2 March 1941. Pembrokeshire, Wales
In the summer after Dunkirk, when there was a dearth of tanks, three Motor-Machine Gun Brigades had been formed. One of these was made up of three Cavalry Regiments (5th Dragoon Guards, 15/19th Hussars, 1st Fife and Forfar Yeomanry) which, as the 2nd Light Armoured Reconnaissance Brigade, had played such an important role in the fighting in France and Flanders. The other two MMG Brigades had been created from other Cavalry Regiments and Battalions of the Royal Tank Regiment which lacked tanks. The Motor-Machine Gun Brigades had been equipped with a variety of cars and lorries for mobility. As the invasion scare had reduced, two MMG Brigades had been reformed as 26th and 28th Armoured Brigades, the third (made up of Royal Tank Regiment battalions) as 25th Army Tank Brigade. 26th Armoured Brigade had been attached to 6th Armoured Division, while 28th Armoured Brigade was now part of 9th Armoured Division.
The Castlemartin training area had been acquired just before the war and was one of the few places where tanks could exercise and have live fire drills. More land throughout the country was being acquired by the War Office, but in the meantime, tank units found a place in Wales where they could hone their skills. All they needed were the tanks to do so.
28th Armoured Brigade, were the first Brigade to receive early production models of the A15 Cruiser Mark VI. So far each of the regiments had only received a handful for training purposes. The fixing of defects was still going on in the factories, so the men of the 28th Armoured Brigade were having to get used to a new tank, without having enough of them to go around. It was expected that once the problems had been resolved, then production would ramp up very quickly, the Commanding Officer Brigadier Herbert Lumsden, had been promised that he would have 150 A15s by June at the latest.
Having spoken to his opposite number in 27th Armoured Brigade, Brigadier Charles Norman, and the GOC 9th Armoured Division, Montagu Burrows, the idea that the whole Division would be fully equipped and trained by the summer on the new cruiser tank was overly optimistic. Having visited the main Nuffield factory, the three officers knew that if they were lucky, the Division might receive thirty tanks per month from the end of March. Production levels would probably rise fairly rapidly from June forward, but the problems at the moment stemmed from all the changes that were having to be made due to the testing of the prototypes.
What was particularly worrying was that they would likely be receiving tanks designed for, but not equipped with, 2-pdr guns. Burrows had been assured that the Ministry of Supply was working very hard to bring the numbers of 2-pdr guns being built up to the level needed for the expanding army anti-tank regiments and the new Armoured Divisions, but there was no doubt going to be a short-fall. Burrows had suggested to the civil servant who informed him of this that having an Armoured Division counterattacking a German invasion, with the gunners shouting ‘BANG’ while aiming broomsticks, wasn’t going to be much help in defending the country.
The A15 tanks that had been delivered so far, were asking a lot of the crews and the Light Aid Detachments. The design of the tank had meant that the Liberty engine needed to have its height reduced and the new Mark III engine’s installation was described, politely, as ‘compact’. Instead of the old 30-inch eight-bladed cooling fan, there was now a pair of 19-inch six bladed fans, which were chain driven from a sprocket mounted on the crankshaft output. The half-inch chain was meant to be maintenance free for 1000 miles, except when it required tensioning, for which an adjustable jockey sprocket was attached. Already the tanks being used by 28th Armoured Brigade were finding that if there was going to be a problem, it was likely to do with the cooling system, and the root cause was almost always in the cooling fan chain. The Light Aid Detachments were writing almost daily reports of the difficulties they were having trying to fix something that was just simply badly designed.
If the problem wasn’t with the cooling fan chain, then it was likely to be caused by various issues with oil. The new engine’s oil pump had been redesigned to reduce the depth of the sump, and its filter was now on the front of the engine. Making the sump, the lower half of the crankcase, shallower, meant that the crankshaft main bearing oil feed was now an external gallery pipe, mounted on the right-hand side. Already problems were being identified with the shallower sump, which was found to be inhibiting oil scavenging, and the external pipe had seven interfaces with the sump, which was a recipe for oil leaks. The mechanics and fitters found that the engine had a tendency to oil up when the tank was going uphill, and that could only be put down to inadequate oil scavenging. This had been noted in trials at Farnborough in the previous summer, and the fact that they weren’t resolved in the early production models of the tank was worrying.
Bringing the new A15 tanks to Wales to give the men of 28th Armoured Brigade experience of working with them in the field was throwing up a lot of concerns. Some of the older, and more cynical, hands weren’t overly worried. Having tanks that weren’t entirely reliable meant that the training of the men to take proper care of the tanks would be taken very seriously. Being stuck out in a field in Wales on a cold winter’s night while waiting for a recovery vehicle was an important learning experience. No one would take anything for granted before setting off in their tanks. Every check would be done at least twice. Crews would be looking out for potential problems to get them fixed before they became the cause of a break down. Men who had had little or no experience with machinery would become adept with the use of spanners and wrenches. Those who were less cynical wondered if having to worry less about their tank being reliable, would mean that they would be more concerned with how to use it as the fighting machine for which it was designed.
