1 May 1939. Wolverhampton. England.
The 2nd Dragoon Guards, the Queen’s Bays, had been assigned the first few of the new Light Tank (Wheeled), designed and built by Guy Motors of Wolverhampton. This was basically a four wheeled drive armoured car, but because its turret was fully enclosed, with the same armament as the Vickers Mark VI light tanks, it had been renamed as a Wheeled Tank.
With a body made of 14 mm of armour, its centralised driving compartment was in front of the main superstructure which mounted a square turret with the Vickers .5-inch and .303 machine guns. It was the first fully welded vehicle brought into service by the British army. The welding made it better protected against small arms and more waterproof, thus being able to ford water bodies easier. Welding even made the vehicle slightly lighter. In addition, it made the vehicle a lot cheaper and quicker to build. The welding technique developed by Guy Motors was then given to the War Office, for free. This had brought Sir John Carden and a team from Vickers-Armstrong to have a look at what Guy Motors had done.
The experience of welding the prototype A10E1 tank had thrown up a number of problems and the team from Vickers were keen to see how the Wolverhampton company had resolved them. The tour of the factory coincided with the completion of one of the Wheeled Tanks. They were walked through the entire process and Carden was impressed with the way both the management and workers were happy to share their expertise and experience. If war came, as it seemed more and more likely, this kind of sharing of ideas and openness would be highly valued.
The Vickers-Armstrong board of directors had been aware for some time, when looking at how the War Office were involving so many other companies in the manufacture of tanks, that the companies being chosen tended to be engineering firms that had less than full order books. The really successful engineering firms were so busy with their civilian orders that they had no spare capacity for military orders. The reason that companies like Vulcan Foundry and some of the locomotive manufacturers had spare capacity was that they hadn’t modernised their plant or working practises. The way the A12 was designed was a case in point, it was extremely slow to build because it tended to use outdated, but highly skilled methods.
With Vulcan Foundry as the ‘parent firm’ a number of other companies were making sub-assemblies, so that large pieces of tanks, like hulls or turrets, were having to moved from one part of the country to another, before final assembly. Since standardisation wasn’t something that these companies were well versed in, the ‘craftsmanship’ of fitting together two pieces that didn’t fit was necessary. All of this was highly inefficient. What made it worse was it was hampered all too often by the lack of quality control, all of which meant that a tank might take too long to build, be unreliable, heavier than it needed to be, and more expensive.
What Guy Motors had shown with the Wheeled Tank, which they called the Ant, was a company that had evolved and had therefore produced a vehicle for the army that was all the better for the new techniques. When looking at improving the tank shop at Chertsey, the Vickers team were taking notes of some of Guy Motor’s systems. Getting to see the Ant up close gave Carden a feeling that his decision to press for the Valiant to be a completely welded tank was along the right tracks. The up-front investment in a new factory, training of new employees and the specialised equipment for welding would be expensive. What Carden firmly believed, and the Board of Directors needed to be persuaded of, was that the investment wouldn’t just be good for the company, it would be good for the country.
The problems that Vickers Armstrong had experienced with building the welded A10E1 were similar to the problems that Guy Motors had had to resolve, and the Vickers team were impressed by their solutions. There was obviously going to be differences between welding the light tank armour of 14mm to the much thicker armour planned for the Valiant. The Guy Motors methodology however was applicable even to the heavier armour plate, they were even prepared to made a demonstration for their visitors.
This was the final piece of the puzzle, and the report given to the Board of Directors about the visit to Wolverhampton pressed for Chertsey tank shop improvements to have welding as its primary method of tank manufacture. There would also have to be a further expansion of the associated steel works to meet demand for armour plate. Eventually Elswick would be able to follow the move to welding, and with all the Shadow Factories being built for the RAF, the War Office would probably be persuaded to repeat what they had done at Elswick. In that case Vickers Armstrong met 40% of the costs of the improvements to the tank shop, the War Office met the other 60%. It was also proposed that the Chertsey site should be big enough for the expected increase in orders for tanks should war break out. The ability to build 100-120 tanks per month that seemed ludicrous just last year, was looking more and more necessary.
