From Overlord’s Blog comes this post recounting an action from 1942 by some Royal Engineers versus Axis tanks in North Africa.
In late November 1942 , twenty sappers of the 1st Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers were picking their way across the Tunisian landscape. Overhead a bright moon bore down, and the peaceful night sky was frosted with stars. Their mission was to emplace mines and set up an anti-armour ambush on a road. This road led to an harbour area with a large number of Axis forces, including tanks. Once these forces were in place two companies of Para’s, covered by a section of three inch mortars and supported by some ex Vichy Senegalese infantry whom had decided to join up with the Paras, would launch a frontal assault on the Axis position. The harbour was on the slopes of a place called Gue Hill.
It was similar to an ambush launched about a week earlier. They had convinced the German forces near Béja that the Paratroop force was actually three times its size, by the simple expedient of marching through the town three times, but switching headgear each time. The Para’s had moved to Mateur where they got word of a large German convoy protected by armoured cars that had moved past. So they mined the road and when the convoy returned they attacked with Gammon bombs and small arms. This resulted in several captured German armoured cars and quite a haul of POW’s.
In the afternoon five Type 95 Ha-Go tanks approached the roadblock. The lead tank was spewing out smoke in an attempt to conceal the other four. As they approached the roadblock they began to rake the US positions with their machine guns and the 37mm main guns. PFC Vlug grabbed his M9 Bazooka and charged the Japanese tanks.
Back in 2012 Overlord’s Blog published a several part interview with author and researcher 
series. With four years having passed since this interview was published, we thought it was time to bring some attention to this interesting piece. The interview is broken up into several pages, links to which we have provided below. The questions posed to Doyle were submitted by readers, which explains why the quality of the questions sometimes varies. It is also worth pointing out that the first page of the interview is somewhat confusingly labeled “Part 4”, parts 1 through 3 do not contain interview segments.
She was named Cuckoo. All the vehicles of the command group in the Coldstreams were named after birds, for example the battalion commander’s tank was called “Eagle”, a armoured command vehicle was “Vulture”, and they had scout cars named “Pigeon”, “Wren” and “Owlet”, to name but a few. Keeping with this ornithological theme “Cuckoo” seemed to fit a German tank in a British unit.
Tank and AFV News 