2-pdr over the 57mm gun on the Japanese tanks. As often the case, when tanks engaged one another the advantage was with whichever tank saw, fired and hit first. Sergeant Docherty was the first of the British tank commanders to see the Japanese tanks, and his gunner, Corporal Pat Currie, who had a 2-pdr round ready in the main gun, was the first to fire, but it was only a glancing shot off the turret. The Japanese tanks all had the advantage of being faster and more manoeuvrable, but the armour on the Matilda II was effective, unless the Japanese could score hits at close range to the rear and sides where the armour was thinner.
With the tanks engaged in point blank fighting, the sepoys of the Garhwal Rifles struggled to keep up the momentum of the counter-attack, allowing the Japanese infantry to recover and begin to move up to support their tanks. Two of the British tanks were disabled within a few minutes of the fighting, but so were six of the Japanese tanks. The British gunners found that their machine gun ammunition could penetrate the Japanese tanks at the very close range they were fighting at, and it was easier to bring the co-axial machine gun to bear on the moving Japanese tanks that it was to lay on the 2-pdr gun. A third British tank was stopped with damage to its tracks, but the fifteen minute engagement finished as the last Type 95 tank was the focus of the fire from the remaining British tanks.
Docherty found himself back on the defensive. The Garhwal Rifles’ officers were trying to get their men back into some kind of order. Lieutenant McLennan had been killed along with his crew, so Docherty was now the senior surviving tank commander. A quick radio conversation with the other two tanks, noting they were both fully mobile and capable of continuing, the problem was trying to reach Lt Col Hartigan to find out what he wanted done. While still trying to figure reach him, Corporal Currie warned him that the Japanese infantry were on the move, the warning followed immediately by the co-axial MG opening fire.
The Japanese assault was what became known as a ‘Banzai Charge’. The three British tanks acted as three hard points to the Garhwal Rifles’ positions. Just as Docherty feared they would be overrun as the Japanese attacked without thought to their losses, the weight of fire from the Indian side increased dramatically. 3rd Bn 12th Frontier Force Regiment arrived and the Sikhs were delighted to find their enemy out in the open. Once more the balance of the battle swung back in favour of the Indian troops.
Lt Col Hartigan had been wounded, and command passed to Lt Col Jeffrey Blood, CO of 3/12th Frontier Force. Blood mounted Docherty’s tank and seemed to be in high spirits. Docherty reported the state of his troop of tanks, and the Lieutenant Colonel ordered him to advance. Blood and his men had been in East Africa where a small detachment of Matilda II tanks had made a big difference. His feeling was that the time was right to keep moving forward, keep the Japanese on the backfoot for a bit longer. Because Docherty’s tanks all had radios, Blood asked if he could attach the Royal Artillery Forward Observer to one of the tanks and for one of his rifle companies to support the tanks. Docherty agreed, he could hardly do otherwise. An RA Sub-Lieutenant Philip Scholes came aboard the tank and Docherty showed him the radio set-up. Jimmy McMahon, the loader having to make room for him wasn’t happy, but told to be quiet. Within moments, the Royal Artillery was starting lay ranging rounds, followed by a general barrage. Docherty and Currie couldn’t help wonder how he managed to do it so quickly, but the order to move forward gave them other things to think about.
With only three tanks in the vanguard, the rifle companies of 3/12 FF Regt formed a wedge shape, with Docherty’s tank at the point. The turret was very cramped with four men, and Docherty and Scholes took turns looking out the hatch and periscopes. The counter-attack, having regained its momentum, was beginning to run into the Japanese gun line, the artillery which they had managed to get over the river. This posed another threat to the tanks, while difficult to achieve a direct hit on a tank from an emplaced artillery piece, it wasn’t impossible. Once more Scholes played his role, calling down the British artillery on the Japanese gunners.
The advance with three tanks, armed effectively with only one machine gun each, was a real limiting factor. Docherty had trained on an A11 with the 2-pdr pompom gun, which he would happily have given his left arm for at the moment. Currie fired the 2-pdr occasionally, but the BESA was in danger of overheating, and every time there was a stoppage, it felt like the end of the world. McMahon began shouting out how many belts of ammo were left as he changed out the empty box. It was clear to Docherty that the forward momentum wasn’t going to last much longer. The word from the other two tanks was about the same, whenever Docherty could get through to them, which meant Scholes had to come off the link to the Royal Artillery.
Lt Col Blood reappeared on the back of Docherty’s tank. It was becoming clear that getting all the way to the river to destroy the pontoon bridge wasn’t going to happen. Casualties to the Frontier Force Regiment were mounting steadily, and even with the rest of the Garhwal Rifle’s support, there was no guarantee of success. Blood was happy enough with the spoiling attack, especially having knocked out the Japanese artillery unit. Scholes therefore called for another barrage and then smoke to cover their withdrawal. Knowing what the Japanese were like, the wedge was reformed heading back to 9th Brigade’s positions. They would likely have to fight as hard to get back as they had to get to where they were.
It was late evening before Docherty’s tank arrived back at the railhead, where instead of refuelling, the surviving three tanks were driven onto flat cars, and withdrawn towards Gemos. Whatever happened the rest of the night Docherty and his crew knew nothing about, they slept like babies all the way back to where they and their tanks could be fixed up for their next battle.
The difference being that the British were too bankrupt to be able to replace them, while the Americans had plenty of money.
There's also the fact that no-one else has yet produced anything to match even the Valiant, never mind the Victor.
A waste of miney.That's kind of the crux....
They still have time during the end of the Churchill production run to explore what a larger turret ringed/turreted Churchill variant could look like. The trade-off being that clearly the final design will not be the all-round performer that the Victor is....but it may be worthwhile to use an in-production chassis to develop a TOG-lite, along with "funnies variants" as you would get more of them faster, than the other options....which give ln the balance of power and target theaters, I assume would be a significant advantage.
Of course, I could be totally misreading Allan's timeline, at which point I'm a totally fanny (this time used in the British context).
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And never saw serious production.
As to the latest post, good stuff. The Japanese look to be really suffering this time around.
I don't think you realise how savage Truman's defence cuts were before the Korean War.