Man Versus Machine: A Brief History of the Infantryman's War Against the Tank

By Clive Paling

World War I

Tanks first appeared on the battlefield on 15th September 1916 to find no opposition from an enemy completely surprised and demoralised. They were very unreliable machines; of the 59 sent to France only 32 reached the start line and only 9 of these completed their tasks. In spite of this the results were encouraging.

It took the Germans time to get over their surprise, but in the first tank attacks of the following year the infantry struck back. The Germans possessed a special bullet called the 'K' type. This had a tungsten carbide core and was made for sniping, at ranges up to 750m. The Germans discovered, from captured tanks, that the 'K' bullet would penetrated the 5-10mm thick soft iron hulls of the MkI and MkII tanks. All German infantry were from then on issued with 5 rounds of 'K' ammunition and machine gun crews with a full belt.

The British were aware of the effect of the 'K' round and from June 1917 the MkIV tank had armour that was proof against it. The enemy reply was to build an enlarged bolt action rifle scaled up from 7.92 mm calibre to 13 mm. This brute of a rifle was 1.7m long and weighed 12kg; it could penetrate the MkIV at 110m, if struck at right angles, but was not popular with those who fired it. These bullets were later found to contain a capsule of 'tear gas', but the effect in the fume filled tanks of the time was probably unnoticeable.

The greatest danger to the tank was the field gun, a hit from which no tank could survive. The German 77mm was the ideal anti-tank gun. It fired a 7kg shell which could destroy a tank completely. Each division held a section of guns in reserve with horses in readiness to form a 'flying squad' and were supplied with special steel pointed anti-tank shells. This was an excellent arrangement, but reduced the number of guns available for conventional tasks.

The Inter-War Years

The end of the war brought an immediate stop to experimentation, due to lack of resources and absence of real interest from much of the military, many of whom still regarded the horse as the king of the battlefield. In spite of improvement in tank design it was not until 1930 that interest was taken in anti-tank weapons. Guns were developed in many countries, but with a slavish uniformity of calibre, which can be split into three main groups:

20 mm cal. with armour penetration of 15-25 mm @ 350 m
37 mm cal. claiming a penetration of 25 mm @ 950 m
47 mm cal. - very little improvement over the 37 mm

As a backup many countries developed an anti-tank rifle able to penetrate 12-19 mm of armour at 275 m.

The Spanish Civil War

This was the testing ground for the above armaments and provided some dangerously misleading lessons. They appeared to be effective against the lightly armoured vehicles of the day. Whereas the tank designers saw the necessity of improving their vehicles, those who specialised in the development of anti-tank weapons were content to stick with what they had. Consequently most nations entered WWII poorly equipped.

Sheets hanging from a rope stretched across the road, in front of a row of dinner plates laid upside down, was enough to hold up one platoon of tanks for hours. The tank commanders were unwilling to advance against this unknown obstacle.

Other desperate measures were used in Spain. One was the now familiar Molotov cocktail, almost as dangerous to the user as to his opponent. Another, the speciality of the miners of northern Spain, was a cloth bag filled with blasting explosives and a short fuse. Running up to a tank, pulling the fuse pin and throwing the bag beneath the belly of the tank was usually fatal to both tank and attacker.

A few years later the Russians tried a similar tactic against the Germans. Dogs were given food under the hulls of tanks so that they came to associate tanks with food. They then had explosive charges strapped to their backs and were released to destroy the German tanks. However the dogs were unable to distinguish between German and Russian tanks and the practice was soon abandoned.

World War II

France 1940 - rude awakenings

The British Expeditionary Force faced the German panzers armed with the 2- pounder (40 mm cal.) anti-tank gun and the Boys anti-tank rifle. Patriotic newspapers carried photographs of the "deadly new tank killing guns". The reality was far different and the BEF returned from Dunkirk soundly beaten, minus it's heavy equipment, and with a much greater respect for the tank.

In spite of it's inadequacies the 2-pounder continued in production as there was no replacement. Procrastination over the 6-pounder ensured that it was still a year away.

The Home Guard

Formed in the dark days after Dunkirk the Local Defence Volunteers, later renamed the Home Guard, were expected to make up for lack of weapons with enthusiasm and bravery.

One Home Guard manual describes how a four man team can destroy a tank. Two members push a length of tramline or similar material into the running gear of the tank to jam it. Once immobilised a third member douses the tank with petrol and the fourth ignites it. The crew can then be shot as they try to evacuate.

Tanks did not ignite as easily as the Home Guard supposed, but there was far more petrol available than there was explosives. However, tanks can be stalled by burning up the surrounding oxygen, and flame figures large in Home Guard manuals. Static traps were set up throughout Britain. Pipes led to road verges from tanks dug into nearby hillsides. Fuel flowed by gravity into the road to be ignited by flare pistol. A variation was to bury a 200 litre drum of fuel into a road bank. Half a kilo of explosive detonated behind it would fire a sheet of flame 3m wide and 25m long across the road.

Two grenades, deemed too dangerous for issue by the regular army, were the pride and joy of the Home Guard.

The first of these, the sticky bomb, was a glass sphere mounted on a wooden handle and covered in bird lime. It contained ½kg of semi-liquid nitroglycerine which, when thrown against a tank, spread out into a 'cow pat' which was detonated by a 5 second fuse.

The second device was a glass bottle, the size of a stubby, containing a mixture of phosphorus, benzene, water and a small piece of rubber. The rubber dissolved in the benzene to form a sticky mess, which stuck to the tank when the bottle was smashed. The phosphorus, when exposed to air, caused the whole lot to ignite.
Fortunately neither device was used in anger.

Development of the Anti-Tank Gun

Germany
The 37mm gun (slightly less effective than the British 2-pounder) with which she started the war was small, light and easily handled by it's crew. However it was well out of date by 1939. It was not replaced until 1941, when a scaled up version of 50mm calibre started to appear. It could punch a hole through 50 mm of armour at 1000m. It was low, easy to conceal and at around 1 tonne still relatively easy to move.

The Russian tanks with their thick, sloped armour proved impervious to the 50 mm. The next stage in development was the 75 mm which was much heavier, but able to penetrate 95mm of armour at 1000m.

The most successful gun was a development of the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun. Although large, cumbersome and weighing 5 tonnes it could defeat most armour up to the end of the war.

Britain
Although the 2-pounder proved of limited use at the start of the war there was no replacement until the 6-pounder (of 57 mm cal.) appeared in 1942. This was still light enough to manhandle easy and quick to fire, but able to defeat all enemy tanks then in use.

By the end of the desert war the tank was gaining the upper hand. The response was a gun firing a shell of 17lbs weight which could defeat the frontal armour of medium tanks at 1000m and heavy tanks at 500m. However the weight had now risen to 2½ tonnes.

USA
The USA began the war with the usual 37mm, which was later replaced with a copy of the British 6-pounder. They also produced a very effective 3-inch (76.2 mm) gun, but this was heavy and clumsy which, coupled with unreliable fuses, soon gave it a bad reputation.

Russia.
The 45 mm gun which faced the blitzkrieg was antiquated by 1941 standards and the 57 mm which replaced it was out of date at its introduction. Rather than develop new A/T guns the Russians gave their artillery the secondary role of destroying tanks. Copying Germany's lead, they adopted an 85mm anti-aircraft gun for the A/T role and later a 100 mm gun. Russia's main reliance was on sheer weight of numbers rather than finesse.

Anti-Tank Ammunition

The purpose of ammunition is to penetrate the armour of the tank. This can be achieved using kinetic energy or chemical energy.

In the first the shell penetrates armour by a combination of weight and velocity, the faster and heavier the shell the better the penetration. This can be defeated by making the armour thicker, but at the cost of heavier tanks. The Russians discovered that sloping the armour caused shells to glance off and effectively increased the horizontal thickness of the armour without an increase in weight.

Chemical energy is used in two ways. In the 'squash head' shell an explosive charge squashes itself onto the tank plates before detonating. This usually causes a scab of metal to flake off the plate and whiz around inside the tank, to the detriment of the crew. The second type is known as the shaped or hollow charge warhead. The explosive is shaped into a hollow cone and lined with a thin layer of metal. When detonated a concentrated jet of superheated gas and vaporised metal is directed against the target. This is capable of blasting a hole through over 200 mm of armour plate, often igniting ammunition and fuel supplies inside the vehicle.

Grenades

Most nations used some form of anti-tank grenade, usually of hollow charge design, but all contained only a small amount of explosive. The effective range of a thrown grenade was suicidally short. Rifles were modified to lob a grenade to about 50m, but this was still rather a last ditch resort.

The Germans produced the Panzerfaust, a hollow charge bomb holding a 1.6kg charge capable of piercing up to 200 mm of plate. It was fired from a steel tube, 5cm in diameter and 80cm long, using a gunpowder charge. The first model had a range of 30m, later improved to 60m. This effective weapon was disliked by it's users, due to the unstable explosives used.

Rockets

The well known bazooka was developed by a US colonel who was interested in rockets from boyhood. With no funds or support and only one assistant he produced, in under a year, a simple shoulder fired rocket launched from a tube. At an army demonstration of anti –tank weapons, most of the weapons demonstrated were incapable of hitting their target; however the bazooka scored hit after hit, even in the hands of the onlooking top brass who queued up for a go. Marrying this with an existing hollow charge grenade he produced an instant success.

This was rushed to the troops in 1942. Some models, supplied to the Russians, were captured by the Germans, who soon developed their own version.

Conclusion

As we have seen the battle against the tank resulted in guns of escalating calibre, until they reached a stage where their size and weight began to tell against them. With the exception of the panzerfaust, grenades were seen to be of little use. Finally the bazooka and its derivatives gave the infantryman a weapon which was portable, easy to use and effective. Such was its success that many military experts believed, at the close of WWII, that the day of the tank was drawing to a close. They were to be proved wrong.

Bibliography GUDERIAN Gen. Heinz Achtung - Panzer London, Arms and Armour Press, 1992, page 59. WEEKS John Men Against Tanks London, Purnell Book Services, chapters 1-5.

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