Some posts (slightly edited) from an old thread but bearing on mostly British tanks and guns.
Often large differences in effectiveness came with sort of "behind the scenes" changes. As the war went on the communications, even in an Infantry division changed considerably. A 1939/40 division had about 75 radios of which 51 were in the divisional artillery regiment and 42 of those were operated by artillery regiment operators. In late 1944 a division had about 1000 radios. At the beginning of the war other 'signalling' methods included runner/messengers, flags/signal lamps/ signal panels (for aircraft) and of course telephone/telegraph wire. These three categories dropped off as the radio use increase.
In late 1944
any forward observer could call for the fire of any and ALL guns/tubes within range of the target regardless of what units they belonged to. A flexibility enjoyed by no other army. The BEF would need about 10,000 more radios to bring it up to 1944 standard of equipment let alone the changes in doctrine/training. See this site for much more detail:
Artillery Communications
In some cases using the Germans as a model may make sense but not everything the Germans did was the
best or
only way of doing something.
I would also note that while the British army was the first to be motorized/mechanized this merely meant there were no horses. An infantry company in the BEF in France had Four 15cwt trucks. (1680lb/764kg payload) and one 8cwt truck. All the Infantry walked.
Going back to the tanks, you have the circle of doctrine (tactics) dictating the weapons specified in future tanks and then you had the weapons fitted helping dictate the tactics (doctrine) used in the field.
The British in the 1930s believed in "
firing on the move". That is that
rapid and
accurate firing while moving/advancing would suppress the enemy and give the British an advantage. Without mechanical stabilizers the British tried a
scheme of using tank guns that were
free in elevation. That is there was no mechanical elevation mechanism, ie hand-wheels/gears. Elevation was controlled by the gunners shoulder against a shoulder piece and his legs/body allowed for a much more rapid and accurate adjustment in elevation as the the tank crossed less than smooth ground. This may very well have been true at slow speeds in tests. However in the real world the ability of the gunners to control elevation in this way was actually pretty limited. It also made no allowance for changes in line (lateral movement) which
It also had the follow on effect of degrading the armaments long range ability. It didn't matter how good the gun/ammo performed at long range (800-1000yds and beyond) as each shot was essentially a "first" shot because the gun/s moved under recoil even if the gun was stationary. Correcting a 1st shot miss wasn't a matter of going up or down a 1/4 turn on a handle for instance but trying to either push the rear end of the gun up or relaxing the leg/body muscles and letting it drop a bit,
hardly precise. The firing on the move could also consume a lot of ammo for each hit actually achieved.
Now combine this with the decision to NOT us HE ammo because the 40mm was considered too small in spite of the fact that just about
every army that used a 37mm tank gun issued HE ammunition and the British are having a real problem dealing with targets of all types at long range. The MG was
supposed to deal with ALL non-armored targets and here we run into another problem. The vast majority of the worlds AT guns and light field guns
were partially armored. At least they had nominally
bullet proof shields covering the forward arc.
Granted a number of these shields could be pierced at close range by rifle/mg ammo at close range even without using AP ammo but that didn't help at around 800yds and beyond. The gun shields could and did protect at least a few of the crew from long range mg fire.
What this means is that British tankers, when faced with long range AT gun or field gun fire had two or three choices. One, call for artillery support while popping smoke. Given mid/late 30s radio nets this was somewhat iffy even
if the tanks were within range of the supporting artillery. It also means a halt/temporary retreat in the advance. Two is attempting to slug it out at long range which is the worst choice and three, advance as fast a possible (charge?) to get close enough for the MG to become effective against the towed guns. Close enough to penetrate the shield or advance to a point to take the guns from the flank and/or close enough to make getting a hit on gun a likely proposition with the main gun AP shot. The last two choices are not very good ones but given the radio communications of the day may be the ONLY options.
Different choices in the design process may have allowed different tactics, which in turn, may have allowed for different choices for future tanks. Throwing out the "firing on the move" tactic early on
may lead to improved long range accuracy for both the main gun and the co-ax gun which extends the range the tanks can deal with non-armored targets. Better, more precise elevation control for quicker walking successive shots onto the target. Buying HE ammo from the start would also do wonders for this stand off capability. The 40mm Bofors shell held 65grams of HE. The German 37mm held 25 grams and the US 37mm AT and tank shells held about 38 grams. The 2pdr wouldn't take out field fortifications but it's ability to deal with towed guns (and their towing vehicles, one or two 40mm HE vs how many MG rounds?) would be much enhanced.
The 2pdr solid shot was also a bit lacking in long range performance due to it's shape.
From
as I want to give credit for the picture.
4th round is an APCBC projectile and extended the practical range of the 2pdr by several hundred yds at least.
