GERMAN TANKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24950, 24 June 1942, Page 5

GERMAN TANKS

STRONGER FIRE POWER SUPERIOR GENERALSHIP (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, June 22. "To win and hold North Africa, we must assemble a force strong enough to defeat the enemy's armour so thoroughly that none would be able to escape,'" savs The Times correspondent in the Western Desert, analysing the two-year desert sse-saw between the British, Italians, and Germans. It is estimated that four armoured and four motorised divisions, with tens ot thousands of supply vehicles, are required to wipe out the present German and Italian forces. It would be folly to embark on another desert offensive without an overwhelming force "Apart from the generalship blunder, the main reason for our reverse was again being out-gunned. Grant' tanks carried an excsllent 7omillimetre gun, but the bulk of the tanks, made up of 'Matildas, Crusaders,' 'Valentines,' and 'Homies, all are armed with a little two-pounder which again proved almost completely useless against the German tanks, all of which are equipped with at least a 47-millimetre gun, the shell for which is twice the weight of the two-pounder. The German Mark 4 tanks had 75's or converted 88 anti-aircraft guns and the Mark 3's 75's or 50's. Evan the Italian and French tanks with 50's and 47's have out-ranged and out-gunned everything on our side except the •General Grants.' The military authorities deleted these facts from an article I wrote after the last campaign. Enemy's Successful Tactics "Formidable anti-tank guns always accompanied the enemy tanks. His tactics—fatally successful—were to draw us into a trap by using a few tanks as a decoy. After the debacle on June 13 our armoured units never rejoined, and were beaten separately by powerful enemy forces. Even during the withdrawal small numbers of tanks forlornly wandered in the desert. Had they been gathered together they would have been strong enough to check the enemy long enough to enable the bulk of our troops to withdraw safely." The Daily Mail's correspondent in the Western Desert says: " Something must have gone terribly wrong at Tobruk, where we had good troops, tanks, guns, and stores. The defences were almost ready-made. They were fairly fresh troops, opposing Italians and Germans who had been fighting for almost a month. The Australians, with far less preparation and material, held out last year. " During the campaign our army did not function like a really well-trained .professional army. Rommel was always making moves, and we countermoves. He acted, we reacted. Our new anti-tank gun was used without imagination and kept exclusively as a defensive weapon. For the sake of speed the Germans ruthlessly sacrifice many things to which we give the utmost care. The Germans and Italians race trucks along roads with headlights blazing until they are actually shelled, and do not bother about camouflage or black-out camps. Poor Communications System,

"Rommel swings his forces around the desert at a moment's notice because all relevant information is sent direct to him, often by radio and uncoded. He alters the whole course of battle before our information has even started to headquarters. Our communications are retarded by the necessity of maintaining radio silence, and by time lost in coding and decoding and by filtering through a whole series of subsidary headquarters. One gets the impression that the desert is littered with brigade,, division, corps, and army headquarters, all feeding one another with information which would have been better if it had gone direct. I have often returned from the front at the end of a day to find that I knew more ot what was going ,on than the army's headquarters." •' • ■