Matilda II, Marks I to V
Type :infantry tank.
Crew :4 men.
Armament :a 2 pounder cannon; a Vickers .303 machine gun (Mark I); a 2 pounder gun, a 7.92 mm BESA (Mark II); a 3-inch howitzer, a 7.92mm BESA (Mark II CS).
Armour:
maximum 78mm;
minimum 14mm.
Dimensions:
length: 5.61m;
width: 2.59 m;
height :2.51 m.
Weight :26.9 t
Mass power :7.17 bhp (Mark III).
Engines :2 AEC 6 cyl. in-line diesel, developing a total of 174 hp (Mark I and II); 2 Leyland 6 cyl. in-line diesel, developing a total of 190 hp (Mark III).
Performance:
road speed speed:24 km/h;
off-road speed speed:12.8 km/h;
range :256km;
vertical obstacle: 0.61m;
straight cut :2.13 m;
ford :0.91 m.
Service time :in the British Army from 1939 to 1945. Also employed by Australia and the USSR.
While the Matilda I was still at the prototype stage, the War Office was already weighing whether to offer it additional armor and firepower to meet a General Staff specification amending an earlier text and saying, if we got to the bottom of things, that "a tank supporting infantry advancing on foot could not survive without having the means to resist the fire of anti-tank guns but also had to carry a fairly high caliber armament to face enemy infantry, artillery and tanks”.
Until then, it had been considered that the machine guns were more than enough, but the new specification called for real artillery and a turret large enough to accommodate it. At first it was thought that the Matilda l (A11) could accommodate a two-seater turret and a 2-pounder but it soon appeared that the narrowness of the hull left no hope and that, in any case, this solution would impose development of a new engine as it would give the deathblow to the already overworked Ford of the Matilda I. The weight of the requested tank was not to exceed 14 t and it was absolutely impossible for the A11 to meet this requirement planned changes; therefore a new drawing was needed.
The project entrusted to the Research Department of the Arsenal of Woolwich, was based to a large extent on the A7 prototype of 1932. It took up the suspension, duly reinforced, as well as the propulsion unit made of two twin commercial diesels. To obtain armor of the specified thickness, the use of a cast steel turret and cowl would have been the best solution, but by the mid-1930s British industry had very limited means. limited for casting large parts, which severely limited the number of firms that could honor a government contract for this work.
As a result, British tanks kept their hulls and turrets riveted or welded together long after other countries switched to casting. However, the Matilda 11 eventually found its prime contractor, the Vulcan Foundry of Warrington, who won the contract in November 1936 and completed a wooden mock-up in April 1937.
Another year went by elapse before the definitive realization of the prototype (in mild steel), the delay being due to difficulties in the delivery of the Wilson gearboxes. This model was tested during the winter of 1938 but an initial order for 65 tanks had been placed before the appearance of the pilot model and followed shortly after by another for 100 units. The tests were successful, the only modifications deemed necessary being minor parts of the suspension and the cooling system.
In 1938, the rearmament of the country began in earnest. The shortage of tanks was dramatic; other orders were therefore placed and Vulcan could not suffice for the task. The War Office used other firms such as Fowler, Ruston and Hornsby, LMS Railway Works, Harland and Wolff and North British Locomotive Works. Vulcan remained the main contractor and the first supplier of castings. Mass-producing the Matilda was no small feat as precisely the castings and some other elements posed big problems. Therefore, it is difficult to understand why the armored skirts were cast in one piece, since this was another important casting. On the other hand, production was immediately facilitated when the number was reduced from six to five. side mud chutes.
In September 1939, only two Matilda were in service but, in the spring of 1940, at least one battalion was equipped with them; the tank behaved very well during. the retreat to Dunkirk and the fighting in the perimeter of the port. At the same time, several armored units from Egypt had received the device and fielded it in the first campaigns against the Italians.
After Dunkirk, the Matilda I was purely and simply abandoned; the Matilda II lost its designation number in everyday troop parlance and became "the" Matilda until the end of the war. In the campaigns of Libya, in 1940 and 1941, it remained virtually invulnerable to all that the Italians could oppose to it in terms of armor and anti-tank guns.
This advantage lasted until about the middle of the year 1941 when the first units of the Afrika Korps appeared on the front lines with their 88 mm Flak anti-tank gun. This piece could knock out a Matilda at ranges where the victim's 2-pounder was quite unable to return the blows; the Matilda therefore gradually disappeared from the battlefield. It was impossible to adapt a 6-pounder to him.
because the turret tank was too small to accommodate a larger gun and the last engagement in which the Matilda played its original role was the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942.
The vehicle was organized according to the British tradition, in three compartments, the driving position being located just behind the frontal plate, in the center. The hull machine gun was conspicuous by its absence, which was rare for the time but reasonable because this weapon was rarely effective in operation. The heavy cast turret was cramped for space, with insufficient habitability for the other three crew members.
In the CS version mounting a 3-inch howitzer, space was even more parsimoniously distributed. The tank commander had a circular cupola but only offering him a limited optical field, which was the biggest handicap of the vehicle although this defect was found on many other machines of this time. The turret was one of the first to use hydraulic control, developed by the Frazer Nash company which had also adapted it to bomber turrets.
The ammo load was 67 rounds of 2-pounders and 4,000 rounds of .303. The two coupled diesels drove the Wilson planetary gearbox and the sprocket. The suspension, derived from the A7, was called either the "scissor" type or the "Japanese style".
The Vickers Medium C was the first to use this type of suspension, which also inspired French tanks during the 1920s and 1930s. The train consisted of bogies connected one to the other and acting against horizontal coil springs. Each bogie had four rollers distributed in pairs so that at each suspension point there were four pairs of rollers, two connectors and two springs; the assembly was maintained by a single vertical support fixed to the hull.
Each side included two of these complete units, a four-roller unit and a large road wheel at the front. This configuration, at first sight a little complicated, proved effective although it inevitably limited the maximum speed.
The Matilda Mark III and later versions were fitted with Leyland diesels which gave slightly more power than the AECs and were produced in larger numbers. The Mark V was equipped with a pneumatic servo at the top of the box to facilitate the gear changes but, these minor modifications apart from the machine always remained very faithful to its original design. Prior to the First Battle of El Alamein, the Matilda had earned itself the flattering nickname "King of the Battlefield", at least among some people.
After El Alamein, it became apparent that this vehicle was no longer effective and it had to give way to the ever increasing number of Grants and Shermans. In these circumstances, what to do with the Matildas, most of which were still in good working order?
Faced with this thick armor, the temptation was great to assign this tank to special missions; it was therefore the first British tank equipped with flails for mine clearance and some of these conversions were used at El Alamein. In addition to the flails, the tank was equipped with a whole range of other mechanisms ensuring, among other things, mine clearance by rollers, transport of heavy demolition loads, laying of bridges, earthwork by bulldozer blades, crossing various excavations, the attack by flamethrowers; finally, the CDL version (Canal Defense Lights) ensured the lighting of the battlefield during the night. We even did a remote-controlled vehicle experiment.
The Matilda was delivered to the Australian Army who launched it into the Pacific campaign and kept it in service for training until 1953. Japanese infantry positions; a bulldozer version was also used a lot in this theater of operations, especially to improve the tracks and thus allow wheeled vehicles to follow the tanks.
A few Mafildas were sent to the Soviet Union as samples for British aid but, as with the Churchill a little later, the Russian experts politely refused the 2-pounder, in their eyes so small that it became almost exclusively decorative.. Despite the traditional discretion of the Russians about the equipment they were provided with, some reports reached Great Britain, announcing that the undercarriage had a tendency to jam in the snow; by 1945 the hull of the Matilda was being replaced by those of the Grant and Sherman, even in its specialist roles. The supplies of spare parts and miscellaneous elements were organized according to the most common tanks, namely American vehicles, heavy cruisers and the Churchill.
After four or five years of continuous fighting, the Matildas were showing obvious signs of wear and it proved too unprofitable to put them back into production. A few were still in service at the end of the conflict but in secondary roles. The fact remains that the Matilda can claim to be the only British tank to have served from the first to the last day of the Second World War; very few machines can approach this record, whatever their nationality.