"British comet tanks" Topic

I like the look of this tank….. Kind of like a Cromwell on steroids.

But did they actually see any fighting in WW2? I have found out they came in late (was it March 45) and made it to the front but did they actually get used in battle?

Thanks for advice.

The British 11th Armoured Division was the first formation to receive the new tanks—deliveries commenced in December 1944—and the only division to be completely refitted by the end of the war. Due to its late arrival in the war in north west Europe, the Comet did not participate in big battles, although it was used in combat. The Comet was involved in the crossing of the Rhine and the later Berlin Victory Parade in July 1945. The Comet's maximum speed of 32 miles per hour (51 km/h) was greatly exploited on the German Autobahns.

From:

link

Thank you

As Jim says, they completely re-equipped the 29th Armoured Brigade of 11th Armoured Division and fought their way across Germany. A lot of people write them off as 'not seeing action', yet 3 RTR lost fully one-third of their original issue of Comets during the period March-April 1945, so they saw plenty of action! 3 RTR also knocked out its first Tiger during this period.

15/19th Hussars, the divisional Armoured Recce Regiment, was re-equipped with Comet soon afterwards and 1 RTR in 7th Armoured Division also received a few (4?), which re-equipped the RHQ.

Comets were organised into Troops of four tanks. Four Troops per Squadron, plus a Squadron HQ consisting of 1x Comet and 2x Cromwell VIII 95mm Close Support Tanks.

They work very nice in Flames of War, being good "Kat Killers." To extend playing options they served alongside Centurions until the late 1950s as I recall.

As above, the fighting in March/April 1945 is often neglected but there was actually an awful lot of it, so plenty of chance for your Comets to shot up some shiny new Panthers straight out of the factory.

I'd recommend Patrick Delaforce's book: Black Bull, with the 11th Armoured Division from Normandy to the Baltic. It has some interesting comments about the increased confidence felt after re-equipping with Comets, to the extent of just speeding through Panzerfaust ambushes. You have to wonder how much difference it might have made to the big British tank attacks around Caen if the Comet had been issued six months earlier.

You have to wonder how much difference it might have made to the big British tank attacks around Caen if the Comet had been issued six months earlier

None at all. The 'superior' Tigers and Panthers fared no better than the Sherman and Cromwell when they led attacks. The II SS counter-attack at the end of EPSOM was a graveyard for the Panzers.

I have a book, and forgive me for forgetting the name, about the fighting in franconia.
Anyway, one chapter was about the so called(by this book, anyway)last tank battle on the western front.
3 PANTHERS, 1 PZ4H, and a pair of stug4's vs 3 comets and a handful of shermans.
Its been years since i read the book, but i believe the germans won. The battle was fought over a farm complex, iirc.
If anyones interested, i can go find what the title is…

This is all very helpful guys. I have some good tank reference books but none talk much about comets.

Patrick Delaforce books are good, I have a couple but nit that one
Will look it up.

And John Lacour it would be helpful to know what the book is if you can help. Thank you.

a few videos on you tube showing comets in new and some of the ww2 footage also shows comets in new late in ww2

Did any Comets got to Korea?

i know some cromwells did but i don't think any comets went, but i could be wrong.

Wiki says they saw some action in Korea, for whatever it's worth.

Dubious about that – a small number of Cromwells were used (in the recce troop of 8th Hussars, possibly some other Centurion regiments, and as FOO tanks.) I've not seen anything to substantiate Comets though – there were Comet units in Hong Kong at the time, but I don't think any were deployed to Korea.

(There's an IWM photo captioned as a 7th RTR Comet in Korea, but nothing else that tallies with it afaik, so it may be a wrong caption – doubly so as it says "advancing to the front line" but it doesn't even have its bow MG shipped.)

What I have read of the 1945 action is that while Allied tanks were still in action, there weren't many German tanks left in the west to provide a lot of tank-on-tank combat. Not none, just not many. Whatever German tanks survived France were saved up to be lost in the Ardennes.

So combat, yes, against infantry and the like; small individual encounters, yes; but mass tank battles, not so much.

I was surprised just how many tanks and SP guns Charles MacDonalds company encountered in their drive across Germany in March and April 1945, although rarely in more than platoon strength (and his battalion seemed to have a company of Shermans and a platoon of TDs on permanent attachment to shoot them up).

Indeed. There were still plenty of tanks and SPs around, just rarely encountered in large masses.

Hang on… COMPANY and PLATOON?! Scrub your mouth out with soap this instant, Martin! ;)

No foul there RMD – MacDonald was a Yank…. ;-)

(and his battalion seemed to have a company of Shermans and a platoon of TDs on permanent attachment to shoot them up).

And people complain that the Flames of War army lists are far too generous in what's available!

"No foul there RMD – MacDonald was a Yank…. ;-)"

Indeed, I was merely trying to adopt the correct terminology:)

After the Rhine crossings, organised resistance by the German Army at a higher level seemed to have ended, and the war resolved itself into a series of engagements against company or battalion sized enemy positions, sometimes reinforced with tanks or SP guns, and with wildly varying degrees of motivation.

Bah! ;)

No Comets in Korea: when the brits decided to go to korea,they took centurions, churchills/flamethrowers and cromwells. The cromwells were the recce troop of 8KRIH, also 45 Fd Regt RA took cromwells as OP/FOO tanks so they could be with the armour. The majority of the cromwells from 8KRIH and 45 REGT were lost in fighting in the beginning of jan 1951 in a rearguard action against the chinese; this action is usually known as the battle of Happy valley.