Anglo French hybrid weapons projects before ww2

What would the consequences be of the French and British deciding that it would be of good advantage in a future conflict with Germany to hybridize some of their weapons systems and have a free flow of licenses

some changes or ideas

Matilda tanks armed with the French 47mm high velocity AT gun and their 270hp engine out of the B1

French aircraft equipped with RR Merlins

French infantry units having a quantity of British 40mm aa guns

France installing a radar early warning network

Souma 35's become the main British cruiser tanks

British infantry get equipped with French 47mm at guns
 
All of this sounds promising, but consider that not all government operations will be able to pick out winning systems. Imagine marrying the worst-performing British gun to a French "cruiser tank" design, or replacing Brens with Chauchats...
 
While there is no doubt that something along these lines would have been beneficial if done properly there are nevertheless a number of hurdles along the way. The French and the British armies operated along different lines and had different doctrines for example. Don't forget petty nationalism and petty rivalries between suppliers and companies as well. Even in peace time these are usually huge in the defense industry. Between two industries with well developped defense industries capable of building everything for pistols to battleships from scratch, this will be magnified to a massive extent. Things along the line fo "let us build one wing of each plane in France and the other one in Britain" could very well happen, if the political leadership is lacking or too keen to promote national interests as opposed to alliance wide ones. Having said that, licence building and subcontracting could solve these problems.

Still even if all the grounwork is well build and well laid, how can we garantee that winners and not losers will be picked?
 
What would the consequences be of the French and British deciding that it would be of good advantage in a future conflict with Germany to hybridize some of their weapons systems and have a free flow of licenses

some changes or ideas

Matilda tanks armed with the French 47mm high velocity AT gun and their 270hp engine out of the B1

French aircraft equipped with RR Merlins

French infantry units having a quantity of British 40mm aa guns

France installing a radar early warning network

Souma 35's become the main British cruiser tanks

British infantry get equipped with French 47mm at guns

Ecen ignoring the political issues, there are all sorts of problem with this list.

The British 2pdr AT gun was one of the best AT guns of the period, the French 47mm wouldnt have offered great advantages that were worth setting up new production lines for guns and ammo.

The merlin engine wasnt really early enough - while it was being made, problems meant it wasnt really ready for war levels of production till mid-39

The British radar was intended to work out to sea, it couldnt pick up overland targets. So useless in France.

Tiy probebly counldnt fit the bigger engine in the Matilda

But the big killer is that the French worked in metric, the British in imperial measurements.
 
While the concept of pre-war SEPECAT/Concorde projects might cause a warm fuzzy feeling, I share the negative response of the other responders. Neither side had a surplus of weapons/materials to share.
The 40 mm AA gun was a Swedish Bofors, designed in metric, partly converted and partly filed to fit. The British shortage of AA guns for naval use was serious. Merlin engines were not a good substitute for a properly developed Hisso engine, something the Soviets were apparently better at. Merlins had no provision for fitting of 20 mm cannons. Concerns over security limited radar cooperation, which was lagging behind German developments anyway, at that time. Clashing of national egos would have been nothing but trouble, and delay. Both sides had plenty of delay to share.
 

Sior

Banned
Ecen ignoring the political issues, there are all sorts of problem with this list.

The British 2pdr AT gun was one of the best AT guns of the period, the French 47mm wouldnt have offered great advantages that were worth setting up new production lines for guns and ammo.

The merlin engine wasnt really early enough - while it was being made, problems meant it wasnt really ready for war levels of production till mid-39

The British radar was intended to work out to sea, it couldnt pick up overland targets. So useless in France.

Tiy probebly counldnt fit the bigger engine in the Matilda

But the big killer is that the French worked in metric, the British in imperial measurements.

It was not so much French lack of radar as the fact that they had no command and control network set up like the RAF. They also lacked the confidence.

“They were well aware of the German advances in quantity but they held the belief that once fighting erupted, the French could hold their own with Germany in the air and that the aircraft the Royal Air Force (RAF), which had just began to deploy in northern France, would tip the balance towards the Allies. Unfortunately for British commanders, their French counterparts not only held the belief that Germany was superior in all air-related aspects, but in fact reinforced it early in 1938. Again, the culprit was Vuillemin. In the spring of 1938, he went to Germany to evaluate for himself the much talked about Luftwaffe. When he came back, the fate of France’s air force was sealed. Later that year, Vuillemin sent a private letter to Prime Minister Edouard Daladier stating once again that in the event of war, Germany would destroy the country’s air force in less than a week. This was the same letter Daladier carried with him to Munich. “
 
Imagine marrying the worst-performing British gun to a French "cruiser tank" design, or replacing Brens with Chauchats...

French standard LMG in 1939 was the FM Châtellerault 24/29, which was a very reliable weapon comparable to the Bren. Chauchat was discontinued in 1921
 
The British 2pdr AT gun was one of the best AT guns of the period, the French 47mm wouldnt have offered great advantages that were worth setting up new production lines for guns and ammo.

Still the French mle 1937 gun was much more powerful and introduced only a year later than the 2 pdr. If the POD was early enough there's no reason not to standardize on a gun that would've been an adequate interim gun until the 6 pdr become available.

I've always thought America should've built this gun under license instead of the American 37mm m3 which was introduced ridiculously late in 1940.

IMO the most important French weapons the British should've copied were the Brandt 60mm, 81mm, and 120mm mortars. The 81mm was superior to the British 3 inch at battalion level, while the 60mm and 120mm would have given British companies and regiments useful fire support. The 120mm in particular proved a WWII classic, being produced by the Soviets and copied by the Germans. Pretty much every army still use these three classic French mortars today with minor improvements.
 
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