THE BRITISH TANK THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD | Matilda

[00:00:00]May 1940, a road south of Arras, northern France. The German advance has been unstoppable for 11 days. Panzer divisions have sliced through Belgium and are racing for the channel coast.

[00:00:10]The British Expeditionary Force is being cut off. Nothing has slowed the Wehrmacht down. Nothing. Then, from the smoke and dust of a collapsing front line, something emerges. A low, squat, angular machine wrapped in cast steel so thick it distorts the silhouette. It moves at walking pace. Heavy side skirts hide the running gear entirely, giving it the look of something that has no business being on a battlefield. Behind it, more follow, grinding forward in a ragged line through open fields. Their engines laboring under nearly 27 tons of armor plate. German anti-tank crews open fire. 37 mm rounds strike the hull and turret. They bounce off. They strike again. They bounce again. One tank absorbs 14 direct hits without a single penetration.

[00:00:54]Another takes 18. Gun crews panic. Some abandon their weapons and run. It looked slow. It looked outdated. It looked like something the war had already passed by.

[00:01:03]Over the next 18 months, this machine would shatter an entire Italian army in North Africa, take over 130,000 prisoners in a single campaign, earn the title queen of the desert, force the German military to fundamentally rethink how it killed tanks, and become the only British tank to serve from the first day of the war to the last. Its designation was the Infantry Tank Mark II, the A12 Matilda, and it was the most heavily armored tank on any battlefield in the world. To understand why the Matilda existed, you need to understand the problem Britain faced in the mid-1930s.

[00:01:35]British tank doctrine had split armor into two roles. Cruiser tanks were fast and lightly protected, designed to exploit breakthroughs like cavalry.

[00:01:43]Infantry tanks were the opposite.

[00:01:45]They existed to walk beside advancing foot soldiers, absorb everything the enemy could throw at them, and crush defensive positions at close range.

[00:01:53]Speed was irrelevant. What mattered was armor, armor thick enough to defeat any anti-tank gun the enemy possessed. The first attempt at this concept was the A11 Matilda, a tiny two-man machine armed only with a single machine gun. It was cheap and heavily armored for its size, but it carried no cannon and was too small to be effective in sustained combat. The war office needed something far more capable. In 1936, the General Staff issued specification A12, calling for a proper gun-armed infantry tank with a three-man turret, armor proof against all known anti-tank weapons, and twin commercial diesel engines for reliability.

[00:02:28]The design was drawn up at the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, based mechanically on the Vickers A7 medium tank prototype, and handed to Vulcan Foundry of Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire for manufacture. A wooden mock-up was inspected in April 1937. The first mild steel pilot was not delivered until April 1938. Production was slow and difficult. The hull front was a single massive casting of 78 mm of armor. The turret was cast in one piece at 75 mm all round. Even the thinnest plate on the entire tank, the roof, was 20 mm thick. No other tank in the world carried protection like this. The contemporary German Panzer III had 30 mm. The Panzer IV had the same. Even the formidable French Char B1 bis carried only 60 mm on its thickest face. The Matilda was in a class of its own. The vehicle itself was a masterpiece of defensive engineering.

[00:03:18]Twin AEC six-cylinder water-cooled diesel engines, each producing roughly 87 brake horsepower, were coupled to a single shaft driving through a Wilson epicyclic six-speed preselector gearbox.

[00:03:29]Combined power output was approximately 190 brake horsepower, which pushed the 26 and 1/2 ton tank to a maximum of 15 mph on a good road, and roughly 6 mph across country. Range was around 160 miles. The crew of four, a commander, gunner, loader, and driver, operated in a cramped but well-protected fighting compartment. The main armament was the Ordnance QF 2-pounder, a 40-mm semi-automatic gun capable of penetrating roughly 53 mm of armor at 500 m. Against the Panzer III and Panzer IV of 1940, this was more than adequate.

[00:04:05]The 2-pounder could punch through their frontal plates at combat range.

[00:04:09]A coaxial Besa 7.92-mm machine gun provided secondary fire, and two 4-in smoke dischargers were mounted on the turret. But, buried inside this formidable machine was a fatal flaw that would eventually destroy its career as a battle tank. The turret ring measured just 54 in in diameter. This was wide enough for the 2-pounder. It was not wide enough for anything larger. The Matilda could never be fitted with a bigger gun without an entirely new turret, and no new turret was ever designed. Worse, the 2-pounder was never issued an effective high explosive round. It could kill tanks. It could not suppress anti-tank guns, destroy bunkers, or engage infantry in the open.

[00:04:46]For an infantry support tank, this was a crippling limitation. But, in 1940, none of that mattered yet. What mattered was the armor. By September 1939, only two Matildas had been delivered.

[00:04:58]Production ramped up painfully across six manufacturers, including John Fowler and Company of Leeds, Ruston and Hornsby of Lincoln, the London Midland and Scottish Railway at Horwich Works, Harland and Wolff of Belfast, and the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow. Output reached roughly 356 in 1940, over 1,000 in 1941, and peaked at 1,330 in 1942. By the time production ended in August 1943, 2,987 Matildas had been built. Now, before the combat record of this extraordinary machine is laid out in full, if this deep dive into British armored engineering is proving worthwhile, hit subscribe. It takes a moment, costs nothing, and directly supports the channel. The counterattack at Arras on May 21st, 1940, was the Matilda's first real test, and it became one of the most consequential small actions of the entire war.

[00:05:51]Under Major General Harold Franklin, two British tank regiments struck the exposed southern flank of Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division. The 7th Royal Tank Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel H. M. Hayland, led the right column with 23 Matilda Ones and 16 Matilda Twos. The 4th Royal Tank Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel J. G.

[00:06:11]Fitzmorris, led the left column with 35 Matilda Ones, roughly 74 tanks in total, supported by two infantry battalions and a handful of French tanks, attacked into the path of one of the most successful armored divisions in the German army.

[00:06:24]The effect was immediate and devastating. German 37-mm Pak 36 anti-tank guns, the standard anti-tank weapon of the Wehrmacht, opened fire at close range. Their rounds struck the Matilda Twos and did nothing. Shell after shell hit cast armor and ricocheted away.

[00:06:41]German gun crews, trained to expect their weapons to destroy any tank at combat distance, watched their rounds bounce off like gravel thrown at a castle wall. Some crews fired until their ammunition was exhausted. Others abandoned their guns and fled.

[00:06:54]Lieutenant Colonel Hayland was killed leading the assault from an exposed position. His radio having drifted off frequency, Major John King took command and drove his Matilda Twos straight through the German gun line. Sergeant B.

[00:07:06]Doyle crushed an anti-tank gun under his tracks. British tanks overran battery positions, scattered the SS Totenkopf Division's infantry, and threw the entire German right flank into chaos.

[00:07:16]Rommel himself rushed to the crisis point near the village of Wylie, and personally ran from gun to gun directing fire. He ordered his divisional 105-mm field howitzers depressed to fire directly at the oncoming tanks.

[00:07:30]He called forward 20-mm and 88-mm anti-aircraft guns of the 23rd Flak Regiment. The 88-mm Flak 18, designed to shoot down aircraft at high altitude, was the only weapon on that battlefield that could reliably penetrate the Matilda's armor. Standing beside one of those guns, Rommel's aide, Lieutenant Most, was mortally wounded. Rommel later wrote that the death of this brave man, a magnificent soldier, touched him deeply. The counterattack was eventually halted, but the damage was done. Only 28 of the 88 British tanks committed returned to their start line, but Rommel's 7th Panzer Division suffered 378 killed and wounded, and nearly 400 prisoners taken. Rommel reported up the chain of command that he had been attacked by five divisions, a wild exaggeration of a force that amounted to two understrength tank regiments and two infantry battalions.

[00:08:19]That alarmist report, as the British official historian Lionel Ellis later characterized it, rattled the German High Command. It contributed to the nervousness that led to the famous halt order of May 24th, when Hitler stopped his Panzers short of Dunkirk, giving the British Expeditionary Force the window it needed to evacuate over 300,000 men in Operation Compass. Seven months later, the Matilda arrived in the Western Desert, and a legend was born.

[00:08:43]In December 1940, Lieutenant General Richard O'Connor launched Operation Compass against the Italian 10th Army, which had 150,000 men dug in around Sidi Barrani in Egypt. The 7th Royal Tank Regiment's Matildas spearheaded the dawn assault on the fortified camp at Nibeiwa on December 9th. Italian anti-tank guns, L3 tankettes, M11/39s, and M13/40s opened fire. Their shells bounced off the Matildas as if the tanks were not there.

[00:09:11]One Matilda was struck 38 times and kept fighting. Another was lost only because a shell entered through a driver's visor that had been left open. At Nibeiwa, roughly 4,000 Italian soldiers surrendered. The campaign rolled forward through Bardia, Tobruk, Derna, and ended with the complete destruction of the Italian 10th Army at Beda Fomm in February 1941. Over 130,000 prisoners were taken. The Matilda earned a title that stuck, Queen of the Desert. Then the Germans arrived and they brought the 88. Operation Battleaxe launched in June 1941 to relieve the besieged garrison at Tobruk ran directly into Rommel's prepared defenses at Halfaya Pass, a position so brutal the troops called it Hellfire Pass. Captain Wilhelm Bach had concealed five 88 mm guns in hull-down positions overlooking the approach.

[00:09:58]On the morning of June 15th, C Squadron of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment attacked up the escarpment. The 88s opened fire at 600 hours. 12 Matildas and one light tank were destroyed in minutes. The attack collapsed. Across 3 days of fighting, the British lost 91 tanks.

[00:10:13]Rommel lost 12. The defeat cost General Wavell his command. The Matilda fought on through the siege of Tobruk and Operation Crusader in late 1941, but the writing was on the wall. Heavier German guns, the 50 mm Pak 38, the long-barreled Panzer 3 and 4, made the Matilda's armor advantage irrelevant.

[00:10:31]Its slow speed, its inability to fire high explosive, and its tiny turret ring left it unable to adapt. By the first battle of El Alamein in July 1942, the Matilda was effectively finished as a British gun tank.

[00:10:44]At Second El Alamein in October, roughly 25 served only as Scorpion mine flail tanks, beating the sand with spinning chains, but the Matilda was not finished with war. Australia received 409 Matildas between 1942 and 1944, and the 4th Armored Brigade took them into the jungles of the Southwest Pacific.

[00:11:05]Against the Japanese, the Matilda's old strength became new again. Its heavy armor was impervious to most Japanese anti-tank weapons. Its 2-pounder, inadequate against German armor, was more than enough to destroy Japanese bunkers and light tanks.

[00:11:20]Australian engineers converted 25 Matildas into the Matilda Frog, a flamethrower variant carrying 80 Imperial gallons of thickened fuel with a range of roughly 90 yards.

[00:11:32]The Frog became one of the most feared weapons in the Pacific.

[00:11:35]Matildas fought at Finschhafen, Sattelberg, Villers-Bocage, Bougainville, and Borneo.

[00:11:41]The landing at Balikpapan on July 1st, 1945 was the largest Australian armored operation of the Pacific War. The Matilda was still fighting when Japan surrendered. On paper, the French Char B1 bis looked like the Matilda's equal.

[00:11:54]It carried 60 mm of frontal armor, a turret-mounted 47-mm gun, and a hull- mounted 75-mm howitzer that gave it the high explosive capability the Matilda never had. But, the Char B1 was mechanically complex. Its turret was a one-man operation, and France fell before its potential could be realized.

[00:12:13]The German Panzer III and Panzer IV were faster, better armed with dual-purpose guns, and carried radios in every tank, giving them a coordination advantage the British could not match. But, in 1940 and 41, neither could survive a frontal engagement with a Matilda.

[00:12:29]The Valentine tank, Vickers' private venture infantry design with similar armor on a lighter, faster, cheaper chassis, eventually replaced the Matilda in the British infantry tank role from late 1941. It could accept larger guns.

[00:12:42]It was easier to produce. It was the practical choice. Under Lend-Lease, 1,084 Matildas were shipped to the Soviet Union. Between 1941 and 1943, only 918 arrived. The rest lost on the Arctic Convoys. The Red Army valued the armor, which matched their own KV-1.

[00:12:59]But, despite the slow speed, the weak gun, and the side skirts that packed with mud and snow until they froze solid and immobilized the tank entirely, Soviet engineers tested a prototype mounting the 76.2-mm ZiS-5 gun, the same weapon carried by the KV-1. But, the breech was too large for the tiny turret.

[00:13:19]The Matilda had largely vanished from Soviet service by 1943. Today, roughly 70 Matilda II survive worldwide, approximately 30 of them in Australia.

[00:13:29]The Tank Museum at Bovington holds two, including one restored to running condition between 2015 and 2018. Built on May 28th, 1941 by the North British Locomotive Company, the Royal Australian Armoured Corps Museum at Puckapunyal holds five, including a Frog and a Hedgehog. Bovington also preserves the only surviving Matilda Canal Defense Light, a variant whose turret was replaced by a 12.8 million candela searchlight intended to blind the enemy at night. May 1940, a road south of Arras, a low squat machine grinding forward at walking pace, wrapped in cast steel, absorbing everything the German army could throw at it. It was slow, 15 mph on a good day. It carried a gun that could not fire high explosive.

[00:14:13]Its turret ring was too small to ever be improved. Its twin engines were complex, temperamental, and underpowered. It arrived in numbers too small to change the strategic outcome in France, and it was obsolete as a gun tank within two years of entering service. And yet it worked. It worked on the road south of Arras, where it broke the nerve of a Panzer division and rattled a high command that had not been rattled since the war began. It worked in the sand at Sidi Barrani and the Baywa and Bardia, where it took 130,000 prisoners in 70 days. It worked in the jungles of New Guinea and the beaches of Borneo, where Australian crews drove it through terrain no tank designer had ever imagined. 2,987 were built. They served on three continents in three separate wars across six years. The only British tank to fight from September 1939 to August 1945.

[00:15:02]The Matilda was not fast. It was not versatile. It could not be upgraded, but it could take a hit that would have destroyed anything else on the battlefield, keep rolling forward, and fight. That is not luck. That is British armor, built the way Britain built armor, when armor was the only thing standing between an army and annihilation.