DEFENCE NOTES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 249, 17 July 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

DEFENCE NOTES

Tanks Versus Guns ARTILLERY ESSENTIAL Coronation Uniforms

(By

Liaison.)

The following plea for more guns, coming as it does from an expert, is worthy of careful thought. The theorists of the tank warfare school insist that the unarmoured man, who depends on his muscles to move himself, his equipment and ammunition, will be swept from the battlefield by the vastly-improved armoured fighting vehicles of to-day and to-mor-row ; that the infantry man will be as ineffective against tanks as the mediaeval foot-rabble were against armoured knights. But the antagonists of this school can point out that if history is followed past the middle ages, we learn that when missile weapons were improved, the footsoldier ruled the battlefield again. This counter-tank school predict that while the tanks had their little day in 1918, that day will never return, now that gunsmiths are awake to the need for anti-tank guns. For some years now, the tank designers have been increasing the weight of armour on their machines, and the lighter calibre anti-tank weapons which would have stopped the tank of a few years ago will have to be discarded for more powerful types. While we may see, in the development of the tank, a repetition of the long, costly and indecisive contest of gun versus armour which was the feature of naval construction in the last century, the odds are much more in favour of the gun on land than they are on the sea. Those artillery experts who are persuaded that the future of land warfare lies with the tank mostly deduce that the chief function of artillery will be the destruction of tanks—just as the function of naval and coast-artillery is to shatter and sink warships. They reason that, apart from the fixed or semi-mobile artillery of fortress areas, guns for such warfare should approach the tank as 'nearly as possible in mobility, which in practice means that it must be on a motoridriven tracked chassis. It must also have armour protection for its crew —in short it must be a tank itself. The piece need only be of large enough calibre to break through the armour of other tanks; which means that for the presentand immediate future it can be of less than field-gun size.

Obviously, if such reasoning be true, the gun becomes the only important weapon in land warfare, as it is now at sea; but, paradoxically, with this increased importance of the gun would come extinction of the artillery as a separate arm of the service, in field warfare at any rate. For the five or six men of a tank’s crew could not reasonably belong to different corps.

Artillery Needed. But if we follow the naval analogy more than a short distance, we shall fall into gross error, for the land is not the sea. More specifically, tank “fleets” will never have any great open areas to manoeuvre in; they will always be bumpI ing against fortifications, either permanent or temporary. And unless the tank forces can crack these nuts, they will be impotent to decide a war. Such fortifications might be taken by deliberate siege, but this should be a last resort; brusque assault should be the normal type of action. But, siege or coup-de-niain, artillery is going to be needed, and artillery of heavy calibre, numerous enough to break down key defences and keep the heads of the garrison below ground, fi'he attack of armoured forces must be protected by artillery fire just as the attack of infantry was. The artillery problems of the future would seem to lie, first, in transporting heavy ordnance and a mass of munitions on the scale needed to overcome anti-tank fortification. It will be no easy matter to trundle howitzers of 200 mm. and upward at 20 m.p.h. over all kiuds of roads, nor will it be simple to supply them with some twenty tons of ammunition apiece. But it is not at all impossible. The next question is, how shall the fire of such mobile siege artillery be directed, tactically and technically? Most probably by extension of the same methods which prevailed in the Great War: i.e., centralised command, and survey methods. Survey methods, at first sight, might seem slow when it is a question of bringing fire to bear on a fort or defended area in the very mobile warfare which we are imagining. We are accustomed to think that these methods are only suitable when there is plenty of time —in conditions like those of the last war. Need for Maps.

But some remarkable advances in the art of survey have been iqade since 1918; advances of a kind which have most important possibilities for the direction of artillery fire. A map of suitable scale and accuracy for this purpose can be made from aerial photographs, taken from great heights. Given such a map, and adequate ammunition supply, artillery could go into action against anti-tank fortifications with the same devastating surprise as it did against the trench lines on March 21 and August 8 in 1918. Military philosophers are not agreed on the final siguificance of the events of 1914-18 in the evolution of war, nor on the future course of that evolution. Few, however, will disagree with the dictum that on the modern battlefield fire-power is master. Yet since 1918 the British Army has neglected the medium and heavy artillery which is essential for winning the superiority in fire-power needed for a successful offensive.

Those who have dreamed and prophesied of tank warfare in which fleets of land.-er.uisers will win wars by the mere power of mobility have diverted attention from the truth that the point of commencement of every effective system of warfare must be the ability to overcome resistance at a given point; to gain the essential superiority of fire, artillery is needed, and, to-day, a lot of heavy artillery. Coronation Uniforms.

New Zealand troops at the Coronation are not the only ones to be criticised on the score of dress:—lt is.difficult to speak with restraint about the blue uniform worn by a large section of the Army and Territorials on Coronation Day. We have, says “Fighting Forces,” always advocated blue uniform, for walking-out purposes, as a decent, gentlemanly, kit which any soldier might be proud to‘wear. The type of blue we had in mind was the type which has always been worn in sergeants’ messes, good, serviceable, and inexpensive, and generally made by the regimental tailor. The uniform issued to the troops for Coronation Day was made of drab material of a definitely cheap and ill-fitting appearance. To make matters worse, it was decreed that khaki web belts should be worn for the occasion. The result was, in . most cases,’ most depressing.' Blue uniform, even at its best, is really not adaptable for big ceremonial occasions, such as the Coronation. Even so, it looks quite nice if it is relieved by some bright colour. The sergeants, with their red sashes, looked very well indeed. Those regiments which had red, or other coloured hatbands, looked quite nice. Everybody, if they had had nicely pipe-clayed white belts, would have looked comparatively smart. As the troops are issued with these belts, and they ar<> worn on church parades, why, it may oe asked, did they not wear them? The answer is, as we have pointed out before, that though white belts are issued for “walking-out” purposes, white frogs, in which the bayonets are carried, are not. What can one say to this sort of thing?