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Best I can come with is to extend the single track railway from Mersa Matruh. None of the ports had capacity for all the armies needs, so every mile extra on the railway is one mile less all the rest has to go by lorry. To be honest you probably need all of them. Improve the ports as far as...

I remember reading "the man who broke into auschwitz", an auto-biography of a tommy who was wounded and captured in '42. In '41 he was with the rifles at beda fomm, and they captured an italian lorry filled with the wages for the entire army. They took quite a lot of it, and had a good night out...

After the initial phase, the camps + sidi barrani + buq buq + point 90, o'connor had the 4th indian division removed from his command. Which he described as "a complete and very unpleasant surprise". It was replaced by the 6th Australian division, but the change delayed o'connors attack. By...

There is scope for hawker to do better than OTL - but not with the P51. Hawker had a history of incremental improvement. The hurricane can be looked at as an updated Hawker Fury, changed from a biplane to monoplane, with a merlin engine. Immediately after the Hurricane was in service Hawker...

Logistics were one of the things the British did fairly well. Partly due to 300 years of supplying forces all round the world. They did learn something from the catastrophes of the Crimea, Gallipoli, and the WW1 shell crisis. Of all the major participants: The japanese were truly terrible...

Using 25 pdr shells with existing cartridge (fixed instead of bagged?), and adding an APDS round for anti-tank would be one way to go. Or take the existing 25pdr shells (+APDS), with a new fixed cartridge, and make a new gun & breech to take it.

From adding up the production numbers, it looks like UK is building 200+ tanks per month, and increasing. On the other side of the hill, german tank production averaged 150 per month in 1940

Just a quick question. What sort of engine do you envisage going into this timelines bren and loyd carriers? The ford petrol v8s, 85hp, as OTL, or something else? Diesels to be in line with the tanks, and something a bit more powerful for the heavier loyds?

Carrier do, however, use welding gear, welders, armour plate, and track. All of which are in short supply, so shifting the work offshore (once the war starts) reduces the pressure. In April '39 I think a little "contingency planning" is justified. Along the lines of: "IF a war started, against...

As there was no tank building experience in canada, the option of building lorries (using the CMP standard), gun tractors, bren and loyd carriers to start with looks better. That will take some of the manufacturing pressure off the UK, and allow more concentration on tanks in the UK. For...

Supplies piled up in Alexandria to an enormous quantity. Round the cape wasn't a problem unless you needed a specific bit of kit, and had to order it from the U.K. Once the supply line was established, there was always stuff arriving, with more in transit. Getting it from Alex to the front was...

Just watched a bovingdon youtube about the crossley armoured car. Apparently some were sent to Egypt, where they were useless in the sand, to the point where the colonel had them locked in a garage. In contrast to the old rolls-royce armoured cars, which had few problems. The later ACs seemed to...

They will anyway, so might as well make it official. And for TTL covanenter ...

Types of dogs? After all, fast WW1 tank was a Whippet. Nuffield Newfoundland, Morris Malamute, Mastiff, Leyland Labrador, Lurcher ...

This link shows "3rd Cavalry mechanisation at Ahmednagar, 1939" I can't get the sound on my laptop, but it shows carriers, light tanks, and lorries. And various spiffing types in shorts and pith helmets. Plus a shot of Vickers carden loyd makers plate.

Somewhere recently (cant remember where) I read a 1920s document that said mechanised/motorised forces were cheaper than horsey stuff, as vehicles for 600 were cheaper than 600+ horses, and didn't need daily care and food. And the indian climate is not great for horses, so more "wear and tear"...

Just looked it up - the long tom, which was towed by the artillery tractor, weighed more than 13 tons. So a trailer that could attach to that hook should be good for anything up to that weight at least. As the vehicle could pull heavier weights than that in OTL (up to and including centurian)...

I think the difference might be in the versions. 3414 scammel pioneers. Of these, from the wiki: 980 RS100 heavy artillery tractors 43 SV1S recovery vehicles 1,975 SV2S recovery vehicles 459 20/30 ton tank transporters (maybe 115 were 20 tonners?) Add that together: 3,457. If the SV2S number...

Quite a lot of stuff was built in india, going back a long way. Dum dum was a major arsenal and military manufacturing site in the victorian era. Hence the bullet type name. The indian army chose a different LMG to the bren - vickers-berthier I think? and made that in india. Tata manufacturing...

Apparently the exchange rate was about £1 to $4.5Cd, so $3000Cd would be about £650. However, with different factories in different countries with different currencies turning them out, a guesstimate is probably the closest anyone can get. Especially as production costs would change over time...