Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.
- Thread starter allanpcameron
- Start date
21 January 1942. Hayling Island, England.
allanpcameron
Donor
21 January 1942. Hayling Island, England.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, Combined Operations Advisor to the Chiefs of Staff, watched as the Duplex Drive Valiant I* tank ran down the ramp of the new LCT (2). Everyone unconsciously held their breath as the tank transitioned from the ramp to the sea. Nicholas Straussler, the designer of the floatation device that prevented the tank from sinking was standing beside Mountbatten, smiled as the tank moved away from the landing craft obviously under its own power. As it did so a second tank, this time, the light Tetrarch moved to the front of the ramp and followed the larger tank onto the water and headed towards the beach. This was where Mountbatten, Straussler and all the other big wigs were gathered.
It was a cold day, but mercifully quite calm. The two tanks arrived at a depth where they were no longer floating, and the tracks began to bite on the seabed. The Tetrarch managed the incline without too much trouble, but the Valiant I* had obviously found a patch where the tracks couldn’t get enough grip. The tank commander’s solution was to order the driver to back off until they were floating free, then using each track separately to crab the tank over to where the Tetrarch had exited the water and follow it up the beach. Once the two tanks were safely on dry land, the process of dropping the floatation screen was demonstrated, with the tanks then able to fight freely.
Most of the VIPs had seen similar demonstrations, though this was the first having two tanks unload from the single LCT (2). Percy Hobart, under whose overall control these types of vehicles were being developed, was a bit out of sorts. Mountbatten had simply asked what would be the effect of machine gun fire on the tanks as they ran into the shore. Straussler admitted that if the floatation screen was too badly damaged by enemy fire, then the tank would sink. Hobart and Mountbatten hadn’t yet got the measure of each other, and Mountbatten was attempting to rescue the situation with his innate charm, to which Hobart seemed immune.
A second LCT (2) came towards the beach. Onboard was a Valiant I Infantry tank and a Churchill tank that had been adapted for ‘wading’. The hull had been sealed as best as possible, and the engine intake and exhaust had been modified to be well above the level of the hull. When the ramp was lowered the Valiant tank moved forward and seemed almost swamped. The engine however kept going, and the tank gradually managed to make it up the slope. The Churchill tank also successfully made it ashore. The Churchill’s tracks and gearbox dealt with the slope better than that of the Valiant.
Overall, the demonstration had been successful. There were a number of things that would be learned, not least having some kind of clear knowledge of make up of the beach that tanks would land on to see if the ground would be suitable. Mountbatten thought that both ideas were worth pursuing, but worried that the DD tanks would be vulnerable against a defended beach until they were clear of the water and had dropped the floatation gear. Having tanks capable of wading coming off a landing craft meant that the problem of grounding the LCT could be done even if there was still a depth of water between the ramp and dry land.
On the train back later in the day, Mountbatten wrote up some notes. Mr Churchill was pushing as hard as he could for something to be done to relieve the pressure on the Soviets. So far, the limited commando raids had been impressive, but without giving the Germans any real problems. Stalin’s call for a second front was obviously completely unrealistic. The build up of the kind of amphibious ships that would be needed to successfully put a strong force ashore would take years. By summer, if the ships currently out in the Mediterranean were brought back, Mountbatten’s planning team thought that they might, just might, have enough capacity to put the best part of a Division ashore.
The difficulty was that Wavell and Cunningham had persuaded Churchill to allow them to keep those amphibious assets. They planned to use them in a campaign to capture some of the Italian islands, securing the eastern Mediterranean, and prepare to do something about some Greek islands or even Sicily. The 8th Army had plenty of men and tanks sitting around waiting to see what would happen with the French, but capturing Rhodes would be another big loss for Mussolini. The Australian 7 Division had been exercising as much as they could with the commandoes, so there was a solid core for taking the fight across the Mediterranean.
Mountbatten’s problem was not only a lack of the correct shipping, but also an actual Combined Operations organisation that would be able to herd the three cats known as the Navy, Army and RAF. General Alan Brooke was keen on keeping the Prime Minister happy, without actually committing men to a half-baked plan would just end with lots of dead troops with nothing very much to show for it. Helping the Soviets was all very well, but realistically the Infantry and Armoured Divisions currently in the UK weren’t ready to take on the Wehrmacht. O’Connor’s 8th Army in Libya was about the only formation Brooke trusted to do the job. Supporting them, all the way around the Cape of Good Hope was just too long a line of supply for anything more than an island-hopping campaign. Even doing that much would mean some pretty hard lessons would have to be learned.
Lord Louis Mountbatten sometimes wondered if captaining HMS Illustrious would have been the better option. The fact that the Prime Minister, when laying out his plan for Mountbatten to take over Combined Operations, in response to his request to stay with Illustrious the Prime Minister responded “You fool! The best thing you can hope to do there is to repeat your last achievement and get yourself sunk!”. Churchill wanted to take the war to the enemy and saw in Mountbatten a man who would be able to do that. Mountbatten was keen to do his bit, and the exercise that morning gave him another card in his hand.
The ability to support a landing with tanks in the first wave would give the infantry useful support. The difficulties of getting tanks out of the water, up a beach and over any obstacles was still to be satisfactorily resolved. Mountbatten had pencilled in a meeting with Major-General Hobart to discuss just what exactly was in the pipeline and what else should be. The Landing Craft Tank (2) had worked out well, but getting them over the English Channel in anything more than slightly choppy water was a worry. There would probably have to be an American solution to that issue, the ability to build enough ships and smaller craft for an invasion was currently beyond British shipbuilding capacity.
It was Mountbatten’s intention to fly out to Egypt in time to see the planned amphibious attacks that would lead to taking Rhodes. The Australian involvement had meant that the planning had to be absolutely clear on what would happen, the memories of Gallipoli were still very strong among the Australian senior officers. It was probably a godsend that Australian 7 Division were involved from the very beginning. There was a lot of work that was being done in Egypt that Mountbatten wanted to see for himself, and perhaps get a few of the planners back to England with him afterwards.
The danger to all this was in Malaya and Burma. The last big exercise, the dress rehearsal, had had to be postponed because the shipping and the aircraft carrier had to be used to move troops, equipment and fighters from Egypt and Persia to Burma. Once all the ships were back under Cunningham’s command, the exercise would be rescheduled and then hopefully, the offensive to capture enemy held islands could begin.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, Combined Operations Advisor to the Chiefs of Staff, watched as the Duplex Drive Valiant I* tank ran down the ramp of the new LCT (2). Everyone unconsciously held their breath as the tank transitioned from the ramp to the sea. Nicholas Straussler, the designer of the floatation device that prevented the tank from sinking was standing beside Mountbatten, smiled as the tank moved away from the landing craft obviously under its own power. As it did so a second tank, this time, the light Tetrarch moved to the front of the ramp and followed the larger tank onto the water and headed towards the beach. This was where Mountbatten, Straussler and all the other big wigs were gathered.
It was a cold day, but mercifully quite calm. The two tanks arrived at a depth where they were no longer floating, and the tracks began to bite on the seabed. The Tetrarch managed the incline without too much trouble, but the Valiant I* had obviously found a patch where the tracks couldn’t get enough grip. The tank commander’s solution was to order the driver to back off until they were floating free, then using each track separately to crab the tank over to where the Tetrarch had exited the water and follow it up the beach. Once the two tanks were safely on dry land, the process of dropping the floatation screen was demonstrated, with the tanks then able to fight freely.
Most of the VIPs had seen similar demonstrations, though this was the first having two tanks unload from the single LCT (2). Percy Hobart, under whose overall control these types of vehicles were being developed, was a bit out of sorts. Mountbatten had simply asked what would be the effect of machine gun fire on the tanks as they ran into the shore. Straussler admitted that if the floatation screen was too badly damaged by enemy fire, then the tank would sink. Hobart and Mountbatten hadn’t yet got the measure of each other, and Mountbatten was attempting to rescue the situation with his innate charm, to which Hobart seemed immune.
A second LCT (2) came towards the beach. Onboard was a Valiant I Infantry tank and a Churchill tank that had been adapted for ‘wading’. The hull had been sealed as best as possible, and the engine intake and exhaust had been modified to be well above the level of the hull. When the ramp was lowered the Valiant tank moved forward and seemed almost swamped. The engine however kept going, and the tank gradually managed to make it up the slope. The Churchill tank also successfully made it ashore. The Churchill’s tracks and gearbox dealt with the slope better than that of the Valiant.
Overall, the demonstration had been successful. There were a number of things that would be learned, not least having some kind of clear knowledge of make up of the beach that tanks would land on to see if the ground would be suitable. Mountbatten thought that both ideas were worth pursuing, but worried that the DD tanks would be vulnerable against a defended beach until they were clear of the water and had dropped the floatation gear. Having tanks capable of wading coming off a landing craft meant that the problem of grounding the LCT could be done even if there was still a depth of water between the ramp and dry land.
On the train back later in the day, Mountbatten wrote up some notes. Mr Churchill was pushing as hard as he could for something to be done to relieve the pressure on the Soviets. So far, the limited commando raids had been impressive, but without giving the Germans any real problems. Stalin’s call for a second front was obviously completely unrealistic. The build up of the kind of amphibious ships that would be needed to successfully put a strong force ashore would take years. By summer, if the ships currently out in the Mediterranean were brought back, Mountbatten’s planning team thought that they might, just might, have enough capacity to put the best part of a Division ashore.
The difficulty was that Wavell and Cunningham had persuaded Churchill to allow them to keep those amphibious assets. They planned to use them in a campaign to capture some of the Italian islands, securing the eastern Mediterranean, and prepare to do something about some Greek islands or even Sicily. The 8th Army had plenty of men and tanks sitting around waiting to see what would happen with the French, but capturing Rhodes would be another big loss for Mussolini. The Australian 7 Division had been exercising as much as they could with the commandoes, so there was a solid core for taking the fight across the Mediterranean.
Mountbatten’s problem was not only a lack of the correct shipping, but also an actual Combined Operations organisation that would be able to herd the three cats known as the Navy, Army and RAF. General Alan Brooke was keen on keeping the Prime Minister happy, without actually committing men to a half-baked plan would just end with lots of dead troops with nothing very much to show for it. Helping the Soviets was all very well, but realistically the Infantry and Armoured Divisions currently in the UK weren’t ready to take on the Wehrmacht. O’Connor’s 8th Army in Libya was about the only formation Brooke trusted to do the job. Supporting them, all the way around the Cape of Good Hope was just too long a line of supply for anything more than an island-hopping campaign. Even doing that much would mean some pretty hard lessons would have to be learned.
Lord Louis Mountbatten sometimes wondered if captaining HMS Illustrious would have been the better option. The fact that the Prime Minister, when laying out his plan for Mountbatten to take over Combined Operations, in response to his request to stay with Illustrious the Prime Minister responded “You fool! The best thing you can hope to do there is to repeat your last achievement and get yourself sunk!”. Churchill wanted to take the war to the enemy and saw in Mountbatten a man who would be able to do that. Mountbatten was keen to do his bit, and the exercise that morning gave him another card in his hand.
The ability to support a landing with tanks in the first wave would give the infantry useful support. The difficulties of getting tanks out of the water, up a beach and over any obstacles was still to be satisfactorily resolved. Mountbatten had pencilled in a meeting with Major-General Hobart to discuss just what exactly was in the pipeline and what else should be. The Landing Craft Tank (2) had worked out well, but getting them over the English Channel in anything more than slightly choppy water was a worry. There would probably have to be an American solution to that issue, the ability to build enough ships and smaller craft for an invasion was currently beyond British shipbuilding capacity.
It was Mountbatten’s intention to fly out to Egypt in time to see the planned amphibious attacks that would lead to taking Rhodes. The Australian involvement had meant that the planning had to be absolutely clear on what would happen, the memories of Gallipoli were still very strong among the Australian senior officers. It was probably a godsend that Australian 7 Division were involved from the very beginning. There was a lot of work that was being done in Egypt that Mountbatten wanted to see for himself, and perhaps get a few of the planners back to England with him afterwards.
The danger to all this was in Malaya and Burma. The last big exercise, the dress rehearsal, had had to be postponed because the shipping and the aircraft carrier had to be used to move troops, equipment and fighters from Egypt and Persia to Burma. Once all the ships were back under Cunningham’s command, the exercise would be rescheduled and then hopefully, the offensive to capture enemy held islands could begin.
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I think you mistyped the date here. Surely it's supposed to be 21 January 1942.
It looks like Churchill is getting restless. That's seldom a good thing. It also looks like he avoided nearly dying in the Whitehouse during his visit.
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Ramp-Rat
Monthly Donor
The question of whether Erwin Rommel was a tactical genius, is dependent on which Rommel you are talking about. The WWI, company/regimental commander, the Battle of France divisional commander, or the mid war Army commander in North Africa/Sicily, and later in France. In both WWI and the Battle of France, his tactical skills and attitude of audacity, audacity, audacity, were without question highly successful. However once he was playing on a much larger stage and against a foe that had greater military depth and resilience, he for all his tactical genius, wasn’t able to convert this into strategic success. His failure to take into account the strategic situation, and the logistical realities of the situation he was in, meant that for all his tactile ability and audacity, even against men who were not as capable as him, he was going to lose. In France in 44, he was right that the only way to defeat the Anglo Americans was on the beaches day one. However he didn’t have a plan on what to do if he failed, which was essentially get rid off Hitler and his gang and make peace as soon as possible.
Rommel was very much a product for the Anglo American press, he wasn’t well regarded by his German peers, and the Soviets hadn’t heard of him. He didn’t fight in what was the major cockpit of the European conflict, which was the Eastern Front. No matter what the Anglo American people might think, the war essentially won on the Eastern Front, it was there that the overwhelming majority of casualties that the Germans suffered were incurred. The wars largest Tank battle took place on the Eastern Front, in fact the Eastern Front was where all of the largest battles of WWII took place. While the largest amphibious landing ever took place in the West, and the Anglo Americans, were able to deploy more mechanical devices into action than the Germans and Soviets combined. At the end of the day, when it comes to men, the battles in the West were minor in comparison to those in the East. And had Rommel been posted to the East, he would be just one of the legion of German generals involved. And chances are given his persistence failure to take into account logistics, he would have made a major mistake and ended up being captured or killed, given that he constantly chose to lead from the front, when he should have been at his HQ, like the overwhelming majority of senior commanders.
RR.
Rommel was very much a product for the Anglo American press, he wasn’t well regarded by his German peers, and the Soviets hadn’t heard of him. He didn’t fight in what was the major cockpit of the European conflict, which was the Eastern Front. No matter what the Anglo American people might think, the war essentially won on the Eastern Front, it was there that the overwhelming majority of casualties that the Germans suffered were incurred. The wars largest Tank battle took place on the Eastern Front, in fact the Eastern Front was where all of the largest battles of WWII took place. While the largest amphibious landing ever took place in the West, and the Anglo Americans, were able to deploy more mechanical devices into action than the Germans and Soviets combined. At the end of the day, when it comes to men, the battles in the West were minor in comparison to those in the East. And had Rommel been posted to the East, he would be just one of the legion of German generals involved. And chances are given his persistence failure to take into account logistics, he would have made a major mistake and ended up being captured or killed, given that he constantly chose to lead from the front, when he should have been at his HQ, like the overwhelming majority of senior commanders.
RR.
The Signal intercept unit - was exactly that - a signal intercept unit and was a bloody good one - manned by English speakers many of whom also understood nuanced English having spent time in the UK - it had nothing to do with the Black Code (this was intercepted on a more global level)
While British OpSec got better as the war went one and education of officers etc improved - even by mid 1942 unit commanders where still being lax
For example a unit commander reporting in the clear "7 of my horses have thrown a shoe" thinking he was being cunning was clearly understood as "7 of my tanks have broken down" - so the Germans knew that particular unit was now understrength.
Unit commanders would discuss all sorts of things in the clear - at Gazalla 2 Brigade commanders lamented about the poor mine field between their 'boxes' much of it unable to be covered by direct weapons - guess where Rommel attacked?
Often Rommel had a better picture of British/Commonwealth dispositions than the British commander did
And the intercept unit was forward for one of 2 reason depending on who you believe
- It's commander had been insulted for staying in the rear and so moved to the front lines (or near enough)
- (and more probable) it was attempting to get as close as possible in order to improve the quality of any intercept and to enable more accurate triangulation so as to better plot where enemy units where
- Really focused the allies on OpSec - while they had been improving the shocking amount of information that was discovered by the Aussies and British tankers caused a massive tightening up of radio discipline going from meh/okay to the best in the world in just a few weeks
- Denied Rommel a massive source of tactical and local strategic information (that with the loss of skilled personnel was difficult to replace) just as the US changed the Black Code and denying the Germans that source as well.
- Allowed the Allies now aware of how good the Germans were at Radio Interception to use it against them with fake units setup etc
During the first Burma campaign Slim gave orders over the radio in the clear.
He and his two division commanders spoke Gurkhali, a language not part of the range of tongues of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere/
Wasn't there a war in the air too, in the west, which if nothing else on the Allied side forced the diversion of huge amounts of German artillery to protect Germany's industrial heartlands?
Too few speakers outside the Pakaha (White New Zealanders) and the Maori themselves, unlike the Indian Army which was populated by soldiers who were required to pass exams in Hindi, Urdu or Ghurkali. Slim would often begin a speech in Hindi and would end it in Ghurkahi, much to the delights of his listeners who could only speak one or the other the languages. At least here was a commander who spoke their native anguage, even if it was the wrong one!
And? Rarity away from home is an advantage in a military setting, it makes it less likely unwanted ears can listen in.
Problem is, you need speakers at both ends of a conversation for people to understand it. Maori speakers are very, very, very rare on the ground outside of Kiwi land. You might as well as wished for speakers of the 800 or so Indigenous Australian languages that used to exist before white settlement.
You've still got a pool of potentially tens of thousands. I don't think the USA had more with the Navajo (or the other Amerind tribes).
Talking with a guy today who's grandfather was arty in Sicily/ Italy and his father had told him how some Maori were used for radio comms exactly as discussed
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I believe that at that point there'd be a lot more Maori who were fluent, as it predated the big urban migration.
Still low numbers in total but perhaps enough to use in a theatre with a strong NZ presence
Still low numbers in total but perhaps enough to use in a theatre with a strong NZ presence
Ramp-Rat
Monthly Donor
Yes the Anglo Americans conducted a major bombing offensive against principally the Germans, and to a lesser extent the Italians and Romanians. And these bombing campaigns did require the Axis powers to divert resources, especially fighters and anti aircraft artillery from the eastern front. But despite what the “Bomber Barons “ believed, the bombing offensive was never going to end the war in Europe. And while the aircrews did suffer some of the highest casualty rates of the Allied forces, their total casualties for the entire war, just about equaled those of the foot soldiers during a major battle in the East. What ever those of us who are from the West think, WWII in Europe was won by the Soviets in a prolonged slug feast with the Germans. The Anglo Americans, took the British way of war, pay someone else to do the heavy lifting and take the majority of the casualties. While using your technological superiority, to fight the war with as few casualties as possible, hence the massive spending on bombers, artillery and armour, that the Anglo Americans engaged in.
RR.
Hello? Tell me how can DDay happen before 1944? And Italy? They were fighting out, just too bad Italy was mountains glue together.