What I find interesting about this thread is that the ground has already been gone over, numerous times in this forum. We have had threads covering more or less the same subject numerous times and yet nobody appears to have read what has been posted. I find that discouraging to say the least. In addition, it appears that all too often it is American posters, making the same posts which are incorrect about British views on the employment of combined arms operations. It is because they are unable to read plain English and instead treat the language as a something unusual? They keep making the same mistakes, about the same things which while they are obvious in hindsight, were not directly visible at the time by the participants.
1. The ground, to my mind, has never discussed the rationale behind the basic Churchill vehicle design from, a human ergonomics point of view. By any standard of functional man-machine interface the Churchill, in my judgement, like many a fighting machine on this forum, has not been addressed that way. Nor has its specifics, as virtues and deficiencies as to inside room to move about. hand things off among crew members (passing ammunition from the front carry boxes in the forward hull to the crew in the fighting compartment, as an example.), or the "turret monster", which is to say the basic inside "grab you and tear off an arm or leg" hazards inside the Churchill been shown as to be either a virtue or a hazard to the man-machine interface, nor has overall visibility, situational awareness, ease of gun feed or gun lay or engagement cycle time first round hit, been addressed in detail.
2. By 1. I mean the American understand this whole "ease of fightability of the system" concept. It is the British, whose reports I read, who do not seem to get the "Look, communicate, move, shoot, cycle". when it comes to anything remotely comparable to combined arms, even as a fighting unit. I even commented on that in some macros respects in posts; #16, #32, and #51 as to what I thought were the problems and the reasons why with the Churchill.
3. I am well aware of what system failure and success matrices are. If I am to judge by the Churchill's success, I would rate it as a decent mid-war British tank with a decent mechanical reliability and available for service upon contact with the enemy percentage rate, of about 80%. That is good. What I find substandard is what I have mentioned. It is not an easy tank to use as a fighting platform. It improves from Mark IV to Mark VII, but I flat out reject that it was ever as good as a Sherman as a tank.
4. Based on 3, how can I claim the Sherman was superior? Simple. The Sherman was several things the Churchill was not.
a. The Sherman was what the British would recognize as a "cruiser", or in American parlance "an exploitation tank"; that is a "cavalry or shock action" tank.
b. The Sherman mutated into just as many and as effective "funnies" as the Churchill and STILL could be used for its primary role as defined by a.
c. The Sherman chassis became the basis for tank destroyers, assault guns, self propelled artillery, kangaroos, armored engineer vehicles, Murphy knows how many field expedient hedgerow plows, bulldozers, mine clearers, and expedient engineer vehicles while still be able to flame throw, shoot and crunch stuff under its treads, depending on the Sherman.
d. The Churchill because of the way it was built and was intended to be used could be a "funny" but it lost its primary purpose in the process. It could not "tank" after it became a mine clearing vehicle or a wall breacher as easily as a Sherman. It was never intended to do so.
e. And besides, when the British tried for an early war replacement for a "main battle tank" or "universal" which they began to recognize as a tank role, that is what the Sherman defacto became, This actually is what the British army wanted... midwar.
f. They wanted a main battle tank. . a cruiser. Like the Sherman. Not the Churchill.
The Black Prince was an abortion of a tank, according to David Fletcher. It was under powered and terrible to attempt to drive. He makes that clear in his several books on the topic. The man is not a fool yet we see it surfacing once more as the panacea to all sorts of ills according to some. It was a dead end. It was not worth bothering with because Centurion was obviously on the horizon.
g. The point I made about the Black Prince was that it was an example of British tank designers being not clued in as to what the tank was supposed to do. It was in effect the British answer to the German Tiger I and it made about as little sense function wise.
The Churchill was an adequate tank. It wasn't great, particularly in it's earlier versions but it could do the job, as it showed in Tunisia. The Mark IV was the last of the first generation of it. After that, they started rebuilding them and they became a better vehicle. The Mk. VII was a good tank. It could cope with most Axis AT guns. It was better than the M4 Sherman in many ways and it was an excellent choice for an AVRE, much better than the Sherman which was also trialed in the role.
h. For an infantry tank, that is close support of infantry, the Churchill Mark I to IV as a direct support platform could outclimb and it could cross terrain a Sherman tank could not. this is true. As a part of the British combined arms drill, that is look, understand, cooperate with artillery, infantry and airpower in the total matrix, no way in Murphy's hell, was it as good as a Sherman. Not even the Mark VII was as good in the ergo as to the situational awareness and communications department; and it sure was never as good as an overall expendable individual fighting platform. The Churchill fulfilled an infantry close assault specialist niche, and that it did fairly well, but the Wallies could have won without it. Not so without the Sherman tank. The Sherman disappears and something like it (T-23/M25 or even the M7 for example), has to replace it in the hole it leaves behind. A main battle tank (cruiser) has to be there for the Wallies, as the T-34 was for the Russians. Tanks are attritional inside the combined arms matrix. Survive long enough to do its job across the entire battle matrix.
Then we have the Centurion. It was an adequate vehicle in it's initial versions and developed into a superb one although too late for action against the Germans.
i. Zu spät ist so gut wie nie. (Too late is almost never.)
Tanks in the British Army fulfill one of two roles. Infantry or Cruiser. Americans seem to have a hard time accepting the differentiation between the two. At war's start, Infantry tanks were intended to support the attack of infantry across no-man's land and to prevent the enemy counter-attacking with tanks of their own. The 2 pounder was quite an adequate AT weapon. It did have a HE round but it was not issued for various reasons to Armour before 1943. Artillery was the main means of delivering HE on the battlefield. It was intended to paralyse the enemy before the infantry and the I Tanks arrived. Churchills were the ultimate outgrowth of that development process. Cruiser tanks were lighter and faster than infantry tanks and intended to exploit any breakthrough. They were generally issued to cavalry units. They tended to have 2 pounders (at least initially) as well. They were meant to engage enemy armour units.
j. The Americans understood infantry tanks and cavalry tanks. They legislated it into their national law in the 1920 National Defense Act. They even incompetently tried to build to it with a whole series tanks that were optimized for cavalry exploitation and infantry close assault roles. The M3 was the scout, the M6 was the American abortion that could be compared to the Churchill in mission role, and the M4 was the American "cruiser". Guess which two worked well?
As much as anyone wants things to be different they have to come up with a clear POD and reasons for alternative development. The development that occurred did so because of enemy action. Without an enemy, it is hard to justify anything different happening.
k. Hard to say, that the Churchill was a result of enemy action. The British army did even not want it. They tried to KILL it in development.
l. One last comment on British attention to human ergonomics...
j.
The British did understand ergonomics. (At least the end-users were aware when they tested the things and wrote up
all the fail issues.). However when war happens and one needs a tank to do a job: one sends out a Grant/Lee or a Churchill Mark I to IV, and then fixes the bodges later. (Sherman and or Churchill VII).
McP.
