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The Crusader was the best of the British cruiser tanks to see combat during the North African campaign, while the M13/40 and related M14/41 were the best Italian tanks to be used in North Africa.
It quickly becomes clear that neither the Crusader nor M13/40 were the best tanks on their side. On the Allied side it was American tanks – the M3 Grant and M4 Sherman, with their 75mm guns and decent armour both outclassed the Crusader. On the Axis side it was the Panzer III and Panzer IV which had the advantage.
We start with a look at one of the first clashes between the two types, during Operation Crusader of November 1941. Here we see a clash between Crusader Is of 22 Armoured Brigade and M13/40s of the Ariete armoured division. Until this clash, the British had generally had the better of any clash with Italian tanks, most of which were either obsolete light tanks or the M11/39, which had suffered badly against the heavily armoured Matilda II. This first clash with the M13/40 thus came as a surprise, and saw 22 Armoured suffer unexpectedly heavy losses.
Both of these tanks had their heyday in the Western Desert between their arrival in the autumn of 1941 and the Second Battle of El Alamein in the autumn of 1942. Their fates after that differed – the Crusader was largely phased out of front line service by the end of the Tunisian campaign, replaced by the Sherman and the Churchill. In contrast the Italians were forced to keep using the M13/40 and M14/41 until they surrendered, mainly due to a lack of alternatives.
We start with a look at the design and development of the two tanks, Crusader first then M13/40. The Crusader was an evolution of the earlier cruiser tanks, in particular the Cruiser Mk III (A13), with which it shared many components. The Crusader I and II had a 2-pdr gun and a three man turret, making it better to operate but undergunned. The Crusader III had the much superior 6-pdr gun, but only room for two men in the turret, a clear step back.
On the Italian side the priority had been on light tanks, until the arrival of the M11/39. This had the same layout as the American M3 Medium tank, with its main gun in the hull, but it was only a 37mm gun, not the 75mm gun of the M3. It was soon followed by the M13/40, which carried a larger 47mm gun in the turret, but again only room for two men. The M14/41 was similar, but with a better engine.
The technical chapters show that both tanks had their faults. For the Crusader one big problem was that British tank doctrine expected them to be firing on the move, so elevation was manually controlled by the gunner, using a shoulder pad, instead of by a geared mechanism, The 2-pdr and 6-pdr also lacked high explosive shells, making them less effective against unarmoured targets such as anti-tank guns. The Italians used geared elevation and were more accurate.
The two types had similar armour, although the Crusader I and II had thinner side armour. Both tanks were vulnerable to the other’s guns at combat range.
The big flaw with the Crusader was that it tended to be mechanically unreliable. It suffered from oil leaks and problems with the water pumps, and needed an overhaul every 1,200 miles (compared to every 3,500 miles for the M3 Grant, which was famously reliable). Some of these problems were eventually ironed out, although only by carrying out extensive work when they arrived in North Africa.
When we move onto the combatants we run into the big problem with British tanks in this period – a poor doctrine. Tanks were still expected to operate ahead of the infantry, firing on the move and charging the enemy. For some time the British believed that the heavy losses they were suffering were being caused by superior German tanks, not realising that well positioned anti-tank guns were a bigger threat. The proposed solution was for the British tanks to get close in as quickly as possible. This just exposed them to more heavy losses. However this only became obvious after Rommel arrived – against the Italians the British tactics had worked fine. Training also needed to be better, with limits on distance driven and shots fired to preserve the tanks.
Italian doctrine called on tanks to be mobile and to break through the enemy lines. However they were much more aware of the need for combined arms, and their armoured divisions were well balanced, with a mix of tanks, motorised infantry and artillery. However the armoured divisions didn’t initially go to North Africa, so we see the initial Italian offensives being carried out with improvised units. However the Italians stopped just over the Egyptian border. Italian training was variable, with the ‘Ariete’ armoured division well trained but others lacking training in combined arms.
For the period being studied here the Ariete division was the core of Italian armoured forces in North Africa, before being joined by the Littorio division. British formations tended to change rather more often than Axis ones – 7th Armoured Division (the Desert Rats) were the most famous British armoured unit, but we see here that the victorious division of the early campaigns was soon split up.
We get a good overview of the campaigns from Crusader to 2nd Alamein, looking at the role the British and Italian tanks played, and in particular their casualties. This tends to show that every side suffered heavy losses in any tank battle, although many of the tanks on both sides were damaged rather than destroyed – at one point the British had 900 tanks in base depots being repaired or prepared for the desert!
The combat chapter looks at Operation Crusader, the battle of Gazala and the Second Battle of El Alamein. For Crusader and Gazala the basic situation was that the respective tanks were quite similar, and we see losses being heavy for whoever was attacking. However a repeated feature of Crusader was the inability of attacking British tanks to take Italian prisoners, leaving them free to return to the battle.
At El Alamein we see a greatly modified British army, with Montgomery having the infantry and artillery play a much more significant part in the initial attack rather than leaving it to the tanks. The same basic lesson – attacks cost many more tanks than defending – was generally still the case, although with some exceptions. Despite their often poor reputation the Italians fought well, with the Ariete armoured division fighting hard as the Axis rearguard, and as a result being almost wiped out.
Although the focus is on the Crusader and M13/40, the combat sections make it clear that these two tanks were only ever part of a larger, far more complex battle. As far as the tanks themselves went, the Italian tank was probably superior to the Crusader I, but the British tank improved rapidly, and the Crusader III outclassed the M14/41. However key to the fate of the Italian armour was the arrival of the M4 Sherman, which outclassed both the British and Italian tanks, and was the dominant Allied tank after El Alamein.
Chapters
Chronology
Design and Development
Technical Specifications
The Combatants
The Strategic Situation
Combat
Analysis
Aftermath
Author: David Greentree
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 82
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2024