The Canal Defence Light (CDL) was a British "secret
weapon" of the Second World War, based upon the use of a powerful
carbon-arc searchlight mounted on a tank. It was intended to be used during
night-time attacks, when the light would allow enemy positions to be targeted.
A secondary use of the light would be to dazzle and disorient enemy troops,
making it harder for them to return fire accurately. The name Canal Defence
Light was used to conceal the device's true purpose. For the same reason, in US
service they were designated T10 Shop Tractor.
Description
The idea is credited to a Greek citizen, Marcel Mitzakis,
who devised the system for the de Thoren Syndicate in the 1930s; they were
advised by J F C Fuller. The device was demonstrated to the British War Office
in 1937. Although three examples were ordered for tests, the trials did not
begin until 1940, when the War Office took over and ordered 300 lights for
fitting to tanks. A prototype was constructed using a Matilda II tank. The
tank's normal turret was replaced with a cylindrical one containing both a 13
million candlepower (12.8 million candela) searchlight and a machine gun.
The searchlight turret included a station for an operator,
who had the task of changing the light's carbon electrodes when they burned
out. The light emerged from a vertical slit that was just 2 inches (5.1 cm)
wide by 24 inches (61 cm) tall, a small size which reduced the chance of battle
damage to the optical system. The beam diverged at 19° horizontally and 1.9°
vertically, forming a pool of light of around 34 by 340 yards (31 m × 311 m) at
a distance of 1,000 yards (910 m). The turret could rotate 360° and the light
beam could be elevated or lowered by 10° from the horizontal.
Blue and amber filters allowed the light to be colored as
well as white. A shutter could flash the beam on and off, up to twice a second.
It was found that the blue light caused the CDL tank to appear to be at a
greater distance, and blue and amber light beams from two CDL tanks could
combine to illuminate a target with white. A flashing beam would further dazzle
and disorient enemy troops by not giving their eyes a chance to adapt to either
light or darkness.
The Matilda tank was later replaced by the US M3 Grant,
which was superior in several ways. It was a larger, roomier and better-armored
tank, also faster and better able to keep up with tanks such as the Sherman. It
was armed with a 75 mm gun mounted in the hull and a 37 mm gun in a turret, so
could retain some fighting capacity when the searchlight turret was mounted. A
dummy gun-barrel fitted to the turret made it resemble a normal M3 tank. The
operator was the only occupant of the turret—the vehicle commander had a seat
to the left of the driver.
The project was shrouded in secrecy. It was tested during
Exercise Primrose in 1943 at Tighnabruaich, Scotland; it was concluded that it
was "too uncertain to be depended upon as the main feature of an
invasion".
The CDL was shown to senior US officers (including generals
Eisenhower and Clark) in 1942 and the US decided to produce their own tanks
using the CDL design. The code names "Leaflet" for the tank, and
"Cassock" for the training program for crews were used. For secrecy
the construction was dispersed. Conversion of the M3 to take the CDL was by the
American Locomotive Company as "Shop Tractor M10", turrets were
produced by Pressed Steel Car Company as "coast defence turrets", and
the arc lamps were sourced through the Corps of Engineers. The final assembly
of the CDL tank was at Rock Island Arsenal. By the end of 1944, Alco had
produced 497 tanks.
American crews were trained at Fort Knox and in the
California-Arizona maneuver area. The six battalions of tanks then moved to the
UK to join the British CDL tanks in Wales.
Type: Non–lethal
weapon
Place of origin: United
Kingdom
Used by:
British Army
United States Army
Wars: World War
II
Designer: A V M
Mitzakis
Number built:
300 (Matilda variant)
335 (M3 variant)
Deployment and Combat
The British and American CDL units deployed to the continent
did not cross over to France until August, the British as part of the 79th
Armoured Division. The British 35th Tank Brigade and US 9th Armored Group were
retained in the UK. The system was highly secret as surprise was considered
essential to its use. This hampered its employment, as commanders were often
unfamiliar with, or did not know of it, and did not consider it when drawing up
plans for attack.
Rather than let trained tank crews sit idle, most of the
special units were converted either to other special roles (such as mine
clearance tanks) or regular tank units.
For the crossing of the Rhine, some CDL units were used. The
one British squadron that had not been converted from CDLs was used in the
north, 64 American CDL tanks were brought back into use with their former
crews. The US tanks were spread across the First, Third and Ninth armies.
Bridge at Remagen
The Allies used the CDLs to protect the Ludendorff Bridge
after it was captured intact during the Battle of Remagen. The Germans used
virtually every weapon at their disposal to try to destroy the bridge. This
included sending frogmen, using Italian underwater breathing apparatus, to plant
floating mines but they were discovered by US Army military police, who used
Canal Defence Lights to locate and blind the swimmers.
The armor of the CDLs made them more suitable for this task
than conventional searchlights as, in some sectors, the East bank of the river
was held by German forces who subjected the CDL tanks to considerable artillery
and small-arms fire. The use of the system resembled its name, which had been
intended to be spurious. Later, the battle moved eastwards and the CDLs were
used to illuminate the bridges for the benefit of engineers carrying out
maintenance. Conventional searchlights would have been more suitable, but none
were available. The CDLs were eventually replaced by captured German
searchlights.
Operators
The 11th Royal Tank Regiment was raised in January 1941 and
designated for the CDL role in May 1941. The unit trained at Lowther Castle
near Penrith, and was based at Brougham Hall, Cumberland. It spent 1942 and
1943 in the Middle East without seeing action, returning to the UK in April
1944. It landed in Normandy on 12 August 1944, seeing no action until 29
September 1944, when it was ordered to transfer all of its equipment to the
42nd and 49th Royal Tank Regiments, and was retrained to operate the American amphibious
LVT-4, known by the British Army as the Buffalo Mark IV.
In their turn, the 42nd and 49th Royal Tank Regiments were
largely inactive for the remainder of the war and all three units were
disbanded after the end of hostilities.
Battalions of the American 9th Tank Group trained using the
Grant variant of the CDL tank at Camp Bouse in the Arizona desert. In 1944,
before deployment in the European Theatre of Operations, they continued
training on the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.
Before dawn, at 06:00 on 18 November 1944, CDLs of the 357th
Searchlight Battery, Royal Artillery provided hazy indirect light for the
mine-clearing flail tanks supporting the infantry in Operation Clipper.
Later Use
Some British tanks were sent to India in 1945. The US Tenth
Army requested deployment of CDL tanks for use during the Battle of Okinawa,
but fighting there was complete by the time they arrived.
During the Korean War, there was a requirement for
searchlights on the battlefield. There was brief interest in resurrecting a CDL
on an M4 Sherman design (T52) that had started in 1944, but it was recognized
that four battalions could be equipped with normal searchlights for the cost of
a single CDL tank.
Surviving Examples
The only surviving CDL-equipped Matilda tank is in the
collection of the Royal Armoured Corps at The Tank Museum, Bovington, Dorset,
in Britain. One CDL-equipped M3 Grant is displayed at Cavalry Tank Museum,
Ahmednagar in India.
Bibliography
Fuller, J.F.C. (1949). The Second World War - 1939-45 - A
strategical and Tactical History. Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Hunnicutt, R.P. (1994) [1978]. Sherman - A History of the
American Medium Tank. Presidio Press.
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| An M3 tank fitted with an armored searchlight turret, known as a Canal Defense Light. |
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| Grant CDL. |
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| Grant CDL. |
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| T10E1 Shop Tractor - experimental American-built CDL on M4A1 Sherman tank hull. |
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| M3A1 CDL. |
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| A Grant CDL testing its beam at Lowther Castle. |
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An M3 CDL on the Bank of the Rhine, 1945. The device is concealed under a tarp.
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| Medium M3 Grant CDL with anti-magnetic camouflage coating. |
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| Medium M3 Grant CDL with anti-magnetic camouflage coating. |
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| M3 Grant CDL with extra lights. |
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| Sherman V (M4A4 DV) CDL prototype. |
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| M3 Grant CDL. |
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| CDL-equipped Matilda II on display at The Tank Museum, Bovington, England. |
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| CDL-equipped Matilda II at The Tank Museum, Bovington, England. |
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| The surviving M3 Grant CDL at the Cavalry Tank Museum, Ahmednagar, India. |
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| M3 Grant CDL. |
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| M3 Grant CDL. |
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| M3 Grant CDL. |
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| The CDL Tank M3 name was retained into 1944. |
