ANTI-TANK UNITS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 131, 30 November 1939, Page 12

ANTI-TANK UNITS

AN IMPORTANT ROLE

PLACE IN MODERN WARFARE

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London • , Representative.)

IiONDON, November 3

The New Zealandersnow training as an anti-tank unit in England will form an important part of the Dominion forces, to which they will later be attached. ' Mass attacks by tanks, as it was shown in Poland, are one of the favourite manoeuvres of the German army and the/machines are used to penetrate rapidly and deeply into enemy country. As many as 500 tanks vyere used on a two-mile front in Poland on one occasion

The British Army's anti-tank .gun, with which the New Zealanders will be equipped, fires a 21b shell which is capable of penetrating the armour of any German tank at present in use. Something like twelve shells can be fired a minute, but the rate of firing is regarded as of secondary importance to making a direct hit. General speaking at is the function of the anti-tank unit, which may be posted at various points along a divisional front, or . concentrated at one section, to hold its fire until the latest possible moment to make .sure of v a direct hit. These 21b anti-tank guns are accurate up to 1500 yards, but.it is more likely that the gunners will be ordered to hold their fire until the tanks are at, say, 500 yards range, when the margin of error is much less.

Very little will be left to chance by these anti-tank units. When they take up their positions on a front, each will select varipus points for range marks, and their exact distance from the gun, which has an all-round range of fire, will be measured up to the exact yard; Tanks reaching them, or passing them, will then be subjected to a deadly fire.

It is not unlikely that the supply of anti-tank guns to each division will gradually expand, in much the same way as the use of the machine-gun developed in the last war. In the early days little more than two machineguns were supplied to each division, a very different state of affairs from that existing today. It is quite possible that the number of anti-tank guns to each division will increase greatly ' as'-the war proceeds.