Tanks: Unstoppable Beasts? Tricky Question.

I’ve long been interested in World War 2; I’ve read about the major actions in the war, as well as about many of the major players in it. I’ve played (perhaps far too many) games set during World War 2. It is only, recently, however, that I’ve become interested in understanding how combat during World War 2 really worked.This interest stemmed from my general interest in the war, and from two of the games I’ve been playing lately: Red Orchestra and Company of Heroes. Red Orchestra is a first person shooter, built to be more realistic than most FPS games; bullets drop, tanks behave (mostly) as they would in the real world, there are no crosshairs (just ironsights), etc. There is, of course, that one not-so-realistic factor: players regularly respawn after being killed.

Company of Heroes is a real time strategy game, giving the player control over infantry, tanks, artillery, and a smattering of air support. The goals are what one would expect: capture this strategic town, defend against a counter-attack, protect convoys. It’s a good deal more arcade-ish than Red Orchestra, but there are still lessons to be learned from it. What are they?

My Major Misconception About Tanks

While playing both of these games, I noticed something: the tanks weren’t behaving as I expected them to. I had always imagined tanks to be these massive, unstoppable monstrosities, charging (or lumbering) across the battlefield, immune to infantry. If you had tanks and the enemy had infantry, you had already won. I assumed that the path that many combat operations went during World War 2 was like this: a group of tanks would basically smash into a defensive line (because they were unstoppable, you see), and the infantry would follow in their wake.

It’s amazing what our brains will come up with when they don’t have any real information.

In both games, I found that tanks were, alas, not immune to infantry. While sometimes infantry would fall before the might of schwere Panzers, quite often, if I was not careful with my tanks, they’d soon be flaming heaps of metal, surrounded by infantry.

A little bit of reading on tank warfare during World War 2 did two things for me. First, it confirmed what I was seeing in the games: infantry, with the right tools (anti-take mines, Panzershrecks or bazookas, anti-tank grenades) could and did take out enemy tanks. It certainly wasn’t a piece of cake, but it was doable. The second thing that my bit of reading did was make me realize just how little I know about combined arms tactics, and how very complicated the matter is.

Many Points in Time, Many Truths

I thought it rather ironic that, when I sat down to write this post, I thought I knew pretty much what I was going to say. I wanted to check a few more sources to double check what I “knew”; those few sources threw everything I had learned on its head.

The source that really knocked things into perspective for me was World War II Infantry Anti-Tank Tactics - or perhaps I should say just the first few pages, as that is all I can currently access. (I’ve already requested the book through interlibrary loan; perhaps once I’ve finished reading the book, I’ll find that this whole post is incorrect.)

In those first few pages, the book proved and disproved what I had thought about tanks. Let me elaborate…

From page 1:

The 1940 Blitzkrieg sent other armies into near panic, and a rush to find a means of countering it ensued on both sides of the Atlantic. The fear was often exaggerated, convincing some that infantry units were helpless against tanks. Often the planning committees looked only at the tank itself, and did not consider the combined arms aspects of German doctrine; but effective anti-tank defence would also have to be a combined arms effort.

Reading this made me feel not quite so silly, in assuming that tanks were the end-all, be-all of the battlefield; apparently, some pretty intelligent military people thought the same thing.

Perhaps a segment from the next page will explain, at least in part, where I got my ideas about what tanks were and what they were capable of:

From their first use by the British Army on the Western Front in September 1916, infantry has perceived tanks as a ‘terror’ weapon capable of routing troops, piercing defensive lines and driving deep into rear areas. Considering the limitations of period anti-tank weapons, there was considerable justification for this fear.

The first sentence sums up excellently how I viewed tanks. The view that tanks were basically unstoppable, terror-inducing machines has some truth behind it. The problem with this view, however, is that it’s too general and too static. The problem, in short, is not considering time. Again, from page 1 of the same book, providing an important key to understanding tanks during World War 2:

Anti-tank tactics and weapons were in a constant state of evolution throughout the war. Improved models of tanks, evolving armour tactics, new field innovations and the overall development of combined arms tactics all contributed to the process.

It may be that this is the second biggest misconception I had about tanks: that the tactics they used were the same throughout the war. If I had stopped to make my grey matter work a little, I would have realized that this was a silly notion. Tanks varied widely throughout the war, and how they were used (and how the enemy fought against them) varied accordingly. Why I had shoved all tanks of all nations into one general lump, I’m not entirely sure. In my defense though, until one starts digging into the matter, let’s face it: tanks look pretty similar across the board. How was I supposed to know that a Churchill tank was built to go up against dug-in infantry (World War 1 style), and not go toe-to-toe with a Tiger? They’re both big, armored vehicles, both with a big gun on a turret!

How Things Worked

While my understanding of how infantry and tanks worked together is still tenuous at best, something which I’m going to rectify with more study, as I understand it right now, here’s how things went down:

Early on in the war, my vision of how tanks functioned wasn’t too far from the mark. The anti-tank weapons that infantry had access to were all but useless, particularly the anti-tank rifle. This lack of decent hand weapons to go up against tanks led to the tanks controlling a battle if the defenders had no other anti-tank defenses, such as AT guns. It also led to desperation on the part of many defenders; there are records of Polish cavalary attacking German tanks. Incidentally, even many of the “anti-tank guns” early in the war were fairly useless; the Germans nicknamed a 37mm gun as an “armoured door knocker”; all it did was let the attackers know where the gunners were. This, however, was all to change, as both tanks and anti-tank weaponry were developed further.

Once these developments had taken place, the relationship between infantry and tanks shifted and became truly symbiotic. Instead of tanks bashing through lines followed by infantry, often, the infantry would move forward first to clear out anti-tank infantry; at this time, the tanks would support the advancing foot troops. After an area was secure from anti-tank defenses, then the tanks could move up, accompanied by the infantry. It sounds almost like some peculiar give-and-take dance.

At long range, clearly, tanks would have an advantage over infantry that did not have tank support or long range AT guns. However, at close range, particularly if the area being traversed is cramped with trees and buildings, advancing tanks need infantry support; otherwise, they’re basically sitting ducks, inviting enemy infantry to attack. To quote one of the acknowledgement voices from Company of Heroes (and pardon the language): “This tin can’s a fuckin’ death trap.” In an area of limited mobility, without infantry support to cover the tank’s flanks, this is rather true.

One of the major problems facing a tank crew in close quarters is the fact that visibility is awful. While I’m highly hesitant to trust Red Orchestra’s damage model completely, I do trust that the creators modeled the interior of the tanks correctly. From the positions available - driver, machine-gunner, and commander, who has access to the main gunsight as well as small rectangular holes in the tank cupola - one can mostly see in front of the tank, and even then, it’s not great visibility. The slits in the cupola afford the commander, in theory, a 360 view around the tank; however, there are rather large gaps in that view, as the slits aren’t very wide, and have pieces of the hull in between each one. There are three further options for getting a good view to the sides and rear of the tank:

1. Rotating the gun turret all the way around to use its sight; not a very practical method, as the vast majority of the turrets had a slow rotation time.
2. Popping the hatch and looking out. In a closed area, this obviously was quite dangerous; often, due to the tank’s noise and visibility issues, infantry could flank the tank and wait for an opportune time to attack. A commander popping his head out of the tank would be one of those times.
3. Some tanks had an almost trapdoor-like hatch on the front of the tank, allowing the driver to pop it open and stick his head out; the T34 to the left (painted with German markings) is a good example of this. Obviously, sticking your head out of that hole during a battle wouldn’t be a good idea.

Furthermore, even if the crew could see enemy infantry, problems arose when the infantry got near the tank for a close assault - namely, the tank couldn’t target them. Due to how most tanks were built, they couldn’t lower the angle of the main gun or the coaxial machine-gun enough to target enemies that were practically on top of the tank. So, if infantry could flank a tank in a tight area, not only would it be possible that the tank crew wouldn’t know about it, but even if they did, they couldn’t do anything about it. They were fish in a barrel, in other words. At that point, infantry could use a number of anti-tank weapons to knock out or immobilize the vehicle. (One of the more “interesting” assault weapons I read about was a smoke hand-grenade, which was typicaly smashed over an air vent, filling the tank with smoke, which would force the tankers to evacuate, at which point they’d be captured.)

While I realize that manning a tank in a videogame is far from being the real thing, I can add to all of this that while tanking in Red Orchestra, at least half the time when your tank is taken out, it’s from an enemy that none of the crew could see. I don’t know if that particular statistic for tanks being taken out by infantry during the war, but I’d say it was still a pretty high amount.

Misconceptions Overturned?

As I mentioned above, when I first thought of writing this post, I figured I’d set out to tear apart the common misconception that tanks were unstoppable. I knew my stuff, damnit! Instead, as I wrote the post, I think I simply opened a giant can of worms: as usual, instead of there being one simple truth that we can fall to, there are multiple truths, which vary a great deal depending on the circumstances at and.

Sometimes, tanks were unstoppable; if infantry were without proper weaponry, such as during early in the war, tanks could charge right through enemy lines, then surround the defenders. Other times, tanks were at a loss, relying on other parts of the military for support - aircraft, infantry, artillery.

I suppose, though, that I’ve at least “fixed” my misconception to a certain degree: I know that tanks weren’t always unstoppable, and that’s something, isn’t it?

While I know I have a long way to go to reach true understanding on this complex matter, I’ve nonetheless enjoyed learning what I have so far; I also enjoyed writing this post, even though it’s been more of a drain on me than most of my blog posts. If the post doesn’t make all of my subscribers run screaming into the hills, I’ll certainly continue writing stuff like this. (And, come to think of it, even if it does scare folks away, I’ll probably continue writing some stuff like this; it’s been a blast learning about all of it, even if I’ve only learned enough to realize I still know very little.)

As a final remark, while I’m all for learning, I have to admit that it is (and always will be) one thing to sit in my general’s armchair and study this stuff, and quite another to really experience it (which I have no great desire to do). While hindsight says that infantry did have ways to go up against tanks, that they weren’t always as unstoppable as I once had thought, if a sight like this came rolling at me…

… I can’t imagine how I’d respond. I think anyone can look at that picture and have at least a vague sense as to the terror these things instilled in people.

Cheers to the guys who went up against those mechanized monsters; you’re better men than me.