Osprey - New Vanguard 296 - Tanks of D-Day 1944.pdf

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TANKS OF D-DAY
1944
Armor on the beaches of Normandy and
southern France
STEVEN J. ZALOGA
ILLUSTRATED BY FELIPE RODRÍGUEZ
NEW VANGUARD 296
TANKS OF D-DAY 1944
Armor on the beaches of Normandy
and southern France
STEVEN J. ZALOGA
ILLUSTRATED BY FELIPE RODRIGUEZ
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
• Lessons learned?
4
6
SPECIALIZED TANKS FOR
OVERLORD
• The CDL Canal Defence Light Night-Fighting Tank
• The Sherman Duplex Drive Amphibious Tank
• Deep-Wading Tanks
• Churchill AVRE
• AVRE Bridging Devices
• AVRE Carpet Layers
• Crab Flail Mine-Clearing Tank
• Churchill Crocodile Flamethrower Tank
• T1 Armored Engineer Vehicle
• M1 Tank-Dozer
• US Army acquisition of Armoured Funnies
TANKS, DOCTRINE, AND ORGANIZATION
• Gunfire support groups
• Armored engineer support
21
THE CAMPAIGN
• Sword Beach
• Juno Beach
• Gold Beach
• Omaha Beach
• Utah Beach
• The other D-Day
25
BATTLE ANALYSIS
FURTHER READING
INDEX
45
47
48
TANKS OF D-DAY 1944
Armor on the beaches of Normandy and
southern France
INTRODUCTION
The Operation
Overlord
amphibious landings in France in the summer of
1944 were spearheaded by tank landings. This book examines the specialized
armor involved both in the
Neptune
landings in Normandy on June 6, and
the
Dragoon
landings in southern France on August 15.
Lessons learned?
Allied forces had conducted numerous amphibious operations prior to
Operation
Overlord.
Most of these occurred in the Mediterranean theater
in 1942–44. Among the first landings involving the amphibious tanks was
Operation
Torch
on November 8, 1942 against France’s North African
colonies of Morocco and Algeria. At the time, the Allies had limited naval
capabilities for landing tanks, and the primary method was the use of LCM
(Landing Craft Mechanized), which delivered small numbers of M5 light
tanks fitted with “Blue Freeze” deep-wading kits.
The Operation
Husky
landings on Sicily in July 1943 once again saw the
use of tanks with deep-wading kits delivered to shore from landing craft.
As in the case of Operation
Torch,
the beaches were not heavily defended
and the number of tanks landed in the initial waves was quite modest. The
same was largely true for subsequent amphibious operations on the Italian
mainland, including Operation
Avalanche
at Salerno in September 1943,
and Operation
Shingle
against Anzio in January 1944. In all these cases, the
delivery method was to use deep-wading kits on the tanks and deliver them
by landing craft.
The outlier in all these landings was the Operation
Jubilee
raid against
Dieppe on August 19, 1942. Although this raid was much smaller than
the landings in the Mediterranean, the lessons from this failed attack had
a profound impact on Allied planning for the use of tanks in Operation
Overlord.
Dieppe was seen as a more representative model for
Overlord
than the Mediterranean experiences, since it was a contested landing against
German Atlantikwall defenses.
The Dieppe raid was both a tactical and technical disaster, exacerbated by
abysmal planning and poor intelligence. The armored spearhead consisted of
the 14th (King’s Own Calgary) Canadian Army Tank Regiment landing 30
Churchill infantry tanks from Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs). The port of Dieppe
was protected by German coastal artillery batteries on either side, as well
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as significant fortified defenses in the town itself. German gunfire managed
to damage, disable, or sink all ten LCTs delivering the tanks to shore. The
Churchills were fitted with deep-wading trunks. Two of the 29 tanks that
attempted to land drowned in the surf; the rest reached shore. The planning had
failed to consider the effect of chert rocks covering the beach, which immobilized
about a dozen of the tanks. The three leading Churchills were fitted with a
Beach Track-Laying Device that laid chespaling track over the 2ft-high seawall
to provide additional traction. The seawalls in front of the town also proved to
be a formidable barrier, and only 16 tanks managed to overcome both the chert
and seawalls to advance into the town. By the end of the day, all 29 tanks were
abandoned in Dieppe and many of their crews killed, wounded, or captured.
The technical lessons from Dieppe were many. Many planners felt that
landing tanks directly on shore from LCTs was too dangerous for the LCTs.
This led the program to develop amphibious tanks that could be launched
from thousands of yards offshore and swim to the beach, thereby protecting
the LCTs. Lt. Col. George Reeves, assistant director of the Department of
Tank Development at the War Office, prepared a report a week after the
Dieppe raid outlining the need for specialized tanks to deal with the obstacles
and defenses. Over time, this was expanded to include flail tanks to clear
mines, bridge-laying tanks to assist in overcoming beach obstacles such
as seawalls and anti-tank ditches, and tanks capable of firing large, high-
explosive charges to deal with walls and other obstructions.
From an operational perspective, the raid showed the hazards of conducting
an amphibious landing against a defended port. Although it was not immediately
apparent to Allied intelligence, the German Atlantikwall program placed an
emphasis on defending ports, since it was presumed that port facilities would
be an essential Allied requirement for logistical support. The areas between the
ports were weakly defended. Since there were limited resources, some regions
were more heavily fortified than others, notably the Pas-de-Calais. The essential
reason that lower Normandy was selected for Operation
Neptune
was that its
Atlantikwall defenses were especially weak, well into 1944.
The heavy losses suffered
during the ill-conceived
Operation
Jubilee
raid on
Dieppe on August 19, 1942
strongly influenced the
Overlord
plans regarding the
use of tanks in an amphibious
landing. This is a scene from
the eastern side of the beach
in front of the Dieppe casino
with Churchill III “Bloody”
of 10 Troop, 14th Canadian
Army Tank Regiment in the
foreground, “Buttercup”
behind it, and tank landing
craft TLC-5 (No. 121) in the left
background.
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