British armour development prior to WWII

DMA

What if the British designers aren't restricted by budget, prior to their efforts in 1939, so in the period from 1935 onwards, they're told they can design & build what they want. In other words all British tanks in 1939 are built up to the highest standard, not down to the lowest price.

So what kind of tanks, thus, would we be looking at?

And what impact could have they made during the events of 1940, in France, & elsewhere during the war?

Discuss.
 

The Dean

The most promising prospect would have been for the Matilda II to have been made with a larger turret ring. It was already one of the most formidable tanks of it's day. With a 57mm gun firing AP or HE and the capacity to up-gun to 75mm it would have been the best machine on the battlefield.

But don't get excited, it would have been wasted by the high command.

The other design that, with hindsight, could have been influential was the TOG series. It was large enough to take any gun, it eventually had the 17lb QF fitted and could have taken the 3.75in QF but nobody dreamed of putting guns that size into tanks in the 1930s. If that had been made reliable and put into service by 1939 it would have had some effect, even if it was just astonishment.
 
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Michele

I think they would have come up with big, heavy tanks, building on the prototypes of the early 30s or late 20s, such as the Vickers Medium Tank Mk III or the Independent. The good news about those is that they could mount 47mm or 57mm main guns, and would probably be able to upgun to 75mm. Another advantage was that they were not as slow as their size would suggest (actually the Mk III was even too fast for its own good). The bad news is that they were clumsy and unwiedly, and the really bad news is that, for all their weight, they weren't seriously armored.
 

rudebadger

The American and British tank programs prior to and during WW2 were hamstrung not by lack of resources but by the lack of imagination at the decision-maker level.

The Americans could have had the Christie drive suspension system for the asking but dropped it. The Soviets were clever enough to pick it up and build their T-34 around it.

The British couldn't seem to make up their minds on whether they even wanted tanks or not. They made some good designs but ended up building some of their worst to fight with. They were so badly off that the American M3's and M4's were gladly scooped up to use despite of their own serious flaws.

Oh, BTW, hot damn, post number 100!
 

Redbeard

Banned
The worst problem of early British tank design IMHO was reliability. With that corrected but sticking to the OTL production numbers we will actually have quite an impressive British tank arm early in WWII.

From 1939-40 600 unreliable crusier tanks (A9-A13) were produced and in 1941 another 1400 (Covenanter and Crusader). In 1942 3200 Covenanter and Crusader tanks were produced. On top of that almost 9000 infantry tanks were produced 1939-42 (Mathilda II, Valentine and Churchill). All in all 14.200 tanks with at least a 2pdr. gun - which still by 1941 was as good as any other tankgun in widespread service.

Commonwealth production is not incl. in above numbers - but Canada alone produced 1500 Valentines and 2000 Rams + thousands of light AFV.

Until and incl. 1942 Germany produced about 9000 tanks in all, but of which about 3000 were Pz I or II of limited combat value.

Next imagine the 6pdr. gun going into prodction as originally scheduled in 1940 and British tanks will be Queens of the battlefield. Extra points would be added if someone sufficiently high ranking tells the Royal Artillery to sod off when claiming a monopoly on HE shells. Both the 2pdr. and 6pdr. had HE shells, but they were not issued to tank units, as the RA was supposed to fire HE!

The climax is reached if the British Army get its inter-arms co-operation sorted out pre-war. For the tank arm that probably requires the cavalry types being removed from influence on cruiser tank tactics. Apparently there is a spell on British cavalry compelling them/it to charge headlessly anywhere anytime...


Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 

aktarian

The problem with pre-WW2 militaries is that except Germany nobody really knew what to do with tanks so nobody really knew how to design. Though UK might go with similar approach to that of Germany with two types, anti-tank and anti-everything else.
 

Markus

Banned
The problem was the loading gauge of the railroad; Britain has the smallest in Europe, hence the small tanks.
Oh, and you don´t ned the highest standard, just a handful of minor adjustments.

1. Do NOT make the Matilda II. It was VERY well protected, but also VERY difficult to make.
2. I´d concentrate on the Valentine. It was not as well protected as the MII, but well enough to be safe from 37mm guns of 1940 and IIRC even the early 50mm guns of 1941. Prodution is much simpler and the tanks was VERY reliable. Like others said, reliability was not typical for tanks made by Britain.
You just need a three men turret right from the start instead of making 1,000 Valentines with two man turrets. Ideally the turret ring is large enough for insalling a 6pdr/75mm gun and still offering enough space for three men.

That´s it. That and HE-shells.
 

Tony Williams

You wouldn't want to make huge super-tanks, not only because of the railway gauge as Markus said, but also because production would inevitably be much slower even with an unrestricted budget. And such big, complex designs would take a long time to debug. It would probably take a long time to perfect a suitable engine, too.

My solution would be a compact vehicle in the 20-ton range (with a designed-in capability of upgunning and up-armouring), with an in-line 6 cyl 300 hp engine (half of a RR Merlin/Meteor) mounted to one side of the front, with the driver sitting next to it (just like the current Scimitar light recce tank). This would leave the entire back of the tank free for a 3-man turret with a decent-sized gun. At first I would fit 40mm (using Bofors ammo), then a 57mm, and ultimately a 76mm, as enemy developments required.

The basic layout would also lend itself to SPG, SPATG, SPAAG, command carriers etc, just by changing the superstructure at the back, so it would remain in useful production throughout the war.

And as soon as it entered service, I would of course start designing a 40-ton tank for later in the war...

That's what I put in The Foresight War, anyway :cool:
 

Michele

I detect a common trend in this thread and in the "Hitler sacks Goering" thread.
The initial poster asks "what would happen if such and such happened?".
Then several posters reply as if the question had been "what would have been the best possible alternative if such and such happened?".

Sorry for pointing out the obvious: these are two different questions.
 

Redbeard

Banned
Michele said:
I detect a common trend in this thread and in the "Hitler sacks Goering" thread.
The initial poster asks "what would happen if such and such happened?".
Then several posters reply as if the question had been "what would have been the best possible alternative if such and such happened?".

Sorry for pointing out the obvious: these are two different questions.
Click to expand...

Well you see, the questioneer may ask whatever he wants to, but it is the one answering who decides what to answer... ;)

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 

The Dean

Markus said:
The problem was the loading gauge of the railroad; Britain has the smallest in Europe, hence the small tanks.
Click to expand...
0

The different companies in the UK all had different loading and clearance gauges, but yes generally they were less than those on mainland Europe apart from the Great Western where there was a hangover from their old broad gauge.

That is all irrelevant because then as now the British Army never intended to deploy for action on British soil. Indeed if it had then or ever does in the future the plan has gone badly wrong.
 

Michele

Redbeard said:
Well you see, the questioneer may ask whatever he wants to, but it is the one answering who decides what to answer... ;)
Click to expand...

No problem with that, as long as the answering poster doesn't believe he's really answered the original question. If you also look up the "Hitler sacks Goering" thread you'll see the trend even more clearly.
 
MrP

MrP

Banned
Michele said:
No problem with that, as long as the answering poster doesn't believe he's really answered the original question. If you also look up the "Hitler sacks Goering" thread you'll see the trend even more clearly.
Click to expand...

It's like that round here. A thread in Chat about contemporary US politics has turned into a discussion of the Book of Genesis. :D
 

Markus

Banned
Michele said:
I detect a common trend in this thread and in the "Hitler sacks Goering" thread.
The initial poster asks "what would happen if such and such happened?".
Then several posters reply as if the question had been "what would have been the best possible alternative if such and such happened?".

Sorry for pointing out the obvious: these are two different questions.
Click to expand...


Guilty as charged! If they have nearly unlimited funds, they´d still be making the tanks the Army requests; cruisers and infantry tanks, not all-round MTBs like Germany made. So we´d probably see something like the TOG or Churchill.
 

Michele

Markus said:
Guilty as charged! If they have nearly unlimited funds, they´d still be making the tanks the Army requests; cruisers and infantry tanks, not all-round MTBs like Germany made. So we´d probably see something like the TOG or Churchill.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what the British designers would probably do, but it's not as if at the time we're talking about the Germans were producing well-rounded MBTs. They were producing or designing/planning:
the PzI, a testbed and training vehicle,
the PzII, a light tank,
the PzIII, which would be used as a MBT but wasn't well-rounded, given that at the time it lacked HE capability,
the PzIV, which had all the potential to be a MBT but when conceived was the equivalent of the British "infantry support tank" concept (howitzer as main gun).
 

aktarian

Michele said:
Yes, that's what the British designers would probably do, but it's not as if at the time we're talking about the Germans were producing well-rounded MBTs. They were producing or designing/planning:
the PzI, a testbed and training vehicle,
the PzII, a light tank,
the PzIII, which would be used as a MBT but wasn't well-rounded, given that at the time it lacked HE capability,
the PzIV, which had all the potential to be a MBT but when conceived was the equivalent of the British "infantry support tank" concept (howitzer as main gun).
Click to expand...

neither Pz III nor IV were designed as MBTs but rather to fulfill specific roles, Pz III to fight tanks and Pz IV to fight everything else. Pz IV did evolve into something resembling MBT later on but fell behind in evolution
 

Michele

aktarian said:
neither Pz III nor IV were designed as MBTs but rather to fulfill specific roles, Pz III to fight tanks and Pz IV to fight everything else. Pz IV did evolve into something resembling MBT later on but fell behind in evolution
Click to expand...

Fine. That's what I said. I never wrote that either had been _designed_ as MBTs. Actually the concept of MBT, itself, did not exist at the time, so it would have been hard. OTOH we can look back at the qualities and usage of tanks in WWII and judge them as "MBT material" or "MBT stand-in" or "MBT potential" if we wish.
 
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