| Flawed Queen of the Battlefield:
Britain’s Matilda Infantry Tank
By James P. Werbaneth
March 2023
 The Mark II Infantry Tank, better known
by its nickname Matilda, is one of the best-known
weapons platforms of World War II. As the mount of 7 Royal Tank Regiment
(7 RTR) in the first counteroffensive against
the Italians in North
Africa it was a decisive weapon, and
even the better-trained and better-equipped
Germans knew to respect the Matilda; only
the 88mm anti-aircraft/anti-tank gun could
be counted upon to penetrate its frontal
armor.
Certainly, the Matilda had its time in
the sun. Yet it was based on a flawed concept
that did not shorten its service life, but
definitely hastened its obsolescence.
From Dunkirk to the Desert
The British Army divided its tanks into
two varieties, infantry and cruiser types.
Cruiser tanks were intended to fulfill roles
traditionally played by the horse cavalry,
such as exploitation and pursuit, whereas
the place of the infantry tanks was alongside
the foot soldiers, providing them support.
The first required mobility, at the expense
of protection, and the latter reversed the
equation.
The Mark I Infantry Tank “Matilda” was
designed in 1934, and expense was one of
the primary requirements. The specification
called for a vehicle costing no more than £6,000,
or about $25,000 in contemporary American
currency. Hence the designers opted for off-the-shelf
components, starting with a barely-suitable
Ford V8 engine and a suspension taken from a
tank design with half the weight. Armament
also suffered, consisting of a single .303
machine gun, later upgraded to a .50 Vickers
model in an armored sleeve. The top speed
was a stately eight miles per hour.
The Spanish Civil War taught that a slow-moving,
lightly-armored and under-armed tank was
going to be ineffective. As a result, most
major powers pushed the development of vehicles
that were both heavier and faster. Britain’s
response was the Mark II Infantry Tank, also
know as the Matilda II.
It was an undeniable improvement over the
original, with armor thickened to three inches,
armored skirts to protect the tracks, and
replacement of the old Ford engine with a
pair of AEC diesels, raising its top speed
to about fifteen miles per hour. The machine-gun
main armament was replaced with a cannon,
the two-pounder anti-tank gun standard to
the British as both a tank-mounted and towed
weapon.
As much of an improvement as the Mark II
proved, it suffered from one shortcoming
inherited from the Matilda I. The hull was
too narrow to allow the installation of a
larger turret, so the later model kept the
less-efficient two-man turret instead of
a three-man component, which further limited
its ability to carry larger weapons. The
new model was harder to manufacture too,
as it called for large castings for the turret
and glacis.
Trials were completed by 1938 and the start
of Britain’s rearmament. Still, procurement
issues meant that when 7 RTR went to France
with the British Expeditionary Force at the
start of World War II, only twenty-three
of its tanks were Matilda II’s, with the
rest being the Matilida I.
The Matilda’s baptism by fire came on 21
May 1940, with a combined Anglo-French counterattack
south of Arras against Erwin Rommel's 7th
Panzer Division. The effort was a desperate
attempt to cope with the panzers after their
breakthroughs at Sedan and Dinant, and did
little more than perhaps delay the German
drive across France. However, the Matilda
established its most important characteristic
at Arras: protection. It was proof against
almost all German anti-tank weapons, short
of the “88” and, despite the attack’s
ultimate repulse, the Matildas of 7 RTR and
4 RTR were instrumental in creating a local
crisis for the Wehrmacht.
In the end all of the British tanks were
destroyed or abandoned in the Dunkirk evacuation.
The Matilda would return, though, in an entirely
different theater of war.
Three events combined to spark the Matilda’s
reputation in the desert. One was the
re-equipment of 7 RTR with the new Matilda
Mark V, essentially a Mark II with an improved
transmission, and with the engines upgraded
to Leyland diesels. Secondly, 7 RTR was dispatched
to the Western Desert Force in Egypt. Third,
Benito Mussolini decided to exploit the Fall
of France by declaring war on Britain on
10 June, expecting to feed on the carcass
of a British Empire soon to be killed off
by Nazi Germany.
Accordingly the Italians invaded Egypt,
pushing as far as Sidi Barrani. There, a
combination of threat inflation and defeatism
at the top of the army compelled it to stop
and dig in.
British Major General Sir Richard Nugent
O’Connor launched one of the most sweeping
offensives of World War II on 9 December
1940. Originally supposed to be a raid, it
proved to be something far more devastating,
and the Matilda was a major part of it.
O’Connor did not incorporate 7 RTR into
the 7th Armoured Division, rather holding
them back as corps troops under the Western Desert
Force. He recognized that a tank impervious
to any defensive weapon fielded by the enemy
gave him a special capability.
Operation Compass began on the morning
of 9 December 1940, and 7 RTR’s Matildas
led the attack on the Italian Nebeiwa fortified
camp. The British infantry tanks surprised
twenty-three Italian M11 tanks guarding
a gap in the lines, destroying them before
the crews could mount up. Soon, the Matildas
were in the camp, while the 7th Rajput Regiment
assaulted from the other side. The Italians
of Gruppo Maletti fought with savage fury,
but had no defense against the Matildas,
and within three hours 4,000 defenders were
forced to surrender.
About three hours later, 7 RTR and the
5th Indian Brigade attacked a second camp,
Tummar West. Along the way seven Matildas
were knocked out by one weapon that might work
against them -- landmines, and the attack
was further impeded by a sandstorm. This
time the British tankers and Indian infantry
encountered no resistance, The post quickly
surrendered, a decision hastened by refugees
from Nebeiwa spread tales of terror about
the unstoppable Matildas. Another 2,000 prisoners
marched into captivity.
A third, successful attack on Sidi Barrani
the next day cemented the Matilda’s place
as the desert war’s decisive shock weapon.
Breaking Through, Falling Behind
Yet the Matilda quickly showed one of its
major drawbacks. As the Western Desert Force
pursued the Italians and swept over Cyrenaica,
the slow-moving Matildas proved unable to
keep up. The Matilda was a fine breakthrough
tank, but in a fast-moving battle of maneuver,
it was out of place. They were instrumental
in punching into the fortresses of Bardia
and Tobruk, then fell to the rear of the
pursuit.
The Matilda went back into action in the
desert in April, when an old foe appeared
in Africa: Erwin Rommel. Sent to bail out
the Italians and defend what was left of
their territory in Libya, the general characteristically
bent his orders to go on the offensive.
The Matilda and 7 RTR continued to fight
in Africa, and would again strike fear in
the Germans, as they had at Arras. However,
the Wehrmacht in Africa was an entirely different
army than the Italians, despite the latter's
periodic episodes of dramatic bravery.
The first really one-sided defeat for the
British when spearheaded by Matildas came
with Operation Battleaxe in June 1941. German
skill, and use of their 88's, shot the British
offensive to pieces, wrecking over one hundred
tanks of all types, including Matildas. Aggravating
the British situation was a lack of a battlefield
recovery system, so that destroyed tanks
stayed that way, instead of being recovered
for repair.
Matildas continued to fight in all of the
important desert battles, plus the defense
of Crete, making its last major appearance
in a British battle at Alamein, but it never
recovered the status enjoyed during O’Connor's
Operation Compass offensive. The Matilda
was a complicated machine, and lacked the
mobility for a free-wheeling war of mobility
against a first-rate opponent who refused
to dig in passively and await attack, as
the Italians had done.
In addition, technology passed it by. Tank
guns got bigger and bigger; when the Matilda
went into action at Arras, the standard German
tank gun was 37mm, and by the time of the
Gazala battles in May and June 1942, the
Germans were transitioning from an adequate
50mm gun to a far superior long 50mm model,
soon to be supplanted by high-velocity 75mm
guns. For that matter, the Tiger tank lay
not too far in the future, mounting the dreaded
88.
Yet the narrow turret ring and small turret
of the Matilda meant that it retained the
2-pounder (40mm) main gun. Though this was a
major upgrade from the machine-gun main armament
of the Matilda I, through most of the tank’s
operational lifetime it was thoroughly obsolete.
Making matters worse, the 2-pounder did not have a high-explosive
round, essential for attacking infantry and
anti-tank guns; despite an infantry support
role, the Matilda was severely handicapped
in engaging the enemy foot soldiers or in
making the most of its presence in a combined
arms approach. It was still difficult to
knock out, but other tanks were able to do
more, and do it better and faster.
The slow demise of the Matilda was in large
part the result of the British infantry tank
concept. Being designed along those lines,
from the beginning the Matilda lacked the
mobility and agility required in battles
in which the pace was not set by the speed
of the marching man. A fifteen-mile-per-hour
speed limit, under the best conditions, simply
was not fast enough, and in Africa the
Matilda demonstrated reliability problems
that further contributed to its unsuitability
for sustained, high-tempo operations. It
would always be a shock weapon, and not much
more, in the face of a first-class foe such
as the Wehrmacht.
Ironically though, the Matilda was the
only British tank to see service from the
first day of the war to the last. Even though
the war in the Mediterranean and Western
Europe passed it by, it remained useful against
the Japanese, an army with weak armor and
anti-tank capabilities, including in Australian units.
Even after the war, some Australian reserve
units continued to operate it.
The British also used it as a platform
of special-use vehicles, including mine-clearing
and flamethrowers, long after its utility
as a British battle tank had passed. Additionally,
if the British were loath to employ the Matilda
themselves against the Germans, they freely
supplied it to the Soviet Union under the
terms of Lend-Lease. The Soviets used it
as early as the battle for Moscow, and though
most were expended in 1942, a few survived
into 1944.
Soviet crews did not like the Matilda,
finding it too slow and unreliable. The armored
skirts, fitted to protect the tracks, tended
to clog with mud and snow, not a good characteristic
for a fighting vehicle on the Eastern Front.
The final irony of the Matilda was that
though its first model was born in a spirit
of cost containment, cost and relative difficulty
of manufacture hastened its departure from
first-line British service. The Valentine
infantry tank had identical main armament,
similar mobility and slightly less armor
protection, and since it did not require
large cast parts, it was cheaper and could
be built in greater numbers. It was deployed
to North Africa as early as the Battleaxe
offensive, and served alongside the Matilda,
slowly replacing it.
Matildas at Alamein.
The final verdict on the Matilda is that
it was a successful design, within the limits
of a flawed, outdated concept. Medium tanks,
combining a better balance of armor, armament,
and mobility were the future, and the Spanish
lessons on the problems with tanks of low
mobility held true throughout World War II.
Even the Matilda’s outstanding armor protection
amounted for very little against an enemy
with the imagination to employ anti-aircraft
guns in an anti-tank role, as the 88 could
penetrate any armor that the Allies would
pit against it. The 2-pounder gun was inadequate
against most armor and useless against soft
targets, severely undermining the infantry
support role.
Against that, one must bear in mind that
though heavily flawed, the Matilda could
be an extremely potent weapon, under the
right circumstances. There is an undeniable
value in having an armored fighting vehicle
against which the enemy has no ready defense,
even if its armament is imperfect. In the
real world and that of Operation Compass
especially, “tank fright” is a
very real phenomenon, and the Matilda inflicted
plenty of it.
You can order Road to Dunkirk right here.
Sign up for our newsletter right here. Your info will never be sold or transferred; we'll just use it to update you on new games and new offers.
Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects.
He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his new puppy. He will never forget his dog, Leopold.
Want to keep Daily Content free of third-party ads? You can send us some love (and cash) through this link right here.
|
