Matilda II vs Panzer III
For roughly eighteen months there was a British tank that German tank guns could not penetrate from the front. It did not win the war, and the reason is in the ammunition list.
At Arras on 21 May 1940, Matildas of 4th and 7th Royal Tank Regiment drove into the flank of Rommel’s 7. Panzer-Division and the anti-tank rounds bounced off them. The German 37 mm gun — the weapon most Panzer IIIs carried that summer — could do nothing to 78 mm of frontal plate. The counter-attack was stopped by divisional artillery and 8.8 cm Flak guns firing over open sights, because nothing in the panzer regiments could do the job.
That is one half of the comparison, and it is the half everyone quotes. The other half is that the Matilda carried the QF 2-pounder, a 40 mm gun issued with no high-explosive shell at all. It could destroy a tank it met. It could not destroy the towed anti-tank gun waiting for it behind a ridge — and in the desert that is what was waiting.
| Infantry Tank Mk II Matilda II | Panzerkampfwagen III | |
|---|---|---|
| Service entry | 1939 | 1939 |
| Main gun | QF 2-pounder (40 mm) | 50 mm KwK 39 L/60 (late) · 37 mm on the 1940 tanks |
| Penetration | ~40 mm at 914 m (1,000 yd) · 47 mm at 457 m (500 yd) (AP Mk 1, 30° plate) | ~44 mm at 1,000 m · 67 mm at 100 m (PzGr 39, 30° plate) |
| High-explosive shell | None issued | Yes |
| Rounds carried | 93 | 84 with the L/60 — 90 with the shorter gun |
| Hull front armour | 78 mm | 50 mm + 20 mm bolt-on |
| Combat weight | ~25 t | ~23 t (Ausf. M) |
| Road speed | ~24 km/h | ~40 km/h |
| Range (road) | ~257 km | ~155 km |
| Crew | 4 | 5 |
| Units built | ~2,987 | ~5,770 gun tanks |
The gun row needs a date attached. In May 1940, when the Matilda’s armour made its reputation, the Panzer III carried a 37 mm gun; the 50 mm L/60 in the table did not reach the desert until 1942. Even that late gun, credited with 44 mm at 1,000 m, is short of the Matilda’s 78 mm frontal plate — which is why the tank that killed Matildas was never a tank.
The Matilda carried 78 mm on the hull front, 75 mm on the cast turret — and 75 mm the whole way round it, not merely at the front — with 65–70 mm on the hull sides and 55 mm at the rear. There is no weak facing to work round: the thinnest plate on the vehicle is the 20 mm roof. The Panzer III of 1940 had 30 mm all over, raised on later marks to 50 mm plus a 20 mm bolt-on plate at the front. Against the guns each faced, the difference is absolute: the German tank was penetrable by the 2-pounder at normal ranges, and the British tank was not penetrable by the German tank gun at any range worth the name.
The 2-pounder was a good gun of its generation — 40 mm at 1,000 yd on plate at 30°, enough to defeat any German tank of 1940 and most of 1941. The 50 mm KwK 39 L/60 that eventually answered it managed 44 mm at 1,000 m, a near-identical figure. What separates them is not penetration but the second shell: the Panzer III had a high-explosive round and the Matilda did not. A British tank commander who found an anti-tank gun dug in ahead of him could shoot at it with a solid 40 mm shot and a machine gun, and nothing else. The German commander could put an HE shell on it.
The Matilda was called the Queen of the Desert through Operation Compass in 1940–41, when Italian armour could not touch it and Italian anti-tank guns could not either. What ended that reign was not a better tank but a better gun on a different mounting: above all the 8.8 cm Flak used in the anti-tank role, which killed Matildas at ranges from which they could not reply. The towed 5 cm PaK 38 is a more careful case — with ordinary armour-piercing shot it could not defeat 78 mm at medium or long range, and only its scarce tungsten-cored PzGr 40 round brought the Matilda within reach, and then only close in. By Operation Battleaxe in June 1941 the losses were heavy enough that the type’s dominance was plainly over.
This is the column that decided which design had a future. The Panzer III went through more than a dozen marks and three generations of main armament — 37 mm, then 50 mm short, then 50 mm L/60 — and when it could take no more, its chassis carried on as the Sturmgeschütz III, of which over 10,000 were built. The Matilda could not be up-gunned at all: its turret ring was too small to take the 6-pounder, and the design was withdrawn from front-line service rather than improved. Roughly 2,987 were built and that was the end of it.
On the two columns a tank crew cares about most in a straight fight — can it hurt me, can I hurt it — the Matilda wins in 1940 and wins clearly. Its armour was proof against the German tank gun of the day, and its gun could kill the German tank. If the war had been a series of duels between armoured vehicles, Arras would have been the shape of everything that followed.
It was not, and the Matilda is the standing proof of it. A tank that cannot fire high explosive cannot fight the anti-tank gun line, and the anti-tank gun line is what kills tanks. The Panzer III was the worse tank in 1940 by every measure of plate and shot, and it was the better weapon system because it could shoot at everything on the battlefield and because it could be changed. The Matilda was as good as it would ever be on the day it entered service.
- David Fletcher, Matilda Infantry Tank 1938–45 (Osprey, New Vanguard).
- Thomas L. Jentz & Hilary L. Doyle, Panzer Tracts No. 3: Panzerkampfwagen III (Panzer Tracts).
- Peter Chamberlain & Chris Ellis, British and American Tanks of World War II (Arms & Armour Press).
- Robert Forczyk, Panzerjäger vs KV-1 and companion volumes on early-war armour (Osprey, Duel).