Question about the massive loss of equipment The British Army took at Dunkirk. . .

[subway dreaming]

would have been better for training crews to use the US Louisiana Maneuvers of 1940, to pin plywood on the side of a truck and
paint TANK on the side, while retooling to make a tank that could actually be used in combat

But did the trucks have BVs? How would you make your cuppa without a BV?

 

[fastmongrel]

Again I am going to disagree though only partially. One of the really useful life saving skills you need to learn if you want to be in tanks is how to get out of a tank when it is on fire. In fact training your muscles to cope with extended periods of time being cramped up inside the confined and sharp pointy projection filled interior of a tank is also quite useful.

Where I do agree however is that it would have been nice if the tank production board (or whomever) had decided much earlier to try for something a bit more useable than the Covenanter.

You also need to teach the Infantry that Tanks are nasty even when they are your own tanks. Tanks have a nasty habit of jerking forward, reversing or spinning on their tracks at zero notice and plenty of inexperienced Infantry got squished by their own tanks.

 

[fastmongrel]

Where I do agree however is that it would have been nice if the tank production board (or whomever) had decided much earlier to try for something a bit more useable than the Covenanter.

For all its faults (If you have an hour spare I can list them) the Covenanter was a pretty good training tank. It was dirt cheap to make, It was available I mean no one was going to suddenly load them all up and send them off to the Desert or Burma, it was fairly simple to operate but complex enough for it to be a valuable training tool and the crews could fix most problems with a hammer and some adjustable wrenches. It was also surprisingly reliable the Meadows engine needed a good amount of nursing but apart from that there wasnt a lot to go wrong.

As a battle implement it was crap but as a training tool it was fine.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

But did the trucks have BVs? How would you make your cuppa without a BV?

Its a post war British thing - less a 'Britishness' thing that a practical addition of 1 per Tank and 2 per APC/AFV - in that it was found that a large number of British Tank crew losses in WW2 were due to the crew dismounting to make a brew or cook and being 'caught out' by direct or indirect fire.

 

[subway dreaming]

Its a post war British thing - less a 'Britishness' thing that a practical addition of 1 per Tank and 2 per APC/AFV - in that it was found that a large number of British Tank crew losses in WW2 were due to the crew dismounting to make a brew or cook and being 'caught out' by direct or indirect fire.

I was teasing, but I also thought for some reason that it was introduced earlier.

 

[marathag]

For all its faults (If you have an hour spare I can list them) the Covenanter was a pretty good training tank. It was dirt cheap to make, It was available I mean no one was going to suddenly load them all up and send them off to the Desert or Burma, it was fairly simple to operate but complex enough for it to be a valuable training tool and the crews could fix most problems with a hammer and some adjustable wrenches. It was also surprisingly reliable the Meadows engine needed a good amount of nursing but apart from that there wasnt a lot to go wrong.

As a battle implement it was crap but as a training tool it was fine.

Then building more of these would have been better

even cheaper and more reliable, plus the tooling already exists.

After 'real' tanks are available in number, do what the Germans did, repurpose and make half tracks
from the running gear