Talk:Operation Battleaxe
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http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/m-6mineban.pdf
THE MILITARY CONSEQUENCES OF A COMPLETE LANDMINE BAN
pg. 15
"Other anecdotal accounts of the use of antitank mines in World War II exist. One of the earliest occurred at Halfaya Pass in Egypt, during Operation BATTLEAXE (15-17 June 1941). In that engagement the British lost four of 18 Infantry tanks to antitank mines, while 11 were lost to AT guns and enemy tanks."
Operation Battleaxe went badly for the British. The Germans used anti-tank guns to kill tanks while using tanks against infantry and trucks. The British had thought that you needed to use your tanks to kill other tanks. They had the disadvantage of having a small tank gun (the 40mm 2pdr). The Germans had a very small number of 88mm FlAK36 guns that were used in the anti-tank role. During Battleaxe, there were about 5 at Halfaya Pass, 4 "at Hafid ridge", and 4 operating with one panzer regiment (the 8th). After the battle, the British assumed that the Germans must have tanks that had a better gun than they did, and that accounted for their many tank losses. In fact, it seems that they were mostly killed by anti-tank guns. The Germans also had the advantage of good tank recovery equipment and organization. The British had almost none. When the British were forced to withdraw, they left behind knocked tanks that were repairable, because they had no way to recover them.
[edit] Google books
- The Grand Alliance [2] - Winston Churchill
- Memoirs of the Second World War - Winston Churchill
- Winston Churchill - Henry Pelling
- The Churchill War Papers: The Ever Widening War, Volume 3: 1941[3] - Martin (Ed.) Gilbert
- Intelligence and Strategy: Selected Essays - John Robert Ferris
- The Rommel Papers [4] - Erwin Rommel
- History of the Second World War - Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Henry Basil, Constance Kritzberg, Larry Hancock
- Tobruk 1941 - Jon Latimer (Contains British Order of Battle)
- Germany and the Second World War: Volume III: The Mediterranean, South-East Europe, and North Africa 1939-1941 - Gerhard Schreiber, Bernd Stegemann, Detlef Vogel
- Rommel's Panzers: Rommel and the Panzer Forces of the Blitzkrieg 1940-1942 - Christer Jorgensen
- The Royal Navy and the Mediterranean Volume II: November 1940-December 1941
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