TANK TACTICS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13773, 16 October 1942, Page 6

TANK TACTICS

GERMAN METHODS The Answer To Rommel Lessons Of Libya In the shuttling warfare of the Libyan and Egyptian deserts. Field Marshal Rommel has more than once shown the astonishing striking power of the German panzer divisions, when they are used with skill and determination. But Rommel is no magician, nor is any other German general—not even Hitler, unless we seek a superstitious explanation of his malignant genius, writes Harold Denny in the “New York Times.’’ Those awesome tank attacks can be met and beaten. They have been met and turned into scattered funeral pyres by the Russians. In many a battle the British also have smashed German tank attacks, though in North Africa Rommel has usually been able to bring up a last column of tanks or invoke some other lightning stroke to rob the British of victory in the end.

Rommel, rough, red-hired, and raucous, is a good general, a very good general; perhaps by now as able a field commander as any in Hitler’s employ. But he is no mystic genius. He has gained his successes almost wholly by employing elementary tactics as old as the Punic Wars, though executed at the high speed of blitz warfare and inplemented with more effective equipment than his enemies could put into the field at the time.

The armoured column warfare, which perfectly suits Rommel’s fastthinking, aggressive ego, is essentially the massed cavalry attack on Tamerlane or Sheridan —the rapid delivery of an overwhelming shock at a vulnerable point. As the Germans have developed it, panzer warfare is the most forable and appalling method of land warfare yet developed on this planet. Yet, like most revolutionising inventions, it seems obvious once it is comprehended. Cavalry Tactics The Germans simply seized upon the tank as the most formidable new ground weapon and formed their land warfare structure around it and the aeroplane. They did not merely add the tank to their equipment and tactics, as the French did. They made it the keystone of their offensive arch and developed round it tactics taken largely from cavalry manuals. The Germans have welded into one coordinated machine assault tanks, motorised infantry, motorised artillery, including anti-tank guns, ground-strafing, troop-carrying, and bombing aircraft, and even naval units to contribute shell-fire when a battle is close enough to a cost. And, make no mistake, the German handling of all these mechanised forces is masterly. I have seen much and at close hand, of German armoured warfare, even to being captured in an attack led by Rommel himself, in Libya. The German war machine, as seen in action, is powerful and smooth running, and displays at every turn care and foresight which the Nazis lavished on it in the years of German rearmament. Handled as Rommel or any other competent commander can handle them, tanks can lay a concentrated fire on a given area which paralyses the bravest resistance, unless that resistance is munitioned with a superabundance of artillery of adequate calibre and range and is determinedly manned. In an open field such as the Libyan desert or the wide, treeless spaces of the Russian steppe, infantry alone or with inadequate artillery or tank support, is helpless against a tank attack. Single Command But the tank force is only one arm of the attack as Germany has developed it. When a German general is ordered to conduct an operation, he is asked what forces he needs, on the ground, in the air, and, in some instances. on the sea. If possible, these

forces —so many armoured divisions, so many infantry divisions, so many squadrons of the appropriate types of aircraft, so many naval units —are assigned to him, and are under his direct and exclusive command for the period of that operation. In the field, then, in the midst of battle, the German general can, instantly and directly, order aeroplane support or a troop concentration by naval vessels-.- There are no delays caused by sending requests up and down two chains of command. And when battles are moving at 2 0 miles an hour in the swirling inferno of mechanised warfare, minutes count as hours did in the previous war. The Germans increased the effectiveness of this system by extremely

fast radio communication, instantaneously linking armoured vehicles, infantry units._ aeroplanes, and war ships. It battle, messages are sent by voice “in the clear ' to save critical minutes which would be lost in coding and decoding. And in battle the generals no longer their fighting on a map in a comfortable chateau. They go into the thick of it and give their orders by radio. The German technique is masterful and overwhelming. Yet it has nothing which we cannot match or excel. Indeed. British units before my own eyes have matched and beaten it in individual engagements, even when out-generalled, as the British invariably were up to the last time the German panzers permitted me to see war in the Western Desert.

Better Co-ordination

Sound tactics and excellent coordination. have won for the Germans thus far. Faulty co-ordination has lost for the British. The British understand the need for swift co-or-dination and have tried to achieve it, though with insufficient success thus far. Though the Royal Air Force was markedly superior to the Axis air forces in the battles I witnessed, the liaison between British ground and air forces was markedly slow.

As the methods of warfare now stand. German panzer attacks can be met effectively in only one way—by confronting the Germans with more and better tanks and artillery and air forces, properly co-ordinated and manned by courageous and welltrained troops.

Sitting in a prisoner-of-war camp, and, with British officers who had been captured in the same Rommel tank attack, fighting on paper the battle that had cost us our freedom, this correspondent conceived an idea which he thought was unique: It was this: That Germany, by casting this war in its present highly mechanised pattern of tanks and aircraft, had chosen the one mould best suited to American capabilities that America could outbuild Germany in tanks and aeroplanes and cannon and all the other delicate monsters of present-day warfare, and that America could decisively out-produce Germany in the man to fight inthem.

First hand examination of the tanks which the United States is now building, and conversation with armoured division officers, show that our armoured services have profited well by the lessons England has learned at such high cost. United States military attaches, military observers and technical experts have long been going to the Middle East in relays to study at first .hand the conduct of armoured and aerial warfare and the performance of American tanks, aircraft, motor vehicles, and other equipment.

Importance of Artillery

The High Command also seems to understand the vital importance of good artillery and plenty of it. Tanks themselves are field artillery, highly mobile and protected. But they must be supplemented by accurate, quickfiring, highly mobile field guns of as heavy calibre and long range as the factor of high mobility will permit. Insufficiency of" artillery was one cause of the British defeat in Libya last winter and must have been a factor in the June defeats.

The German system is to calculate how much artillery is needed theoretically for a given operation and then, if possible, provide four times that amount. There simply cannot be too much artillery in tank -warfare.

Even 'though air power has reached an importance far beyond what it held in the last war, the decision of land, and the orders which win or lose land battles must come from the ground commander. The bombers, the ground-strafing aeroplanes, the obesrvation aeroplanes, and all the other aircraft which can help the ground forces to win, are still auxiliaries to the ground forces. Panzer warfare calls for tanks, artillery, motorised infantry, air support, and, at times, naval support, all integrated and employed with the fine, fast, coordination of a championship football team. Our armoured force commanders know this. And they know that the aggressive spirit is the very soul of successful armoured warfare.