Sir John Valentine Carden survives.

[allanpcameron]

10 July 1939. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. England.

The gun division of Vickers-Armstrong weren’t happy with what they’d been asked to do. There was so much work on, that looking at yet another adaptation of a gun was a pain. The Royal Navy had been looking to get as many of their old 12-pdr guns refurbished as possible for use on various second line ships. The 3-inch/45 20cwt QF HA gun had been designed before the Great War and there were 553 Mark I, 186 Mark II, 27 Mark III and 111 Mark IV in stock, and Vickers were working with the Royal Navy to get them fit for action.

The request from the tank division of the company was to look at the possibility of using this gun as the basis for a new tank gun was an unwelcome addition to the gun design teams’ work load. They knew that Woolwich was working on making a 3-inch howitzer to replace the QF 3.7-inch tank mortar used in the Close Support tanks, but that was a different proposition to what was being requested from Sir John Carden.

He wanted a dual-purpose tank gun that would have enough muzzle velocity to beat 3.5 inches (90mm) of armour with an anti-tank round, and an HE shell with a reasonable bursting charge. The team which had been given the task looked at various solutions, from the easy to overly-complex. But, with all the other work that was being done, just about every element of the company’s capacity was backed up already. Since the gun was a pre-Great War design, to bring it up to date, would mean that the design team would almost have to begin almost from scratch. A few shortcuts might be available, someone suggested using the new 25-pdr’s breech and recoil system and marry it to the 3-inch barrel. The problem was that the army was screaming out for as many 25-pounder guns as they could get their hands on. Any complications to the order for artillery guns would be frowned upon.

The only machinery which was standing relatively idle was the line for the Model 1931 75mm AA gun. This had been a particularly good seller: Romania and Denmark had bought a license to build it themselves. Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Finland, Turkey, Switzerland and China had all bought numbers of guns directly from Vickers. It hadn’t been taken up by any of the British armed forces, 75mm wasn’t a calibre it used much. Finland’s order had been rechambered to take their 76.2mm x 505R, so there was the equipment to make it a 3-inch gun if required, which would simplify sourcing ammunition.

The problem with transforming a gun designed as an anti-aircraft weapon and make it into a tank gun wasn’t insurmountable, but it wouldn’t be easy. First of all, the weight of the gun, just under three tons, would have to be stripped down as far as possible. The barrel length at 10 feet and seven inches, and the recoil length would either need to be reduced, otherwise the turret would look more at home on a ship than on a tank. To achieve this, and keep the muzzle velocity between 2000 and 2500 feet per second, to give it the penetration required, was all a difficult juggling act.

With the drawings of the Close Support Valiant turret to work with, the team had used the 3.7-inch howitzer’s fittings as the basis for attempting the forced marriage. It would take some doing, but they were able to send a report saying that this was the most feasible answer to the request. The draughtsmen’s opinion was that with the current size of the turret it would probably mean that there wouldn’t be room for three crewmen. If they were to progress to a working model, it would be necessary to get the go-ahead from the Board of Directors, to provide the funds to actually build the gun and then fit it to a turret to check for balance and all the other things that went into getting a tank gun working properly.

 

[allanpcameron]

28 July 1939. Birmingham, England.

It was an auspicious day. The Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company had built over 1100 Mark V and V* tanks during the Great War. Now the company, now known simply as Metro-Cammell, had got back into the manufacturing of tanks. The first A10, T9191, almost exactly a year after being ordered, was driven out of the tank shop in Saltley. The fact was all the sweeter because they were a full month ahead of their local rivals, Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Company, whose first A10 still wasn’t finished. Because of their partnership with Vickers-Armstrong, getting back into the tank business had been fairly straightforward for Metro-Cammell. A team from Elswick had spent a couple of months the previous year helping the company reconstruct their tank making capability. There were all sorts of new things that the workforce had to learn, and there had been some changes to the layout of the workshop to try to maximise the use of space. But otherwise the setting up a line to make the Cruiser Mark II had been easy enough.

The Vickers team had then moved to Smethwick to the BRC&WC to bring them up to speed, which was why they were behind Metro-Cammell in the race to complete the order for the tanks. The Smethwick works hadn’t been in the tank business during the great war, so there wasn’t an institutional memory for doing things a in particular way. This in fact had helped Vickers, as in some ways it was easier starting from scratch, without the ‘we used to do it this way’ mentality. So, while Smethwick was a month behind Slatley, they were in fact likely to overtake them in productivity.

The team from Elswick had then moved to Leeds to try to help R W Crabtree and Sons to make the move from building printing presses to manufacturing tanks, which was going to be a much harder job. The team from Elswick weren’t impressed by the Leeds firm whose core work of printing presses was a very different proposition to building a tank. The chances of them getting any A10 built in anything less than 18 months was looking highly unlikely. The recommendation of the Vickers experts was that the 100 tanks ordered from Crabtree should be given to the two Birmingham based companies, and that Crabtree should focus of building components or sub-assemblies which would be much more within their capability.

Metro-Cammell had another 74 tanks to be built, and the company expected that these would be the beginning of the kind of numbers they had dealt with in the Great War. The order for the A10 was understood as a stopgap tank. Some of the company people had seen the drawings of the Vickers Valiant, and they fully expected to be part of the group of companies that would bring the new tank to fruition. The problem for Metro-Cammell was that Vickers wanted the new tank to be of welded construction. This was a skill that was lacking in the company. It would take a lot of retraining and investment to get them to the stage where that would be possible.

 

[allanpcameron]

28 August 1939. Westminster, London.

Now that the Ministry of Supply had taken over responsibility for the development and production everything including armoured fighting vehicles from the War Office, various meetings had been taking place to work out how this new office of state would go about its business. With its headquarters in the Adelphi building, many of those previously involved in the process had been reorganised in the new system.

Vice Admiral Sir Harold Brown, as the Director-General of Munitions Production (DGMP) transferred from the War Office to the Ministry of Supply. Most of his team had come with him, and so Alexander Davidson, Director of Mechanisation chaired this particular meeting. With his assistant, Douglas Pratt, and John Crawford, Deputy director of Mechanisation (Vehicles), the Ministry of Supply team met with representatives of Nuffield Mechanisations and Aero Ltd, its production engineer Andrew Robertson, along with Oliver Boden and Edward Luyks. Robertson was able to report that delivery of the A13 Mark I had now risen to four per week, and that progress was being made on the next batch of 65 which would have the extra armour that made them A13 Mark II. So far 43 of the 65 Mark Is had been completed.

When pressed about the Mark IIs, Boden admitted that the progress referred to was of material procurement and machining, no actual tanks were being built yet. What Robertson and Boden outlined was that Nuffields had planned that the Mark II versions would reach an output of five per week in February 1940, so that by April 1940 95 Mark I & IIs would be completed. When pressed by Brigadier Crawford, who was being harangued regularly by General Roger Evans, commanding 1st Armoured Division to get him more tanks, Robertson admitted that he couldn’t see any way to increase that production level at this time.

What Robertson and Boden did want from the Ministry of Supply was confirmation that they would be able to move transfer Machine Gun Carrier production from their plant at Ward End to the MG works are Abingdon in Oxfordshire. This was to create more floor space to be able to build A15 (Crusader) cruisers. The workforce at Ward End, having worked on the carriers would have enough experience already that the move onto tanks wouldn’t be too difficult. If Ward End was to make tanks, then Nuffield could produce ten cruiser tanks per week with ease, asking if that would be sufficient for the Ministry of Supply’s needs.

Major-General Alexander Davidson, like Crawford, was being pestered for all the tanks the army could get its hands on. In answer to Boden’s question, he had one of his own. There was no doubt that there would be further production demands, but would the additional production demands from other companies for engines, gears and all the other components be available? What he really wanted was ‘a large tank factory ready to compete with any type of work.’

Boden argued that if 10 cruisers per week were required, then Nuffields would need additional orders to be placed immediately. The current order for 100 A15s was insufficient for the investment to be able to make 10 per week capacity achievable. There would need to be a least an order for 200 more A15s to be made. Davidson reminded Boden that 200 A15s had been ordered, 100 from Nuffield and 100 from West’s Gas Improvement Co. Ltd of Manchester. The order from West’s Gas was currently a formal understanding, the contract itself hadn’t been placed. Davidson proposed ordering another 100 A15s from Nuffields on the same basis, a formal understanding that would be followed by a contract once the Treasury had allocated the funds. This was acceptable to the Nuffield’s team.

The concern expressed by Davidson’s deputy, Colonel Douglas Pratt, was about the delays to getting the A15 into production, especially as it was coming straight off the drawing board. It was preferable to have some cruiser tanks than have none at all, and so while Nuffields were making their preparations for producing the A15, an extra 30 to 50 A13 Mark IIs would have to be ordered to ensure continuity of production. The Nuffield team left the meeting quite happy. The army team were still worried about the lack of tanks for the Royal Armoured Corps. After lunch they were due to meet the team from Vickers.

Robert Micklem along with John Carden and Leslie Little were able to give a very positive update from the Vickers-Armstrong perspective to the Ministry of Supply meeting. Since the agreement reached in June, a petrol version of the Valiant powered by the Napier Lion, with thinner armour and a higher top speed had been rushed into a prototype form. It was on its way to Farnborough as they spoke. Since all the components were already in place for the third Valiant prototype it had been an easy job to use thinner armour plate and create the Valiant Mark I*E1 for testing. The various fixes that had been suggested from the Farnborough testing for the Valiant Mark I had been incorporated into the second prototype of the Mark I and therefore also for the Mark I*E1.

Regarding their own production, the Vickers team were able to note that the order for 180 A11 Infantry Tank was due to be completed by the end of January 1940. Work on these tanks had been speeded up as the space at Elswick was needed for the Valiant to get into production. The 50 A9 and 10 A10s ordered from Vickers itself would also be complete by the end of January, so that full-scale production of the Valiant Mark I and I* would be able to begin in February 1940, so long as everything went well at Farnborough and there were no complications. Sir John Carden was very happy to say that their talks with Perkins to supply diesel engines had been successful and that the Valiant Mark I would have a modern and reliable engine based on the Napier Lion to power it.

As the parent company for the A9 and A10, the Vickers team were happy to report that Harland & Wolff’s production of the A9 was also ahead of schedule. Micklem mentioned that a team from Belfast had been over to Newcastle to look at the Valiant with a view of offering to take up part of the order for these tanks to replace production of the A9s when they were complete. A10s were being produced by Metro-Cammell and Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Company. The recommendation that the team from Vickers had received that R W Crabtree and Sons wouldn’t be in a position to manufacture tanks for a lengthy period of time was passed onto Davidson and the Ministry of Supply. The idea that the order for 100 A10s be reassigned to the two Birmingham based companies already making them was also given to Davidson for his consideration. That was happily accepted and the idea that Crabtree would focus on components and sub-assemblies was also approved.

Leslie Little noted that work on the A17, the Mark VII Light Tank, was progressing well. The proposal to move production to Metro-Cammell to allow Vickers to focus on the Valiant however was questionable. Now that the Birmingham firm was successfully making the A10, it was Vickers' recommendation that North British Locomotives in Glasgow should take over the production of the A17. The Glasgow company’s production of 147 Mark VI Light Tanks was coming to an end and the new light tank would be well within their capability. That would allow Metro-Cammell to move onto production of the Valiant when they had completed the A10s. The jump to Valiants would be smoother for the company than retooling for the light tank. Likewise, Micklem suggested that BRC&WC would also move onto building the Valiant as production of the A10 wound down. If the 495 Valiants were going to be put into the hands of the army as quickly as possible, Vickers would need the help of these two companies to do so, preferably also with the help of Harland & Wolff.

This proposal was accepted, and Carden took the opportunity to hand over a folder with detailed drawings for a Valiant Mark II. Using the information gained from his trip to Woolwich, Carden had redesigned the turret of the Valiant to take the new 6-pdr gun and its ammunition. The hull, suspension and engine would all remain as they were, only the turret would need to be adapted to take the bigger gun, the turret ring size was already big enough. His notes alongside the drawings remarked that it could be ready to go as soon as the gun was in production, and he made a formal request to have an early production model of the 6-pdr gun to make a prototype of the turret. In the folder was also a proposal for a self-propelled gun based on the Valiant hull mounting the 25-pdr howitzer, which had originally been given the company name of Vampire. Carden now wanted to call it the Birch Gun in honour of the man who inspired it.

Davidson couldn’t help but notice the difference between the meeting with Nuffield in the morning and Vickers in the afternoon. The army were crying out for tanks, and so far, all that Nuffield had been able to do was complete 43 A13 Mark Is, with the promise of 95 more in another eight months. Then they would deliver 200 A15s (Crusader) at some point in the uncertain future.

LMS were offering an A13 Mark III (Covenanter) off the drawing board, which might go into production sometime next year, with a Meadows engine which was yet to run. Crawford had expressed some doubts about the way the A13 Mark III was designed, with the engine at one end and the cooling system at the other end of the tank, a criticism that Sir John Carden also expressed very strongly. The Christie suspension had a lot to offer in terms of speed, and the Mark III certainly looked the part. But at every meeting with LMS more and more problems were coming up. That was expected, after all they were completely new to tank design and building, even with help with Woolwich. If the Meadows engine didn’t produce the promised 300hp; if the weight of the tank kept increasing; if the companies involved didn’t have the expertise or experience, then the A13 Mark III could be a disaster.

Vulcan Foundry had managed a grand total of 3 A12s (Matilda II) so far. It was clear that the Royal Tank Regiment thought that the tank was very good, but the production was going to be slow. A number of firms had been approached to help including Ruston & Hornsby and John Fowler & Co. It was entirely possible that LMS would be far better adding their heavy industry muscle to making a very good tank now than what might be a disaster later. The A12 with its cast armour would likely be a better fit for a company more used to making locomotives than a cruiser tank.

Nuffield, on the other hand, had birthed the A13 Marks I & II and were working on the A15 (Crusader). The pilot model of the A15 would be ready in six months, how long after that would production begin was another question. Realistically it would be spring of 1941 at the earliest before the A15 would be in service, eighteen months between design and service would be pushing it. There were problems with the design, and Lord Nuffield’s insistence on using the old Liberty engine would likely have consequences. However, the company were showing willing and relatively able. A number of other companies were going to be approached to go into production of the A15 alongside Nuffield, West’s Gas Improvement was one, Foddens was another. There was a reasonable expectation that the A15 would be in service in spring 1941, but the army needed to be fully equipped with tanks in spring 1940.

Compare all that to Vickers. Nearly every current tank in the British inventory was a Vickers product, whether the old Mediums, or all the various Marks of the Light Tank. The A9, A10 and A11 all had a head start on all the others, but they were actually appearing in the depots of the RAC. None of them were brilliant, but they weren’t bad either, even the A11 with its pompom gun was winning friends in the Royal Tank Regiment. Now Vickers were offering two versions of a tank that kind of fitted the Cruiser and Infantry roles. They were also promising full scale production in the time frame the army was desperate for. Vickers, Harland & Wolff, Metro-Cammell, and BRC&WC were all very capable firms, with proven expertise and experience.

Over lunch the Ministry of Supply team had been planning on approaching Leyland and English Electric to go into the tank business under LMS’s parentage to build the A13 Mark III (Covenanter). This would involve investing in providing Leyland and English Electric with new plant and machine tools to help manufacture the A13 Mark III, including welding as the principle means of manufacture. After the meeting with the Vickers team this had to be reconsidered. Davidson, Crawford and Pratt over tea began to think about suggesting that this investment would be better going into the Valiant, especially the Mark I* cruiser version.

Vickers had successfully got all the companies under their parentage up and running in a timely and effective manner. With brand new factories built for Leyland and English Electric under the supervision of Vickers, and using welding from the start, these two companies stood a better chance of actually building tanks during 1940 while LMS were still trying to sort out the potential difficulties of the A13 Mark III (Covenanter). If that tank was still-born, before too much effort had been put into it, then LMS could focus on building the A12 (Matilda II) and their core business of locomotives. It would be disappointing for LMS not to have a tank of their own design produced, but the army would prefer a half-decent tank sooner than a potentially risky bet for some time in the next year or so.

 

[allanpcameron]

10 September 1939. Farnborough, England.

4th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment’s commanding officer Lt Col Gatehouse MC, with his second in command Maj FitzMaurice at his side, addressed the officers and men on parade.

“As you may already have heard, the Battalion has received movement orders to join the British Expeditionary Force in France. We are to depart these shores in just over a week’s time. We are going to be the first, and for the moment, only tank battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment in France.

“We have all been watching the newsreels coming from Poland where the German army are engaged in a war of aggression. Those of us old enough to remember the fighting in France in the last lot, are going back to do the same thing as we did before.

“We are going to teach the Hun that aggression against our allies and friends will be met with overwhelming force. The Royal Tank Corps was the war winning weapon that achieved that in 1918. We will go back to France and show them once more that the tanks of the British Army will defeat any foe.

“The battalion will have an extremely busy time of it. There is a great deal to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Each and everyone of us will be expected to give of our best and work tirelessly to make the movement happen, on time and in proper order.

“I have every confidence that the 4th Battalion will set the example for the rest of the Royal Tank Regiment to follow. Your officers and NCO’s have been fully briefed, and once you are dismissed, you will each be assigned your tasks. We have learned that working together that there is nothing that we cannot overcome.

“Now, work hard! This is the beginning of a very trying time for us all, and for our country. Start off as you mean to go on. Put your whole effort into this, and once the fighting begins, we will be in a position to show Germany, and their fancy new panzer troops, that the Royal Tank Regiment is the original and the best!”

 

[allanpcameron]

29 September 1939. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. England.

Peter Bennett, previously the President of the Federation of British Industry, now the Director-General of Tanks and Transport (DGTT) in the Ministry of Supply was paying a visit to the Vickers plant at Elswick to see for himself what the company was doing. It was terribly inconvenient therefore that an air raid siren sounded while he was being guided through the tank shop.

The factories of Vickers, being dedicated to armaments production were an obvious target for an air attack. The level of seriousness displayed by Vickers towards taking Air Raid Precautions was reflected by the level of expenditure during 1938 and 1939 totalling a considerable £495,000. The Board of Directors had agreed at the beginning of 1939 that each factory should proceed with individual ARP schemes, whereby final preparations could be completed within 48-hours of an emergency arising. The majority of these precautions and costs had taken place in the eight months prior to the outbreak of war.

So it was that Bennett, in company with some of Vickers senior managers, found himself walking hurriedly towards one of the air-raid shelters, while the workforce streamed out of the buildings with the same purpose in mind. Only a few weeks into the war, the notion of constantly carrying a gas mask, and knowing where the nearest shelters were, had been repeatedly emphasised to the populace. So far none of the alerts had been due to enemy action, it seemed that the Luftwaffe had its hands full destroying Warsaw and the Polish forces that continued their resistance. None the less when the air raid sirens sounded, workers downed tools and made their way to the designated areas for safety.

Within a relatively short period the ‘all clear’ sounded and as Bennett walked back towards the boardroom, the manager of the tank shop complained long and bitterly about the lost time to his production figures that this interruption, and others like it, had caused. Bennett, in all truth, was quite impressed by the efforts that Vickers had taken, and it seemed an obvious question to ask about what protection would the machine tools have. It was right and fitting to protect the workforce, but Bennett knew well that there was a real bottleneck to production in all areas, because of a shortage of the kind of tools that often had been bought from Germany in the past. The manager shrugged his shoulders, beyond protecting its workforce, the company would have to rely on the armed forces to protect the factories from aerial attack. Bennett nodded with understanding, this was much the same as he was hearing everywhere he went. Vickers at least were well ahead of many companies in their ARP efforts, and that confirmed his intuition about what the company were offering the country.

Back in the board room, with a refreshing cup of tea, Bennett took the opportunity to note the photograph* on the front page of a newspaper of a train load of A11 Infantry Tanks being carried from Cherbourg to somewhere else in France, attended by the men of 4th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment. The tanks had been built here in Elswick and were now taking their place at the centre of the build-up of the BEF. He had been shown the production line for the A11s during his tour. As he had walked down the production line, he had been terribly aware that the 7th and 8th Battalions RTR were awaiting their full allocation of Infantry Tanks to join the Tank Brigade in France. The 7th Battalion, unlike the 4th, were meant to be partly equipped with Vickers A11s and partly with Vulcan A12s. While they had their full allocation of A11s they were still waiting for the A12s. 8th Battalion RTR were meant to be primarily equipped with Vulcan’s A12s, and so far, there were only a handful of these in existence. Some 30 of Elswick built A11s, along with 20 each of A9s and A10s, had been shipped to Egypt where the 1st and 6th Battalions RTR were testing them out in desert conditions. Most of the rest of the A11s were being used as training tanks for the many territorial RTR Battalions that had been activated by the declaration of war.

The decision taken to decrease the numbers of Mark VI light tanks that Vickers were to manufacture had allowed the company to speed up production of the A9, A10 and A11. Now that war had been declared, the company had also been told to stop work on all foreign orders, and indeed some tanks intended for the Netherlands had been taken over by the Royal Armoured Corps as training tanks, and had christened them ‘Dutchmen’. The Dutch government were less than impressed with that decision and had formally objected to it. With work coming to an end on all these other tanks, Bennett had been able to see for himself the work that was going into preparing for the production of the Valiant.

What Bennett noted was the concern raised by the Vickers management of the fact that tank production wasn’t at the nation’s highest level of priority. That priority had been issued by the Air Ministry for aircraft production, something that Vickers were aware of in building the Wellington bomber and having Supermarine as a subsidiary. Having seen how easily production could be interrupted, Bennett resolved to bring the matter up when he got back to London.
*

From OTL. The actual photos TTL would have looked more like:

 

[allanpcameron]

7 October 1939. London, England.

The Under Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, was lunching in his club with Peter Bennett, the Director-General of Tanks and Transport (DGTT) in the Ministry of Supply. Grigg had received a strongly worded letter the day before from General Roger Evans, commander of 1st Armoured Division. He shared the letter with Bennett and they talked through what they could do about it.

Evans had drawn Grigg’s attention to the ‘grave deficiencies’ in the organisation and war establishment of the Division. The plan was to have 1st Armoured Division ready to take to the field on 1 May 1940. With the mobilisation of the Division on 1st September the influx of reservists had meant that the Division was fully taken up with reorganisation and basic training. There was little scope for doing any training at Regimental level, never mind Brigade or Divisional level. This was partly because of the lack of vehicles, but partly also because of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease which limited the availability of training grounds.

Grigg wanted to know from Bennett what the Ministry of Supply was doing before he replied to the letter. Bennett had spoken to Leslie Burgin, the Minister, about the need to increase the production of tanks, and that therefore it needed to pushed up to the highest level of national priority. Bennett encouraged Grigg to do the same with his own Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hoare-Belisha. If the Cabinet could be persuaded of this, then it would make a difference to tank production over the next few months.

The war establishment for 1st Armoured Division that Evans expected was 58 A10s as ‘heavy cruisers’; 159 ‘light cruisers’ which would be a mixture of A9s and A13s; 24 CS cruisers, most of which would be A9s, and 108 light tanks. The Light tanks were meant to be the Mark VII (A17) with the 2-pdr gun, but since these were still to see the light of day, all were in fact the machine-gunned armed Mark VI. In addition to these 349 tanks, the Division expected to have seven Armoured Control Vehicles and 93 scout cars, of which they currently had not a one. With the current shortage of cruisers, the Armoured Division were equipped with more than 200 Mark VIs but really needed the cruisers. When the cruisers came along, the Light Tanks would be passed on to Cavalry Regiments being mechanised. Bennett noted that the order for 120 Mark VII had been allocated to North British Locomotives which meant that it could be mid-1940 before any of these tanks began to be available, far too late for the 1 May deadline.

Evans had made the decision that the Heavy Brigade would concentrate on the Vickers tanks: 58 A10s, 84 A9s, as well as the 24 A9CS versions, to ease the maintenance problems since all these tanks had the same engine and suspension. Made up of 2nd, 3rd and 5th Battalions RTR, the Heavy Brigade, with current production numbers, wasn’t expected to fully equipped until January. General Evans remarked that if the 40 A9 and A10s hadn’t been sent to the Mobile Division in Egypt, his Heavy Brigade would be closer to its completion.

The Light Brigade, made up of The Queen’s Bays, 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers and 10th Royal Hussars, would expect to each be equipped with 36 light tanks and 22 light cruisers. As the light tanks weren’t the desired A17 with the two-pounder gun, General Evans suggested that it would be better if they were equipped entirely with gun armed light cruisers. The Light Brigade’s current requirement of 72 cruisers would then rise to 174. Nuffield who was building the A13s, expected delivery of the 65 Mark Is to be completed in October, the Mark II with the thicker armour would start arriving from then on. By the end of January, it was expected that the Light Brigade too would be equipped with all its current requirement of 72 light cruiser tanks. If Evan’s request to have a full Brigade’s worth of A13s, that would take at least until the end of May to be done, providing that no other units received any production A13 Mark IIs.

While a full complement of tanks by the end of January was something to be grateful for, Evans noted that the Support Group was even slower at being formed than the tank regiments. There was no sign of the Royal Horse Artillery Regiment being assigned. He had been told that it might join them in France at some point after 1 May 1940. Likewise, the Light Anti-Aircraft/Anti-tank Regiment existed primarily on paper; of the two Motorised Infantry Battalions, one had been sent to Northern Ireland; and the Royal Engineers Field Squadron was deficient in its technical equipment, especially in regards of bridging equipment. The Royal Signals were 100 men short of their establishment; there was only one of the seven required RASC companies; and the RAOC were far short of what was needed, for example, they only had two of the eighteen breakdown lorries, and these were missing their trailers.

General Evans, however, had noted that ‘it is not the provision of material alone which forms the determining factor in our readiness to take to the field, but the provision of material in time to allow an adequate degree of training to be carried out before we go to war.’ He reminded Grigg that he had less than seven months before 1 May. It wasn’t just that he was deficient of important equipment, but also for the personnel trained to use it, as ‘It is not a matter of a week or two to complete our training on receipt of our equipment; it is a matter of months.’ He went on in his letter to say, ‘If this Division is to be ready to take to the field on 1st May 1940, the greater part of its equipment and armament must be in our hands at the beginning of the year; if it is not, the date of our readiness for war must be correspondingly postponed.’

The idea of a postponement wasn’t acceptable to anyone. If anything, with the situation unfolding in Poland, the need to get the 1st Armoured Division integrated into the BEF was all the more urgent. Thankfully Lord Gort was insisting that he didn’t want any more untrained and ill-equipped units under his command. The current situation of the BEF in France was bad enough without having yet another Division that would be better served getting themselves up to speed at home before being deployed across the Channel. The process of moving the BEF into position was proceeding as planned, but it was the largest scale operation undertaken by the Army since 1919, and therefore there were plenty of problems that Gort didn’t want to add to. John Grigg noted that the chances were that the shortages that Evans had identified in 1st Armoured Division were the result of the cupboard being stripped bare of anything useful by the regular forces making up the BEF.

Evans had also noted in his letter that when the tanks were delivered, they often were lacking their gun, which would be delivered separately and then have to be mounted and properly sighted. There was often a gap between the arrival of the tank from the manufacturer and the main armament being available. The bottleneck of producing enough 2-pdrs for both the increasing number of tanks and anti-tank regiments was proving to be a problem. This was made more complicated with the decision to move from the Vickers .303 co-axial machine gun to the BESA 7.92mm gun. There weren’t enough of the new Czech designed guns for training, never mind being available for tank use something that once again was a production problem. It would mean that later versions of the A13 Mark II would be equipped with a different co-axial machine gun. The A10 Mark IA and A13 Mark IIA, whose turrets would be redesigned to take the air cooled machine guns, would complicate logistics if they had to provide 7.92mm ammunition as well as .303 and 0.5 for the Vickers guns. The larger 15mm BESA which was also being introduced, was proving to be full of production bugs, delaying its availability. Evans did admit that if the Light Tanks were armed with this cannon in the Light Brigade, it would go somewhat towards improving their capability until the A13 cruisers were available.

Grigg noted that even if the production numbers of tanks was going to go up by giving a higher priority, the probability remained that the delivery of guns for the tanks wasn’t going to keep up. That was something that Campbell Clarke at Woolwich would have to deal with. It had been suggested that the Mark VII (A17) might have been armed with the Vickers 2-pdr pompom that was used on the A11. If that was possible, then it would save 120 QF 2-pdrs for the cruiser tanks. If Clarke could be convinced that the Light Tanks would be better off with that gun rather than a dedicated anti-tank gun, then it would help. Neither Grigg nor Bennett were convinced Clarke would agree.

Both men knew that there were so many new types of weapon being acquired that there was always going to be a backlog in fielding the necessary numbers. Bennett had visited the Royal Ordnance Factory in Nottingham where 2-pdrs were being produced, along with both 3.7-inch and Bofors 40mm AA guns. They were also in the running to build the new 5.5-inch medium gun for the Royal Artillery. The workforce in this factory, like all the others, was increasing. Delays in training new employees as well as delays in sourcing machine tools meant that it would take time before increased production was possible.

General Evans letter to Grigg had one last comment. He had recently been at Farnborough and seen the Valiant Mark I*, the cruiser version of the Valiant with the petrol engine and thinner armour, go through its paces. Evans had noted that it fitted the bill for a heavy cruiser much better than the A10. In fact, despite its weight and speed, he could see it being much more useful than all the current cruiser tanks. He had also seen the Valiant Mark I, which despite being named an Infantry Tank, was, to his mind, also a far better tank than the current crop of cruisers. He hoped that both models would be available as soon as possible, and if pressed, he believed the Mark I would probably be the better bet in the long run.

Over a brandy, Bennett and Grigg noted that they had both seen the proposal for Vickers Valiant Mark II whose turret had been designed with the new 6-pdr gun in mind. If they could persuade their respective Ministers to ask that a new production line for the new gun could be opened up as soon as possible, allowing for the early entry into service for that weapon, it would be a wise move. Bennett noted that the Vickers-Armstrong company had made bids for producing the 57mm weapon, as they had produced that bore of gun previously for the Royal Navy. Currently Woolwich hadn’t finalised the design for the gun carriage, and there were problems with the number of lathes available for the preferred L/50 calibre. Vickers were keen on going with a L/43 barrel for the tank gun, for which they had the necessary tooling, leaving the anti-tank gun for the Royal Artillery regiments to follow when the carriage was fully worked out. The two men agreed to bring that proposal before their respective Ministers. Grigg would bring the concerns of General Evans to the Secretary of State for War, but just about every commander in all three services were writing letters bemoaning the lack of preparedness for the conflict in which the nation was now embroiled.

 

[allanpcameron]

8 November 1939. London, England.

Specification A20 had been formed as the BEF took their place in the line in places like Loos, Lens and La Bassee, amidst the still scarred landscape and massive cemeteries. The men of the 1939 BEF got to work extending the defences of the Franco-Belgian border with trenches that were all too familiar to the older men among them. To their south was the Maginot Line, the ultimate entrenchment. To the east, the Siegfried Line, their own mirrored fortifications. With the approach of winter weather, the return to a muddy ‘no-man’s-land’ full of shell-holes seemed all too real. The question was whether the tanks currently available to the army would flounder in such a pockmarked landscape.

So, at the end of September 1939 was born the idea that what the army needed to cross such a muddy hell hole was a modernised version of the Mark VIII International tank of 1918. It would have to be larger than the Vulcan Matilda or Vickers’ Valiant, and still able to withstand the enemy 37mm anti-tank gun. A speed of 10mph would be all that it would need, capable of leading a direct assault on enemy entrenchments, over very soft ground. To be able to do so, it would need to exert the lowest possible ground-pressure, and be able to employ an un-ditching beam to pull itself out of deep holes. That last requirement would mean that it would have to be turretless, and so the return to side sponsons for the armament would complete the return to the Great War design.

The Mechanisation Board had approached Vickers in October for their design expertise, and both Sir John Carden and Leslie Little had responded with a request to leave it just simply as a set of requirements and let them work out a design to meet them. However, the Board wanted to be more involved than that. They thought that the tank would need to be about 32 tons, with at least 60mm of armour, transportable by train. They imagined that if they used the turret of the Vulcan A12 and the Meadow DAV engine and transmission of the LMS A13 Mark III (Covenanter), then there would be no need for a pilot model.

With such thoughts as these, the Mechanisation Board had approached Harland & Wolff as potential manufacturers. Up to a hundred of the A20 would be envisaged, a significant order. The Belfast firm had been looking at the potential of getting into the diesel engine market with a 300hp design of their own. They suggested using this instead of the Meadows’ V12, but the DAV was much further on in terms of development and so the Mechanisation Board wanted to stay with that rather than an engine still on the drawing board.

The back and forth between London and Belfast got complicated. The French Char B2 bis was very similar to the specification that the A20 looked for, and the Mechanisation Board thought that having a hull mounted main armament in addition to a turret with the 2-pdr anti-tank gun, was a better solution. The new six-pounder gun’s L/50 barrel was judged to be too likely stick out too far from the front of the tank and have the danger of being damaged. They also looked at an alternative based on the Naval 6-pdr anti-torpedo boat gun, the QF 6-pounder 10 cwt gun, but this was rejected as it would have a reduced performance. The French gun was also rejected more or less out of hand, the dubious reason given was that the front of the tank would have to be redesigned for it. Eventually the new 3-inch howitzer being developed by Woolwich was chosen to be mounted in the hull, and they would keep the Vulcan A12 turret with the 2-pdr gun as part of the package.

Harland & Wolff had made their drawings based on a suspension system that had been used on one of the versions of the pre-war A7 medium prototypes. This consisted of pairs of small diameter rollers on trailing arms, acting on short coil-springs, with fourteen such bogies on both sides of the hull. The suspension would be protected by external plating, but the top run of the track would be exposed. Access into the tank would be provided for the crew through hatches on the side of the hull, and in addition to the main hull armament, there would be apertures for machine guns in various places in the hull for firing along trenches as they were crossed. These drawings were now being considered and the debate centred around how many mild steel prototypes should be ordered.

Peter Bennett had noted that when Harland & Wolff were approached for a design for the A20 that they had already been identified to be one of the companies that would be manufacturing the Vickers Valiant in the new year. Taking them off that tank which was nearly ready to go into production and onto something of their own design might be a problem. The question was then whether there were any other companies who, as yet, were not part of the expansion of the war potential. The only company identified was Vauxhall, and so the question was whether to approach them to take on the A20 proposal and develop it themselves. Once more they would need help to create a tank shop, as they had no experience at all with heavy engineering. They might though be able to do something about an engine for a heavy tank, as their Bedford engines were pretty good. It was therefore agreed to approach Vauxhall with the drawings of the A20 from Harland & Wolf and ask them to take on the development of the tank. The specification A21 had been used in another context, and so Vauxhall’s specification would be A22.

With the notion of the A20 being bandied about, Sir Albert Stern had been in touch. He had been the secretary of the Landships Committee, and he considered himself the driving force behind the adoption of the tank in the Great War. Looking at the situation of the BEF and the Siegfried Line that they would eventually have to assault, Stern was convinced that he could do again what he had done previously. To make his point all the more, he had gathered around him the same team that had been successful in 1916. W G Wilson, William Tritton, Harry Ricardo, Ernest Swinton, Eustace Tennyson D’Eyncourt, all agreed to help build a tank for hanging out the washing on the Siegfried Line. With their contacts in the Cabinet, not least Winston Churchill, they were formed into the Special Vehicle Development Committee (SVDC), though they were quickly named The Old Gang.

Harry Ricardo and W G Wilson were named on the SVDC, but didn’t seem too involved, particularly since Wilson’s epicyclic transmission was notable by its absence from the committee’s presentation. Ricardo also seemed to be nothing more than a name on paper as the engine chosen was a Paxman 12-cylinder diesel engine. The tracks that were to be used were to be the same nickel-steel plates used on the old Mark I. Stern seemed to want to refight the battle with Wilson over the transmission for the new tank, selecting for this new tank Merz and McLellan’s petrol-electric drive which hadn’t been selected in 1916 in favour of the Wilson system. The Mechanisation Board were less than enthusiastic about this proposal, but there was definitely some political pressure and so they permitted work to begin, expecting to see a wooden mock-up in the new year.

(Much of this was taken from David Fletcher The Great Tank Scandal.)

 

[allanpcameron]

2 December 1939. Wolverhampton, England.

Sir John Carden’s visit to the Fallings Park factory was a bit of a surprise. Meadows had always had a good relationship with Vickers, the Mark VI Light Tanks used the Meadows 6-cylinder engine, providing 88hp, which had also gone into the A11. The 12-cylinder MAT engine was designated to go into the new Mark VII light tank, providing it with 165hp. The company’s gearboxes were also used on plenty of Vickers’ tanks.

What Carden had come to see was the new 8858cc 12-cylinder DAV engine that Meadows had developed. This engine was just now coming into its own, though the bench tests were a bit disappointing, it was only producing about 280hp, a bit less than the 300hp plus they’d hoped for. LMS, who had been planning to use the DAV engine for the A13 Mark III, looked as if they were going to lose that contract, that the tank would be stillborn. The same had happened with Harland & Wolff’s A20 design, the DAV engine had been mentioned as being suitable for that specification. It looked as though all the development work and costs would be wasted. Carden didn’t agree, the reality of war meant that there would be plenty of uses for powerful engines. Looking at the A9 and A10 hulls, Carden believed that the DAV engine was something that he could use in them as the basis for a number of other Armoured Fighting Vehicles. Replacing the 6-cylinder AEC engines in them with the Meadows DAV would give him the power to weight ratio that he thought they would need, though he would need to significantly redesign the engine compartment to take the much bigger engine and its cooling system.

What Carden had seen over the last few years was that tanks were going to get heavier, and would still need to be fairly speedy. Therefore, tank engines would need to provide a minimum of 15-20hp per ton, though around 25hp/ton would be ideal. The DAV engine would be suitable for anything up to 15 tons, but after that would struggle. The way designs were going, tanks weighing less than 15 tons were going to become things of the past, but there would be other uses for armoured vehicles in that weight range, like an updated Birch gun which he was working on. Which brought him to the other reason for his visit.

Vickers and Perkins had signed a deal, agreed with Napier, to make an engine for the Valiant tank based on the Napier Lion. The five hundred or so engines that had been bought from the RAF were all going to used up within a year of production, allowing for spare engines to be available in army stocks. Perkins, with the help of Harry Ricardo, had been working on making the diesel Lion much easier to mass produce, a project that was going very well. The problem was that the army had wanted a petrol engine for the cruiser variant of the Valiant Mark I*. Napier, who continued to make the Sea Lion, a marine version of the engine producing 500hp were being caught up more and more in the Air Ministry’s web. The problem for many companies was that the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Supply were almost competing with one another to bring new capacity into their sphere for the RAF and Army respectively. Napier was finding that their idea of building a tank engine, in addition to working on the Sabre which the RAF wanted, was causing them problems.

The group of manufacturers Vickers-Armstrong were working with expected that the current orders for tanks would continue to rise at a very high rate. Now that English Electric and Leyland were joining Vickers, Harland & Wolff, Metro-Cammell and Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Company as manufacturers of the Valiant, Carden wanted to get an idea of how Meadows would react to a formal request from the Ministry of Supply to build a petrol version of Napier Lion for the Valiant Mark I*. Like Perkin’s were doing with the diesel version, Carden wanted the Meadows team to simplify the Lion for mass production. He was prepared to accept a loss a bit of horsepower if the engine could be built to be reliable and easy to maintain for the Royal Armoured Corps men who would rely on it to keep them moving.

Carden’s search for an engine had taken him to Ford, and he’d been interested to note that when they were gearing up for production at the new site in Manchester, they weren’t just building the Merlin the same way as Rolls-Royce. Instead, they had taken it apart and were attempting to make it much better suited for mass production. Every component part had to be interchangeable, there was to be no place for having to file or otherwise ‘fit’ something that didn’t fit. This was the reason that when Carden approached Meadows about the Lion he wanted them to do the same with it.

Meadows’ Fallings Park Factory was a large and well-designed facility, it also had the machine tools necessary for producing big engines, and Carden was sure that they would be able to get a new engine into production within the time it would take for the already existing Lion engines to be used in the production of tanks. The Meadows management weren’t entirely keen on the idea, making someone else’s engines wasn’t something they particularly wanted to do. But they could see the fundamental difference between their DAV’s 280hp and the Lion’s best part of 500hp. Vickers’ Valiant was obviously something that the army saw a future with, and it needed the big aero-engine to power it.

The Meadows management were a bit more sceptical about whether they would be able to do what Ford was doing. Their own working practices tended towards the ‘skilled’ ability to fit things together. It would mean having to work with their suppliers too to make things more interchangeable. All of this would take a good bit of investment, but they agreed to look at it, and if approached by the Ministry of Supply, with a promise of funds to help them, then they would take on the work. In exchange, Vickers would have to use the V12 DAV engine in the alternative A9/A10 designs. Carden was confident that he could get the Vickers board to agree, and pull some strings through the War Office to get the Ministry of Supply on board.

The sweetener to their agreeing would be entry at the ground level to the follow-on engine. Carden had already been looking at what would come after the Valiant, a tank that would likely weigh in at around 35 tons. He was looking for an engine that would need in the region of 600hp to move it at a reasonable speed. Meadows was already linked primarily to the Ministry of Supply, so their capacity wasn’t likely to be poached by the Air Ministry. The problem was that a Lion replacement would really need to also come from an aero-engine. Carden had a few years previously looked at the Rolls-Royce Kestrel as possibly being used as the basis for such an engine. However, the expansion of the RAF was using up just about everything that Rolls-Royce could produce.

What was becoming clear now was that the Air Ministry were focusing on the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, with shadow factories being opened in Glasgow, Crewe, and with Ford, at Trafford in Manchester to build it. In many ways a de-rated Merlin would be ideal to produced around the 600hp a future tank might need. There was no way that was going to happen however, at least not in the short term. When Sir John Carden had gone back to Rolls-Royce looking for an engine, Sir Ernest Hives had showed him the Peregrine. As a development of the Kestrel it was causing problems which he and his team really didn’t want to spend a great deal of time on. There were two aircraft types that the Peregrine was to be used on, but the need for developing the Merlin was taking all their efforts. If Carden wanted to take it and play around with it as a tank engine, then Hives had no particular problem with that, though he didn’t know what the Air Ministry would say about it.

If the blueprints and a working example of the Peregrine could be acquired by the War Office, then Meadows might do the same thing with that as he was asking them to do with the petrol Lion. Carden knew it would take a couple of years before the successor to the Valiant would be ready, probably around 1942. If Meadows started work on a follow-on engine to the Lion now, then it too would be mature enough to be fitted into that tank in two years’ time. The problems that Rolls-Royce were experiencing with the Peregrine would be much easier fixed in a de-rated tank version than the high performance needed for an aircraft. Meadows’ designers and engineers would have the time and funds needed to sort out the problems, which simplifying for Mass Production would no doubt help with. If needed, under the Vickers’ umbrella, there was the larger pool of firms, like Perkins, Leyland and English Electric, who all had engine design and manufacturing expertise. A Meadows’ Peregrine tank engine could be a world-beater, and would provide the company with work for years to come. There were a lot of 'ifs and buts' in all this, but the Meadows management were prepared to be flexible on the matter, especially if the Ministry of Supply were keen on investing in the capacity to do so.

 

[allanpcameron]

12 December 1939. Wanquetin, near Arras, France.

The General Headquarters of the BEF had had a couple of days to relax now that the visit of His Majesty King George VI had passed off successfully. The King had been very gracious and all the units he had visited had been most pleased and boosted by his presence and interest. The problem now was that there was something of a backlog of work that had been shelved to allow Lord Gort and his senior officers to attend the King. So it was that Brigadier Justice Tilly found himself having pre-dinner drinks with the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort, the Chief of the General Staff, Lt General Henry Pownall, and Deputy Chief of Staff Major-General Philip Neame. Tilly was replacing Frederick Hotblack who’d been given command of 2nd Armoured Division. Gort was using the opportunity to thank Hotblack for his contributions to the build up of the armoured forces of the BEF as Brigadier Armoured Fighting Vehicles (BAFV).

This role had been created in September as part of the General Headquarters (Armoured Fighting Vehicles) which had replaced the pre-War AFV Branch. The purpose of GHQ(AFV) was to represent the Director of Mechanisation (Major-General Alexander Davidson) in the field. The organisation performed a technical liaison role between the Ministry of Supply, the War Office and the BEF in France. Originally Hotblack’s team had been based in at the Staff College at Camberley, but had arrived at Le Mans in France on 14 September.

Hotblack had been thinking deeply about how best to manage the Armoured Fighting Vehicles in the BEF and had submitted a paper on the subject to Gort’s General Staff in November. The situation was still fluid as the numbers of AFVs in France were still somewhat limited. There was the 4th Battalion RTR had its A11s, increasingly becoming known by their Vickers’ codename of Matilda. The King had spent a morning with the tanks and had been impressed by them, wondering if the pompom guns might have a secondary role of shooting down aircraft! 4RTR was the basis for the 1st Army Tank Brigade, with two more Battalions of the Royal Tank Regiment expected to join them before the end of spring 1940.

The other AFVs in France were the Light Tanks that made up the Divisional cavalry regiments (1st Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, 1st East Riding Yeomanry, 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars, 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards; 12th Royal Lancers; 13th/18th Royal Hussars; 1st Lothians and Border Yeomanry). All of these cavalry regiments were being used currently in their traditional role of providing the reconnaissance element for each infantry Division. This meant that each Regiments were operating more or less independently of each other and their parent Royal Armoured Corps.

In his paper Hotblack had argued for the formation of an “Armoured Group” with a commander and full headquarters to direct all aspects of the BEF’s AFVs, as the current role of the AFV Branch was advisory only. Having a sound organisation set up now, before the numbers and various types of tanks starting arriving, which would give proper ‘command and control if last minute improvisations are to be avoided.’ ‘In the absence of a higher organisation the BEF will be at a dual disadvantage. It will be attempting to use a weapon, made clumsy by lack of adequate means to control it, against a similar weapon in the hands of an enemy who has spared neither money nor pains to provide an efficient and flexible system of command.’ Here he was referencing the German panzergruppen, army sized commands for the amoured forces which would generally encompass two or four corps, each corps consisting of two to four divisions.

Hotblack’s proposal was that the Headquarters of the British Armoured Group would have a commanding Major-General, with a full staff, and a technical establishment of an Assistant Director of Mechanisation with his staff. This would be ‘simple, flexible, and therefore reduces the risk of hasty improvisation to a minimum.’ As 1st Armoured Division was expected to join the BEF sometime in May 1940, it would come under the command of the Armoured Group along with the 1st Army Tank Brigade and all the divisional cavalry regiments, which would be grouped into two Light Armoured Reconnaissance Brigades.

‘Provision was made in peace for four Armoured Divisions, one of which is in Egypt. Of the remaining three, one should join the BEF in the spring of 1940, and another in autumn of 1940, and the third some six to nine months later. These divisions are most convincingly grouped together in an Armoured Corps as was the original intention when it was decided to divide the old ‘Mobile Division’ into smaller Armoured Divisions. Their role requires them to operate against hostile Armoured Divisions and may well take them far from the Infantry Tank formations.’

Hotblack argued that once his new command, 2nd Armoured Division arrived in the autumn of 1940, it should join 1st Armoured Division in the 1st Armoured Corps. As the 1st Army Tank Brigade were joined by the proposed two follow-on tank brigades of infantry tanks this would become the 1st Army Tank Division, consisting of three brigades. The Light Tanks of the two Reconnaissance Brigades would eventually be joined by a third brigade, preferably equipped with cruisers rather than light tanks, which would then be another Division of AFVs.

What Hotblack had seen when visiting with the French army was that their Divisions Légères Mécaniques (DLM), the nearest equivalent of the British Armoured Division, were grouped together in a Corps de Cavalerie. It was interesting that their heavy tanks in the Divisions Cuirassées de Reserve (DCr), like the British infantry tanks in the Army Tank Brigade, remained independent. He noted that ‘At HQs of Armies and higher formations there is an Infantry Tank Commander and a small staff whether tanks have been allotted to the formation or not. In addition, there are a number of HQs of ‘Tank Groups’ which can be allotted to any formation in the Army to command whatever tank units are made available to work with that formation. These ‘Tank Groups’ commanders and staffs are provided on the scale of one Group to two battalions though it will often occur that one Group may have three or more battalions while other Groups only have one.’ As such Hotblack argued that if the BEF didn’t have a higher organisation for tanks, then ‘it will complicate the work of cooperation with its allies in as much as the ally will find no organisation comparable with its own which to establish and maintain liaison.’

Gort and his staff had read the paper and weren’t keen on recommending to the War Office the formation of a British Armoured Group. With the opportunity to speak directly to Hotblack, and his successor Tilly together, Pownall told them that the General Staff had agreed to the AFV Branch being stiffened up with more staff and given control of all AFVs in the GHQ reserve. Hotblack recognised the compromise, he could make the argument to the War Office from his new role as commander of 2nd Armoured Division in due course. What he did want from Gort was that the GHQ AFV reserves needed a specific commander, just as the French did. The reason he explained was that Tilly, or whoever was made commander, needed to remain at GHQ at Wanquetin, not at Le Mans where he was currently based. The bulk of the reserve AFVs would normally be far away from GHQ, either training or conducting firing practice. An overall commander needed to be at the centre of decision making so that he would be in a position to make sure the AFVs were where they needed to be when they were needed. Gort agreed and welcomed Tilly to his staff.

It had taken a great deal of work and negotiations with the French, but the British had finally been given two training areas for tanks. The first was in the vicinity of Pacy-sur-Eure in Normandy (110 miles southwest of GHQ at Wenquetin (Arras)). The firing range was at Meuvaines on the Normandy coast just north of Bayeux, another 110 miles west of Pacy-sur-Eure. It became clear that the distance to Meuvaines meant that it was more practical to have a number of tanks from the normal reserves based there to save the first line vehicles from having to be moved in and out. It would be easier just to move the crews to the firing range and let them use the vehicles there for practice. The arrival of the Vulcan A12 and Cruiser tanks with the 2-pdr would complicate matters as these tanks were so rare that there weren’t enough to have a ‘normal reserve’.

Tilly said that he really wanted another training area in central France, preferably with uncultivated land so that the Cruisers when they arrived could really be put through their paces. If it was sufficiently remote then experiments with the new types of tanks, the Vickers Valiant and the proposed A20, could be done away from prying eyes. General Pownall smiled, there were a lot of things the BEF wanted from the French, he didn’t quite say ‘don’t hold your breath’ but Tilly was enlightened about how hard it had been to get the two current training areas.

While Tilly had only been in France for a few days he and Hotblack had visited these training areas, and when Gort asked him what he saw as his priorities, Tilly argued that the Royal Armoured Corps Base Depot, with its workshops, stores and AFV recovery sections should be based at Pacy-sur-Eure. The plan was that the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) intended to build its main Base Ordnance Depot (BOD) at Rennes in Brittany, 200 miles away from Pacy-sur-Eure. A second Base Ordnance Depot would be created at Le Harve, 75 miles northwest of Pacy-sur-Eure, but on the other side of the river Seine, which might cause problems with the railway bottleneck at Rouen. As the RAOC was responsible for the supply and repair for weapons, armoured vehicles and other military equipment and ammunition, having the AFV element of the RAOC centered on the primary RAC base made more sense, as otherwise tanks would have to be shifted back and forth from their forward positions to the RAC Base Depot by rail, then onwards to either Rennes or Le Harve for significant repairs, and those judged Beyond Local Repair, would then be shipped back to Britain.

Furthermore, Tilly also expressed the hope that if Pacy-sur-Eure was to be the main RAC depot, then due to its distance from the area that the BEF might be operating in, then the RAOC recovery sections should be under command of whoever was commanding the AFV reserves. Tilly was working with the thought that tanks would operate in a similar way to what had happed in the Great War. Then tanks were expected to take to the field intermittently for specific battles rather than be continually in the field for the entirety of the campaign. He said, “Over any considerable period of time the employment of Armoured Formations in active operations will be the exception rather than the rule. When employed, the duration of the period will be relatively short, and the losses relatively heavy, resulting in periods of very heavy and comparatively light commitments in maintenance and repair.” He went on, “The armoured formation will either be far behind the line training and re-fitting, or in reserve closer to it but still undisturbed and free from casualties, or else in action. It will never be ‘in the line’ in the sense that an infantry division is. Nor is it to be supposed that our armoured formations will be employed only on the British sector of the front. The creation of the necessary mass of tanks may send them far afield in the French sector.” The RAOC recovery sections would be needed to collected broken down or destroyed tanks, and then get them to a railhead where they could be shipped back to the BOD to be repaired and re-fitted.

Gort and Pownall said they were happy to pass on his thoughts the War Office for deliberation with the Principle Ordnance Mechanical Engineer (POME), after all if RAOC units were to come under the specific command of a Royal Armoured Corps chain of command it would be up to Major-General Albert Valon (POME) to make that decision. Gort declared that was enough business for the moment, and that the dinner to congratulate Hotblack on his promotion and wish him well would be getting cold.

NB, all this is as mostly OTL, the direct quotes are as they appear in A13 Mk I & Mk II Cruiser Tanks A Technical History by P M Knight, Black Prince Publications, 2019, from which much of this update is drawn. I have pushed a few things around timewise, though most it happened in December 1939 just not all in the one meeting.

 

[allanpcameron]

10 January 1940. Dorset, England.

The Bovington depot was a hive of activity. While 1st Armoured Division was mostly concentrated currently in Hertfordshire, later in the month it was due to move to Wiltshire to use Salisbury Plain for exercises. Planning was already going on to use the road march of some 120 miles as the first main exercise for the Division as a whole. Almost all training up until now had had to be in smaller units, partly due to the slow build up of tanks, and also there were a lot of personnel changes for various reasons.

Many of the tanks now being issued to the 1st Armoured Division were Carden designed A9 and A10, Cruisers Marks I & II. As these tanks were being built in Belfast, Birmingham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne by four separate companies, Vickers-Armstrong were providing the Royal Armoured Corps (RAC) and Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) with teams of experts to help the process of bedding the new tanks down for use by the army. Vickers’ shipbuilding arm was well used to sending employees along with the Royal Navy as new ships went through constructors’ trials and working up to commissioning. Sir John Carden had insisted that company do the same with the tanks, and this meant that there were some things that helped both the manufacturers and users.

A couple of minor problems in the shock absorbers had been identified with the A9s coming from Belfast, and so Vickers were able to send notice to Harland & Wolff that they needed to check their suppliers, adapt their working practices and inspections to eliminate the issue. Likewise, some of the early A10s coming from Metro-Cammell in Birmingham had problems with the water pumps for the cooling system. These kinds of problems were normal in any new vehicle, and it was only as numbers increased and they were used under normal conditions that the problems surfaced and could be sorted. Once the problem was identified, it was a simple matter of going back to suppliers and getting them to sort it out, or in some cases to look for other suppliers of components that were better.

The RAC and RAOC men in most cases were new to the job and having someone from Vickers supervising or working alongside them helped them get used to the machinery they would be working on for the next few years. The teams from Vickers began to understand from working ‘in the field’ that having more spares easily available was something the tank crews and the Depot fitters appreciated. The other thing which no one had really noticed before was that anything not tied down seemed to be pilfered at the first possible opportunity. Each tank was supposed to come equipped with a tool box which the crew would need for basic maintenance. More often than not there were various items missing, sometimes the whole lot had disappeared. Someone joked that the army would need to send an escort to supervise each tank delivery from the factory to the squadron or troop, and even then, keep them under armed guard at all times. Vickers began to take seriously the need to make sure that each tank would be delivered, not just shipped, fully equipped. There was a pressure from the Ministry of Supply to have as many tanks delivered as possible, but working with the troops meant that the company also had to make sure that plenty of spares were provided too. Especially of the kind of things that were constantly having to be serviced, such as water pumps and track pins, were also delivered.

The abandonment of the ‘lubricated track’ that the A9 and A10 had originally been built with was underway. These were being replaced with a copy of the tracks used by the Czech TNH/P tank meant that track life had increased greatly. The track pins were easier to replace if they did sheer, but that was a far less common fault. The companies making the tracks were still getting up to speed but whenever another tank was reequipped with the new tracks there was a little celebration the RAOC sergeant’s mess.

The Vickers teams enjoyed going along ‘for a ride’ on the tanks when they were put through their paces on the Bovington circuit. There was so much to learn about how moving things around just by inch could make the lives of the tank crews so much better. A discussion over a couple of beers one evening in the sergeant’s mess resulted in a letter going back to Sir John Carden. Stowage of ammunition for the 2-pdr gun was noted by someone who’d worked with the Royal Navy as being akin to the problems at Jutland. The tank crew, naturally, wanted to carry as much ammunition as they could, which meant that there was a lot of material in and around the fighting compartment, that if a fire was to break out could easily lead to a magazine catastrophe. There was nothing to prevent the explosives in the 2-pdr ammunition from catching a red-hot splinter and ‘cooking off.’ The idea that some kind of lightly armoured ammunition bins be provided might just prevent undue loss of life because poor ammunition handling. A quarter of an inch of steel around the current ammunition stowage would add a little weight to the tanks, but might be worth it to save the tank crew from a terrible death.

Other ideas were passed back and forth between the RAC, RAOC and Vickers that were noted for use in the future, especially for the Valiant tanks that would soon be going into production. This was something that Carden and his design team had long debated. The War Office tended to give a very defined specification which meant that the tank designers were curtailed in what they were able to do. Carden preferred to have a general requirement which gave him the flexibility to design a tank that would do the job intended. The way the War Office specification came however it nearly always limited what the designer could do. An example was the A11 Matilda. If he had stuck rigidly to the WO specification for a cheap tank with 8mph top speed and a two-man crew armed only with machine gun, the army would be complaining about how useless it was. The fact that the actual tank the army had was a bit faster, more powerfully armed and effective than the specification proved that all the experience that Vickers Armstrong had in building tanks wasn’t wasted. The fact that the original A11 specification was so limited meant that the War Office had then had to issue specification A12 for a bigger tank, with much the same level of armour, but a better speed and the ability to carry the 2-pdr gun. A specification that Carden had exceeded with the Valiant when left to his own devices.

The A9 and A10 had begun to pick up nicknames, some more irreverent than others, which wasn’t uncommon in the British army. There was talk of calling all Cruiser tanks after reptiles, so the A9 had been awarded the moniker: ‘Krait’, the A10 ‘Cobra’. The Krait soon became known among the troops as the ‘Kraut’ and the Cobra as the ‘Bra’, which didn’t go well so well with the men who used it as it made them mammary glands. The A13 Mark I had picked up the name ‘Adder’ which quickly became ‘sadder’ and the A13 Mark II ‘Boa’ which of course became ‘whoa’. Unlike the Vickers tanks, no-one from the Nuffield organisation took the same trouble to sort out problems. So those who were in units where the two A13 tanks were issued got well used to the tanks coming to abrupt halts, making them sad.

 

[allanpcameron]

2 February 1940. Farnborough, England.

Both the Vickers Valiant Mark I Infantry Tank with the diesel engine and the Valiant Mark I* Cruiser Tank had been in the possession of the MEE for a couple of months. The difference between the two being the Mark I* was made with the petrol engine and thinner armour to save weight and increase speed. Both had completed all the tests that any tank would have to complete to be fully accepted before going into production.

The Infantry Tank Mark III, as the army called the Mark I Valiant, had exceeded expectations. Compared with the Vulcan A12 it was between 5mph and 10mph faster, cross country and on the road; with the same level of armour; much easier to operate and designed for comparatively simpler welded manufacturing. Armed with the 2-pdr gun and co-axial .303 machine gun it had the same armament; and was about £750 cheaper per unit than the Vulcan.

As with every tank that went through its paces at Farnborough, there had been some glitches and defects that had had to be fixed, but otherwise it was ready for production and the Royal Tank Regiment couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. The first four production models were expected back at Farnborough at the end of the month for testing and preparing them for entry into service. There was still a lot of work to be done to train up the RAOC and RAC mechanics on the Lion diesel engine; the handbook had to be fully completed and then double checked; the drivers would need to qualify on it, although in layout it was sufficiently similar to other tanks that wasn’t considered to be a problem. With some of the Vickers-Armstrong employees still undergoing training on welding, it was expected that the tank would start getting towards the promised 40 tanks per month production around June or July 1940. In comparison Vulcan Foundry had so far delivered less than thirty A12s since September 1939 and were not expecting to achieve 30 tanks per month until about the summer, the same time as Vickers.

The Valiant Mark I*, or Cruiser Mark V, had also passed its tests with flying colours. It too had had to have some modifications, mostly to the suspension to help it deal with the higher speed than its diesel-powered brother. The big petrol Lion engine had proven powerful enough to move the heavy-weight cruiser at 27mph comfortably on the road and able to reach 30mph ‘downhill with a wind behind it’. Off road the tank was a comfortable ride and reasonable gun platform at between 15 and 18mph. Although it was generally a few miles per hour slower than the A13, this was more than made up for with the same 2.3-inch armour of the A11 infantry tank. The downside of using the petrol engine in the Mark I* was that its range was reduced compared with the Mark I, 105 miles instead of 158 miles. The A13 also had a radius of around 100 miles and so it wasn’t going to be at a disadvantage working together in ‘cruiser’ formations.

Once again it carried the same armament with the 2-pdr gun and co-axial .303 machine gun. It was expected that the Besa machine gun was going to be available to replace the .303 at which point it would become known as the Mark IA*(pronounced Mark One A Star), the Infantry version would become the Mark IA. Production of the Besa was still in its infancy, and it wasn’t clear just how long Vickers would have to wait to get it for both marks of the Valiant. The Birmingham Small Arms factory was doing its best, but the A13 Mark II, Cruiser IVA was likely to be first recipient, along with the Light Tank Mark VIC which was also being fitted with the 15mm Besa.

Vickers was going to making the first ten Mark I*, then the rest of the first order for sixty-five Valiant Mark I* would be manufactured primarily by Metro-Cammell. These would be of riveted construction, as waiting for the workforce to be trained on welding would take too long. The bosses at Saltley were promising that they would have the first four production models by the beginning of March, then be making ten a month from April, rising to thirty per month by August. The army were therefore planning that the first fully equipped and trained units would be fielded in the autumn as part of 2nd Armoured Division. Once the new Leyland and English Electric factories were fully built, equipped and had a trained workforce, then the later versions of the Mark I* would also be welded. Due the foul winter weather progress on the two tank shops had been delayed and they weren’t expected to start producing tanks until later in the year. Once these two factories were in full production monthly deliveries would be expected to increase dramatically. This, along with Metro-Camell, Harland & Wolff and Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon Company all gradually moving from A9 and A10 production to production of both the Mark I and I* would start giving the army the kind of numbers of tanks they were crying out for.

Some of the last of the A11s that were being built by Vickers at the Elswick Works had been used as test beds for the workforce to use their newly acquired welding skills. There wasn’t a lot of difference between the thickness of armour in these types than the planned Valiant, so it was a useful exercise. Not least because the foremen saw the difficulties of access to make some joins. Studying the problems gave them a plan to help quicken and smooth the start of work on the Valiant. It also gave the quality control inspectors some experience of what to look out for as many of them were new to welding too.

 

[allanpcameron]

8 March 1940. Hampshire, England.

The headquarters of 1st Armoured Division was at Hale House and General Evans had brought together his senior officers along with other luminaries of the Royal Armoured Corps. Vyvyan Pope, CO of 1st (Heavy) Armoured Brigade, Richard McCreery, CO of 2nd (Light) Armoured Brigade, and most of the staff officers had been joined by the recently promoted Major General Frederick Hotblack, commander of the embryonic 2nd Armoured Division.

The Army Council had stipulated that the organisation of the Armoured Division had to be looked at again given the present state of tank production. It was unanimously agreed that the designation of Light and Heavy Brigades needed to be dropped. The original idea that there would be separate light and heavy cruisers hadn’t really come to pass. The armour on the A10 was now being matched by that on the A13 Mark II, and armament wise there was no differences. The meeting agreed that what was needed was that the whole Division had to have homogenous equipment, i.e. all Cruisers. Each of the six regiments, three in each Brigade, would likewise be homogenous. This couldn’t be done immediately, there would still have to be a lot of Light Tanks among the regiments until they could be replaced with cruisers.

After discussion it was felt that the ideal organisation of an Armoured Regiment should be made up of three squadrons, each of which would comprise of a Headquarters of four tanks, and four troops each of three tanks. The Regimental HQ would also have four tanks, so each regiment would require 52 tanks. The Brigade HQ would have a further ten tanks and the Divisional HQ another eight, giving a divisional total of 340 tanks, nine less than the previous arrangement. There had been a suggestion that an extra 18 tanks would be helpful so that each Squadron HQ would have an extra tank for the second-in-command. Currently the second-in-command travelled in what was known as the rear link tank, a tank which held back to transmit radio signals back and forth between higher command and the squadron ahead. This proposal wouldn’t in fact be taken up.

Until there were enough cruiser tanks, the six armoured regiments would have to be ‘mixed’, with two Cruiser squadrons and one of Light Tanks. Even with that, the Cruiser squadrons would have three troops of cruisers and one of Light Tanks. This meant that currently each mixed Regiment would have almost exactly one third of its tanks as Lights Tanks rather than Cruisers. As more Cruisers were delivered, then the Light Tanks would be passed on to one of the Cavalry Regiments as they continued being mechanised.

Part of the discussion at the meeting concerned the Support Group which was still not fully functional. The Royal Horse Artillery Regiment still hadn’t been assigned, since both the 1st and 2nd RHA had been reassigned in October 1939 to the BEF GHQ. The 60th Anti-Tank Regiment had been replaced with the 101st Light Anti-Aircraft/Anti-Tank Regiment, an odd and somewhat experimental combination. The two Motorised Infantry Battalions, 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade and 2nd Battalion Kings Royal Rifle Corps, were part of the Support Group currently, but there was no guarantee that they too wouldn’t find themselves reassigned in an emergency. What Evans demanded was that 1st Field Squadron and 1st Field Park Troop of the Royal Engineers should no longer be considered part of the Support Group, but, along with the Royal Signals, would actually be part of 1st Armoured Division, under the direct command of the Divisional Headquarters. At least that way, the chances of losing the engineers, the way they had lost the artillery, was much reduced. Like the rest of the Division the Royal Engineers were still very short of their establishment in men and equipment. There was no way the Division could go to France without their engineering support.

There was some disappointment expressed at the meeting that the A10 was 10mph slower that any of the other cruisers. This threw off the balance of being homogenous, if a percentage of the tanks moved at a much slower pace than the rest. It was therefore decided to keep the A10s primarily as HQ tanks, where the slower speed was less of an issue.

Each Armoured Regiment would continue to be equipped with eight Close Support tanks armed with the QF 3.7-inch tank mortar. There was a case for making the majority of Close Support tanks A10s as they would generally be kept with the Regimental and Squadron HQs. Thirty A10s had been ordered as Close Support variants, a letter went out after the meeting asking for these to be prioritised, and if possible, for another 18 be procured to have the same type throughout the Division.

The A9s were faster than the A10 and therefore more useful in the Cruiser Squadrons, though still slower than the A13s. The faster speed of the A13 made it the more popular tank with the Divisional Staff, but there was a growing awareness that the new tracks on the A9 and A10s were going a long way to improve their reliability. There was only a total of 125 A9s on order, and with some already sent to Egypt, it would be better if most of them had the 2-pdr main armament to take their place in the Cruiser Squadrons rather having some of them as Close Support tanks. This was agreed, and whenever a tank had to be overhauled, the A9 CS tanks swapped over their main armament with A10s, a relatively straightforward, but heavy job as the turrets were almost identical except in armour thickness.

Once the main points of the meeting were agreed by the War Office, as of 14 April 1940, the 1st (Heavy) Brigade would be renamed 3rd Armoured Brigade. At the same time 2nd Armoured Brigade would lose the designation (Light). The six Armoured Regiments would remain as they were within the two Brigades: 2, 3 and 5 Battalions RTR making up the newly named 3rd Brigade; while the Queens Bays, 10th Hussars and 9th Lancers comprised 2nd Armoured Brigade. The War Office also agreed to the change of structure regarding the Royal Engineers being part of the Division rather than the Support Group. All these changes became known as Basic Organisation II, replacing that of May 1939.

 

[allanpcameron]

24 April 1940. Salisbury Plain, England.

2nd Armoured Brigade had been hard at it for the last couple of weeks. Word on the fighting in Norway had spurred on the three armoured regiments. So far only a troop of 3rd Kings Own Hussars from the Royal Armoured Corps, were expected to be shipped over the North Sea along with 15th Infantry Brigade from 2nd Infantry Division. In their light tanks the 3rd Hussars would be acting as the reconnaissance element for the Brigade, as the Cavalry Regiments attached to Infantry Divisions were trained to do.

The three Cavalry Regiments that made up 2nd Armoured Brigade however had a different purpose. A few days before, the Queens Bays had acted in the reconnaissance role as they and the 9th Lancers and 10th Hussars had made the road march to Salisbury Plain as the first element of their weeks training. This was a chance to get used to the new organisation, no longer were they the Light Armoured Brigade.

Word came through to the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Christopher Peto before the morning briefing from the War Office that 1st Armoured Division were to be mobilised for service overseas by 1st June 1940. At the briefing, Peto noted that the 9th Lancers’ war establishment of 52 Cruiser tanks, was actually 18 A13 and 4 A10 (*) Cruiser tanks and 35 Light Tanks, a mixture of Mark VI B and Cs.

The previous week the 9th Lancers had spent their time at the firing range at Linney Head. Since all their tanks were to be Cruisers armed with 2-pdr guns, it was necessary to train the whole regiment in their use. On the range from 09:00hrs until 17:00hrs, every gunner and wireless operator had a chance to get used to the new Besa co-axial machine gun. Every commander, gunner and wireless operator also had firing practice with the 2-pdr and .303 Vickers Machine Gun, which still made up the majority of co-axial machine guns.

On the last two days on the firing range, each troop had a battle practice. This took place over a special course at Linney Head where the tanks were expected to move and engage various stationary and mechanically operated targets. Each troop had one experience of this, which was important because it gave both stationary and moving gunnery experience, but also it provided a chance to get used to handling a troop in cross country movement, something they weren’t able to do normally. If tanks went off the road outside of practice ranges, they would have to pay compensation to land owners for damaging crops.

During their week at Linney Head, the Regiment fired off 2500 rounds of 2-pdr ammunition 17000 rounds of Besa 7.92mm, and 22ooo rounds of .303. Coming together on Salisbury Plain was the next part of the honing of the skills that would include working with the other two regiments in the Armoured Brigade.

Having only 22 Cruiser Tanks was a major problem for the Regiment. As it was now expected that all the Light Tanks would eventually be replaced with Cruisers, this meant that all the drivers in the Regiment needed to be trained on them. Those used to the Vickers Mark VI would have to learn how to drive an A10 or an A13. The shortage of Cruisers was compounded as at least several of them were in the Regimental Workshop and RAOC Advance Depots for overhaul at any one time. The army stipulated that no Cruiser was to be shipped overseas if it exceeded 1000 miles. The overhaul mileage for an A13 had been set at 1500 miles, so if a tank was sent overseas with less than 1000 miles, it would have a theoretical minimum of 500 miles of useful life remaining before going in for an overhaul.

Everyone knew that the nearer a tank came to its 1500 mile overhaul it was more likely to suffer from mechanical ailments. The chances were that the last 500 miles were likely to be a tank's ‘worst’ miles. Ideally, any tank would have a considerably greater mileage in hand before being sent overseas. So, the 9th Lancers, and all the other regiments of 1st Armoured Division were caught in the predicament of having to conduct as much training as possible with less tanks than it should have, while simultaneously trying to avoid them being subjected to excessive wear and tear. What the regiments were finding was that the 1000 mile limit was eaten up very quickly in intensive training, two or three months at most.

9th Lancers were for the most part receiving the Mark II version of the A13, with the extra armour bolted on. The first 65 A13 Mark I, with the maximum 0.55 inch (14mm) armour were concentrated in the 3rd Armoured Brigade. However, all six regiments were having to send tanks to each other to allow for the mixture agreed upon to happen. If one regiment had more A10s than it needed for the Headquarters Troop, then the spare would be sent to another Regiment, or even to the Brigade or Divisional Headquarters. As the A13s slowly increased in number, those approaching their overhaul would be sent off to the Depot and the newer tanks replace them in the training. It wasn’t unheard of, in fact it was normal practice, for a Regiment, if they had a spare tank, to send off one with deficiencies to a sister unit, rather than a good runner.

Lt-Col Peto was informed by the Regiment’s Quarter Master that the 9th Lancers were also deficient in ‘B’ vehicles (wheeled), gun parts and spare parts. Peto was also informed that they were short of 30 Driver Mechanics, 54 Driver Operators, 4 Electricians, 5 fitters and 15 motor mechanics. Peto asked that all of this information be passed onto Brigadier McCreery, 2nd Armoured Brigade’s Officer Commanding. Meanwhile the Regiment had another couple of days on Salisbury Plain, and with a lot to do, everyone had to make the most of it.

(*) This is the only change to OTL, in fact they had 18 cruisers and 39 light tanks.

 

[allanpcameron]

1 May 1940. London, England.

Despite the growing tensions due to the fighting in Norway, business in the Ministry of Supply had to carry on as usual. The agenda included two reports from the Design Team of Vickers-Armstrong.

Having got hold of one of the new 6-pdr guns, Sir John Carden’s team had successfully designed a mounting that would fit in an adapted Valiant turret. The turret had been placed on the Valiant prototype and taken for gunnery trials at Lulworth, where it had been tested. A few problems had been identified with the gun, which wasn’t surprising as it was still in development, but its mounting in the turret was passed as suitable. There were two disadvantages however that were identified by the gunnery experts. The first was that the mounting used fixed gears for bringing the gun to bear, not a shoulder mounting that the army was more familiar with and preferred. Vickers argued that the weight of the gun and the pull necessary to fire the gun would make a shoulder mounting highly inaccurate. The only way they could guarantee the accuracy required for the new gun was to use geared mountings. They further insisted that the expansion of the army and increased number of men being trained as tank gunners would be helped with a much simpler geared mechanism, as this would take less time to train on. The second disadvantage identified was that the new gun’s ammunition was a great deal bigger than the 2-pdr shot. This would mean that a tank would have to carry less rounds than it would for a 2-pdr, down from 100 to about 60 rounds.

Vickers noted that the turret mounting for the 6-pdr had primarily involved only internal adaptations. The company was therefore in a position to offer the 6-pdr armed Valiant, the Mark II, as soon as the gun was put into production and orders were made. Vickers had experience with making Elswick Pattern modification of the Hotchkiss 6-pdrs in the past and were happy to put in a bid to be considered as a manufacturer of the new 6-pdr anti-tank gun, concentrating on the tank version for the Valiant Mark II. This would allow Royal Ordnance at Woolwich to concentrate on the carriage version which would be needed by the Royal Artillery anti-tank regiments. The estimation was that Vickers-Armstrong would be in a position to start manufacturing 6-pdrs within six months of an order being placed, without compromising the numbers of other guns it was currently manufacturing.

The second part of the Vickers’ report was a detailed drawing of the design of what they described as the Valiant Mark III, or ‘Victor’ as they called it. Realising that once the Germans had come up against the Vulcan A12 and the Valiant, they would develop an anti-tank capability to overcome 3-inchs of armour, Sir John Carden had offered to look at designing a tank that would capable of keeping the army ahead of the Germans. He had been given the War Office specification A23 and now he offered a first look at the design for this specification. He proposed that the Victor would provide 4 inches of armour on the front hull and turret, with 3.5-inches on its sides. The armour would be sloped to provide the level of armour while keeping the weight down as far as possible, though it was likely to be in the 30-32 ton range.

The Victor would be powered either by a diesel engine, based on the original Napier Lion, but developed by Perkins to provide extra horsepower and torque over the current diesel Lion. Alternatively, it would use an engine based on the Rolls-Royce Peregrine. Developed and manufactured by Meadows, this petrol engine was expected to deliver around 475-500hp. He noted that he would have preferred an engine based on the Rolls-Royce Merlin, providing more like 600hp, but that this was currently unavailable. He did note though it might perhaps be possible to have such an engine for the Victor Mark II. The Victor would be slightly larger than the Valiant, the main change being that its width would be extended to 10 feet to allow a 66-inch turret ring. This would take the tank over the British rail gauge limit, but this couldn’t be helped. The need for as broad a turret ring as possible meant that this tank was designed with the continental loading gauge in mind.

The Victor would be armed with a 3-inch gun derived from the Model 1931 75mm anti-aircraft gun. Vickers proposed to use the Finish 76.2mm x 505R as the basis for the shells, which would provide the armour piercing capability to defeat a tank with the equivalent armour as itself. The 3-inch gun would also be able to fire a good sized HE or smoke shell eliminating the need for a Close Support variant. The co-axial machine gun would be the Besa 7.92mm machine gun. The tank would be designed to take the latest radio that was being developed, the No. 19. It would have a crew of four, three men in the turret.

Carden had been working with Sydney Horstman for over a year to work out an improved suspension system that would deal with the weight and speed desired by the new tank. They had looked at various types of suspension, including the American Vertical Volute Spring Suspension. Horstman realised that he could adapt his own system to use a horizontal volute spring instead of a coil spring. Used horizontally the volute-springs were placed in compression by either the front or the rear bogie wheel-arm. This would allow the pressure from the load was transmitted to the opposite arm, thus helping to keep tension maintained on the tracks. He had successfully demonstrated this on the old A10E2 with the Eagle Engine. This type of suspension would be more than capable of taking the 30 + ton weight of the Victor, and with the engine providing between 15 and 18 hp per ton, Vickers believed that the Victor would still be capable of a top road speed of around 25mph.

The last part of the design that Vickers proposed for the Victor was new type of gearbox that had been developed by Henry Merritt in collaboration with the David Brown engineering company. With increasing weight of the tank, the ordinary clash gearboxes that Carden had looked at were going to struggle. Harland & Wolff had originally looked at Merritt’s work for the A20 specification, seeing this, Carden had approached Merritt to see if his system would be suitable for the Victor. It was indeed suitable, and this was the last part of the jigsaw which now all fitted together. Carden firmly believed that the Victor would be a suitable replacement for the Valiant.

Vickers-Armstrong noted that they were prepared to build an A23E1 mild steel prototype to test out the combination of new suspension, gears and engine, as well as the 3-inch gun and its turret. They believed that if the order for this was given immediately, the prototype would available for testing at the end of 1940, with production able to begin later in 1941. While they believed that the Valiant at that point was likely to still be considered a reasonable tank, there was no way of knowing what the Germans would be fielding at the beginning of 1942.

Having looked at the two proposals, the Ministry of Supply were being asked to look at the replacement for a tank that only just coming into production. Knowing it would take about two years for it to develop, an order for the A23E1 Victor was approved. They also asked for an A23E2 with the 6-pdr gun. The Director of Artillery, Colonel Campbell Clarke wasn’t keen on Vickers designing their own 3-inch gun. Woolwich was still working on the new Close Support 3-inch gun, and he felt the 6-pdr would be a better tank gun. Regarding Vickers building a tank version of the new 6-pdr, he agreed, as long as they could guarantee that it would not inhibit the production of any other guns that were currently in production. With this agreed, an initial order for 200 6-pdr guns to be fitted in the Valiant Mark II was approved. While the Valiant Mark I and I* tanks armed with the 2-pdr were thought of as being suitable currently, having a 6-pdr capable tank ready to go into production around the beginning of 1941 seemed sensible. The question was then raised about the Nuffield A15 Cruiser Mark VI. It was due to enter production in November, and therefore, could possibly be entering service around the same time as the 6-pdr armed Valiant Mark II. The A15’s turret ring was 55.5 inches, the question was raised as to whether Nuffield might give consideration to a turret that would be capable of taking the 6-pdr gun. The A15 would still be much faster than the Valiant, a suitable replacement for the A13, so, even it were armed only with the 2-pdr, the A15 should still be progressed. Likewise the A22 specification for an Infantry Tank that was being designed by Vauxhall Motors should also be progressed, as a replacement for the current Vulcan Foundry A12. The idea that Vauxhall should be approached to consider that the A22 should be fitted with a turret for a 6-pdr gun was also raised and approved.

 

[allanpcameron]

3 May 1940. Dorset, England.

With time running out before they were due to be mobilised for overseas service, the current situation of the 1st Armoured Division had been hampered by the switch to the Besa air cooled machine gun from the Vickers .303. The changeover meant that Nuffield’s production of A13 Mark IIA had been slowed, and some of the Armoured Regiments were complaining that they were dealing with two different types of ammunition for the machine guns, complicating an already messy business of preparing for war. The numbers of Besa machine guns coming from Birmingham Small Arms factory was still less than required, which also meant there weren’t a lot of spare part for the guns being delivered either.

It had also been noted that most of the Close Support tanks didn’t have 3.7-inch ammunition for the main gun. Only a small number smoke shells were available and there was no High Explosive ammunition at all. If the Division was to meet the deadline, there were serious deficits in its ammunition stores that would have to be addressed. Letters to the Ministry of Supply had asked for them to deal with the provision of the main 2-pdr ammunition. Hadfields Ltd of Sheffield was the only company making this ammunition. They had evolved a specialised production process that required skilled workmen, and an in-house designed rotary furnace. The order for ammunition for the growing number of tanks and anti-tank regiments who were equipped with the 2-pdr meant that the estimate was the army would need approximately 1 million rounds per month. Currently, since there was only one firm making the ammunition, the army was receiving less than 300,000 rounds per month.

A lot of the existing stock of APHE 2-pdr had been adapted for training purposes. When delivered originally, these shells contained a small bursting charge designed so that once the armour had been pierced, it would explode, providing for something of a ‘coup de grâce’ for the crew of an enemy tank. Before war had been declared Hadfields had changed over to a solid Armour Piercing shot as the War Office thought it provided greater penetration. Therefore, many of the APHE shells in stock had had the bursting charge removed and ‘plugged’ with sand or other inert material, so they could function as practice rounds. There was now a concern from the Armoured Division’s Quartermaster that the tanks would be deployed with only solid shot, and nothing at all with any kind of High Explosive capability. The Royal Tank Regiments equipped with the A11, firing the Vickers pompom 2-pdr, had found that even the relatively small HE charge in these shells were very effective. Without HE ammunition for the 3.7-inch tank mortar or APHE shells for the 2-pdr, the Quartermaster was concerned that the 1st Armoured Division would be at a disadvantage. Asking Hadfields to begin making APHE rounds again would probably mean that the deficit in 2-pdr ammunition would get worse.

The Ministry of Supply was overwhelmed with all the requests for making up deficits to just about every aspect of the army’s life. The conscription of so many into the army had meant that the training establishments were bursting at the seams, but didn’t have the staff or equipment to train the new recruits. There were shortages of everything, including uniforms. Trying to sort out ammunition for the small numbers of Close Support tanks was quite low on the list of priorities. Due to the lack of ammunition, more and more of the Armoured Regiments started using the CS tanks as the rear link tank. This was the tank the second in command of each squadron rode in. They acted as a conduit for communication back and forth between the Squadron and the Regiment HQs, and important task, due to the limitations of the wireless sets in the tanks. But it also meant that the tank wasn’t available for its main purpose.

The new drafts of men arriving in the Armoured Regiments had completed their basic training, then had some specialised training. Of those who had received tank training, it had been extremely limited. This was due in part because of how few tanks there were to be trained on. Those who had qualified as drivers admitted that had spent less than an hour actually driving a tank, and that was usually not the type they would be driving in the Regiment. Mechanics, fitters, and electricians all needed a lot more training and on top of all the other problems of getting the Regiments up to War Establishment, this was one more burden.

The other burden that was being felt especially in the Quartermaster’s and Technical Officer’s staff. The stores and equipment that were arriving from central stores, while peacetime equipment was being withdrawn from Squadrons and returned to the RAOC. Despite being at war, peacetime procedures of issue and receipt accountancy were supposed to be maintained, something that the clerical staff found almost impossible. As if this wasn’t enough, the Regiments weren’t yet all in possession of Army Form G1098. This should have provided them with a detailed scale of equipment, not only for their expected War Establishment, but also as personal weapons, wirelesses, tools, stores, spares, signals and cooking equipment.

All of this is OTL, no changes.

 

[allanpcameron]

4 May 1940. Wiltshire, England.

The 8th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment was in a bit of a pickle. They should have already been in France with their sister 4th and 7th Battalions in the First Army Tank Brigade. However, the delivery of A12s from Vulcan Foundry was so slow that the majority of these tanks had gone directly to 7th Battalion RTR to try to get somewhere near a full battalion’s worth. They didn’t have the full amount, but with time running out, the 7th RTR had now arrived in France with seven light tanks, 27 A11s, and 21 A12s. The plan was for them to join the 4th RTR at Dormat, near the Somme River, and begin working up together. This meant that 8th Battalion didn’t have many tanks to its name, so it was still in England.

8th Battalion was the youngest of the Royal Tank Regiment’s regular Battalions. It had only been formed in 1938, and because of the lack of tanks, its men had been busy working with the new Territorial Battalions that had been formed. The 40th, 41st, 42nd, 43rd, 44th & 45th battalions were raised in 1938, being converted from Territorial Army infantry battalions, the 46th, 47th, 48th, 49th, 50th and 51st were likewise activated and converted in 1939. These had been formed into the 21st, 22nd 24th, 25th Army Tank Brigades, each serving under one of the Home Commands, Eastern, Western, and Northern (with two Brigades) respectively. With the seven other regular Royal Tank Regiment Battalions all having first call on whatever tanks were becoming available, the 8th Battalion had, to all extent and purposes, become the Regiment’s training battalion.

One company of 8th Battalion was currently detached to the MEE at Farnborough where they were getting to grips with the new Vickers Valiant tank. There was a lot of work trying to learn the ways of a new tank, especially one with a diesel engine that no one had any experience with. The reports coming from Farnborough were very positive, and because the production of the Valiant was going to overtake that of the Vulcan A12, it seemed likely that the majority of the Tank Brigades would be equipped with this as the Infantry Tank Mark III. It was crucial therefore that the work being done at Farnborough and Bovington to get the Valiant ready for service was done as quickly as possible.

The fact that the Battalion had received orders to prepare for France earlier than planned came as something of a shock. Most of the Companies and sections of the 8th Battalion were scattered all over the country trying to get the territorials up to speed. The orders were firstly, for the Battalion to gather at their Depot at Perham Down Camp. Secondly, forty of the A11s that were currently being used for training by the territorials were to be issued to the 8th Battalion and readied for service in France with the First Tank Brigade, to be embarked by 21 May at the latest. A company’s worth of Vulcan A12s were likely to be available by that date from the factory and the few that were being used as trainers.

It seemed that Lord Gort was getting more worried about the lack of tanks in his command. As well as 8th RTR getting the call to prepare to move, the 1st Armoured Division’s date for deployment had been advanced from the 1st June. The Divisional Headquarters had been ordered that the 2nd and 3rd Armoured Brigade’s mobilisation should be completed and be ready to proceed to France on or after 12 May. The Division was to ship for France in five ‘flights’ (i.e staged groups), the first of which on 13 May included the 101st Light Anti-Aircraft and Anti-Tank Regiment, the division’s Signals, Royal Engineers, Intelligence Corps and various Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) units.

The second flight, to commence embarking on 16 May comprised the Division HQ, the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) field ambulance unit, further RASC units, including the petrol sub-park. The third flight, embarking on 19 May, included the last of the RAMC and RASC units, both the RAOC Divisional Workshop and Armoured Corps Workshop. The later was to proceed to Pacy-Sur-Eure to join the AFV Area, while the former would have a more mobile forward role. The fourth flight, embarking on 22 May would be the 2nd Armoured Brigade HQ, its three regiments and their LADs (Light Aid Detachments) and the HQ of the Support Group, still without its artillery and infantry. The final, fifth flight, on 25 May, would be 3rd Armoured Brigade HQ and its three regiments and their LADs. The Light Aid Detachments, normally per one armoured regiment, consisted of extra fitters and mechanics, who would assist the RAC’s own maintenance personnel (ten fitters, 17 motor mechanics and two armourers per regiment). If a tank, or other piece of equipment couldn’t be repaired by these men, then it would be sent back to RAOC Divisional workshops.

Word was sent to all the various places where the men of the 8th RTR were scattered. The fact that they had to bring the A11s with them would hinder the training of the Territorials. The RAOC were already complaining about all the work they were having to do on the 1st Armoured Division’s Cruisers, while setting up a new Depot in France, and now they were going to have to overhaul a bunch of Infantry tanks too. For the officers and men of the 8th Battalion however, the call to arms was welcome. The didn’t like the way they were talked about by their fellow regulars. The fact they too would be going to war, even if it was on what were essentially training tanks, was meant that they wouldn’t be left out.

NB: 8 Bn RTR in OTL didn't go to France, they didn't have any tanks. But TTL there are more A11s so it is within the bounds of possibility. The stuff about 1st Armoured Division is OTL. I've edited this because at this point RTR were still using company and sections rather than Squadron and Troops. A Battalion was made up of and company HQ (1 infantry and 1 light tank), 3 Companies, each of five sections with 3 infantry tanks each. 46 infantry tanks.

 

[allanpcameron]

7 May 1940. Gerawla, Egypt.

The 7th Armoured Division, commanded by Major General Michael Creagh had just finished yet another exercise. If one thing Creagh’s predecessor, Percy Hobart, had done for the old Mobile Division (Egypt), it was that he had given them a culture of training, and training hard. When the Division had been renamed the 7th Armoured Division in February, two months after Hobart had been ‘retired’, Creagh had maintained that culture. Brigadier John Caunter, commander of 4th Armoured Brigade (6th Battalion RTR, 7th Hussars) and Hugh Russell of 7th Armoured Brigade (1st Bn RTR and 8th Hussars), along with Bill Gott, who commanded the Support Group (1 Kings Royal rifle Corps, 2nd Rifle Brigade) were all involved, alongside Creagh, in dissecting the lessons of the exercise. They were joined by Brigadier Ponting, from the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade who had played the opposition, alongside the 1st Bn RTR.

The A9 and A10 Cruisers that had been received had gone to the 6th Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment in 4th Armoured Brigade, so some their old Light Tanks were available for the Hussars, especially the 8th Kings Own Royal Irish Hussars who had been the least equipped regiment in the Division. The 30 A11 Infantry Tank Mark Is however had been something of an anomaly. Because of their slow speed they were probably better suited to defensive postures than attacking, and so for the purpose of the exercise they had been given to the 1st Bn RTR. They acted as part of the opposition along with the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade. The 11th Hussars, which was normally the Divisional Reconnaissance Regiment had worked with the 8th Hussars in 7th Armoured Brigade as part of the exercise.

Brigadier Ponting noted first of all that the experience of working alongside the tanks had been something of a revelation, especially for the Indian troops in the 3rd Battalion, 1st Punjab Regiment and 4th Battalion, 6th Rajputana Rifles. The Brigade had never really worked alongside tanks before, and they were lacking even the most rudimentary anti-tank capability, beyond a few Boys anti-tank rifles. If nothing else, Ponting noted, the exercise had given his Brigade a good experience. The 2-pdr pompom on the Infantry Tank Mark I had given the Brigade an effective support weapon.

The 4th Armoured Brigade, with the Support Group had played the role of holding the Indian infantry in place, while the 7th Armoured Brigade had circled around to take them in the flank and rear. In previous exercises this had proven highly effective. The presence amongst the defenders of the 1st Bn RTR however had complicated matters. The umpires noted that armour of the Infantry Tank Mark I was such that the 2-pdrs on the Cruiser tanks struggled to penetrate it from any range outside of the reply from the pompom gun. The armour on the Light Tanks and A9 was highly vulnerable to the pompom shells, while the thicker armour of the A10 was more resistant, they still had to come quite close to stand a chance of knocking out the Infantry Tank. The Indian troops use of their limited anti-tank capability and the presence of artillery was judged by the umpires to make the holding action by 4th Armoured Brigade very costly.

The flanking attack by the Hussars of 7th Armoured Brigade was met by just two troops of A11 Infantry Tanks, six tanks in all. Equipped entirely with machine gun armed Light Tanks, there was nothing the 8th Hussars had which could deal with the Matildas. The 11th Hussars, who were mostly equipped with armoured cars, came off even worse. If the exercise had been a real battle, 7th Armoured Division would have been gutted, all because of 30 Infantry Tanks. Creagh and his Brigade commanders sat down to work out what they should do next. Thankfully the Intelligence Corps was certain that the Italians had nothing like the Matilda.

 

[allanpcameron]

10 May 1940. Dormat, France.

The First Army Tank Brigade’s commander, Brigadier Douglas Pratt was woken with the sound of air raid warnings. It was clear that the Luftwaffe had kicked off the campaign in the west. The news that the German army was on the move was confirmed when Pratt was given a paper which contained the message from GHQ: “Plan D.J.1. today. Zero hours 1300 hours. 12L. may cross before zero. Wireless silence cancelled after crossing frontier. Command Post opens 1300 hours. Air recces may commence forthwith”. The fact that the Dyle Plan was being implemented was no surprise to Pratt or anyone on his staff.

A week, even a few more days, would have allowed the two Royal Tank Regiment Battalions to have exercised together. The arrival of the 7th Bn RTR just at the beginning of the month had meant that they hadn’t had time to really get settled, the drivers hadn’t even had a chance to practice driving on the wrong side of the road! Still, the movement of the First Army Tank Brigade wasn’t likely to happen for a day or two. The Brigade Staff were already on the phone making sure that the movement by rail was confirmed. The 12th Lancers would be the first to cross into Belgium, followed by other elements of the Light Reconnaissance Brigade. The infantry divisions would begin moving after 13:00hrs. Pratt had to make sure that all his ducks were in a row. He sent an invitation to Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzmaurice of 4th Bn RTR and Lt-Col Heyland of 7th Bn RTR to join him for lunch. They really needed to bring Heyland up to speed, and this would be a good day to get a measure of where everybody stood.

What he really wanted was to see if he could sort out an exchange of troops between the two Battalions. Heyland’s 7th Bn RTR had come to France with 23 A12s (Infantry Tank Mark II) with the QF 2-pdr gun as well as 27 A11 Matildas (Infantry Tank Mark I). Each RTR Battalion was made up of the three Companies, broken into five sections, each with three tanks. If Heyland could be persuaded to swap three of his sections (9x) A12s for three with A11s from 4th Bn 4RTR, then it would give each Company in 4th Battalions at least one section of A12s. The men liked the pompom in the A11, though it wasn’t easy to operate and reload in the cramped confines of the turret. But the high velocity of the 2-pdr gun gave a good hard punch, especially if they came up against any panzers. There was no point exchanging just the tanks though, the crews who’d been trained on the A12 would need to go with the tanks.

When this was discussed over lunch, the problem that arose was that the A12, with its diesel engine needed a whole other set of spares and support from the A11. It wouldn’t just be a case of swapping over the tanks and their crews, but some of 7th Battalion’s fitters and mechanics, RASC men and of course taking two types of fuel. The officers couldn’t help reflect on the mess they found themselves in. The A11 was only ever meant to be a stop gap until the better A12 came along and yet here they were going to war with only 23 A12s and 77 A11s.

The First Army Tank Brigade were going to taken by train to Halle in Belgium. The dispositions of the BEF on Dyle Line had been agreed previously. The tanks would be positioned south of Brussels under the command of I Corps’ Major-General Michael Barker. Everyone was going to be really busy over the next few days, so it was agreed that once they were settled in their forward positions, three sections of A12s would be assigned to 4th Battalion RTR. Pratt, Fitzmaurice and Heyland were conscious that there was an extraordinary amount of work to be done, so having finished lunch, they hurried back to their Headquarters, where there was a queue of people to see them about one thing or another.

 

[allanpcameron]

19 May 1940. 21:00hrs. Tournai, France.

Brigadier Pratt finally had a moment to sit down with the commanders of the two Royal Tank Regiment Battalions. Ever since the First Army Tank Brigade had been moved by train to Halle on the night of the 14/15 May, and taken up positions in the Forest of Soignies, the situation had been changing rapidly. The British Expeditionary Force had successfully held the Dyle Line against German attacks, and the French Light Cavalry Divisions had given a good account of themselves at Hannut. The problem was the gap that had been blown through the French at Sedan. The right flank of the BEF was held by the French 1re Army and due to the situation south of them, the decision had been made to pull back to the Escaut Line.

Lord Gort, looking at the situation, worried about the Line of Communications that Arras was at the heart of. He therefore, while ordering the rest of the BEF to make the withdrawal to the River Escaut, ordered the First Army Tank Brigade to be reassigned to General Harold Franklyn, who had been given command of the forces protecting Arras and the Line of Communications. When the movement order had come through to Brigadier Pratt, the first part of the movement from their positions near Soignies was to Enghien where the Brigade was to entrain for the move back to Tournai. The Luftwaffe put paid to that idea, there were no trains available. Therefore, the tanks had to drive the 30 miles on their own tracks.

The movement had been horrific. The roads were clogged with refugees, making progress through them, while keeping one eye constantly on the sky for enemy aircraft had taken its toll. The two Battalions had taken most of the day to arrive, with some tanks rolling in having had to repair track breakages or other reasons for breakdown. It was with some relief that the threat of air attack hadn’t materialised, but nonetheless it had been a hard day on everyone. The bad news was that tomorrow was to be another day just like it. Pratt had received orders that the Brigade was to make its way to Vimy, where it was to prepare to take part in an action to close the gap that the Germans had opened up between Arras and Amiens.

The road from Tournai to Vimy was another 30 miles, and once more there was no hope of trains to carry the tanks. Pratt ordered as much maintenance to be done as possible to prepare the tanks for the next stage of the journey, and for the men, especially the drivers to try to get as much sleep as they could. These two orders were somewhat contradictory, but Fitzmaurice and Heyland knew what he was getting at. Over a cup of tea, the desire for information was insatiable. Nobody was entirely clear what was happening. Pratt had heard a rumour that 8th Battalion RTR might join them, but where and when wasn’t clear. He did know that the movement of 1st Armoured Division had begun in earnest, but that they were being shipped to Cherbourg rather than Le Havre.

Fitzmaurice wanted to know what would be the makeup of the force they were to join. It seemed that the Adjutant General, Sir Douglas Brownrigg, who was left in charge at Arras, had been putting in place Gort’s order for creating ‘ad hoc’ forces, one under General Petre, whose 12th Division would be involved, and another under General Franklyn, whose 5th Division, with elements of General Martel’s 50th Division, made up the main force. Looking at a large-scale tourist map, the leaders of the Tank Brigade could see that the BEF had real problems. The entire force, short of the forces around Arras were committed to holding Escaut Line. If it was true that the Germans were all the way past Amiens and heading for the channel coast, then it would be up to the French to attack from the south and close the gap. The 100 Infantry tanks of the Brigade, less now because of breakdowns, wouldn’t be able to do all that much on their own.

 

[allanpcameron]

20 May 1940. 21:00hrs. Arras, France.

The arrival of First Army Tank Brigade at Vimy, having travelled from Tournai was yet another part of the puzzle coming together. Generals Franklyn and Martel had, despite the relentless air attacks against Arras, had met together, along with Brigadier Pratt to put flesh on the bones of the vague order from Gott to do something to protect Arras and possibly put a dent in the German corridor.

The roads had taken their toll of the tanks. Only 79 Infantry Tanks had arrived in Vimy, the other 21 were spread out on the road back to Belgium in various states of disrepair. Pratt’s information was that some of those might arrive during the night, but 61 A11 Infantry Tank Mark I and 18 A12 Infantry Tank Mark II was all he had to offer at the moment.

Earlier in the day General Franklyn had been in Lens where he’d met with General Prioux (Commander of the 1st Cavalry Corps) and, by good fortune, he’d been there while General Billotte (Commander of First Army Group) was conferring with General Blanchard (First Army) and General Altmayer (V Corps). The French were looking at a making a southward counter-attack in the direction of Bapaume and Cambrai. If Franklyn’s two divisions and the Tank Brigade, were to be part of that, with the British attacking towards Bapaume, then that would be helpful. Franklyn was conscious that his two divisions were Territorials and, along with the Tank Brigade had had a long march from Belgium. Realistically it wouldn’t be possible. His orders from General Gort were to ‘mop-up’ the Germans south of Arras. What he did offer was that the British would take over defence of the line of the River Scarpe to the east of Arras, allowing the French Cavalry to move to the west of Arras and watch that flank. General Prioux accepted the offer, and arranged for part of the 3e DLM to support the British on the right flank of their sweep south of Arras.

Franklyn’s information from Gott was that the German forces south of Arras weren’t too strong. His plan, therefore, was for the Tank Brigade, with infantry support, to do a sweep around the south of the town, starting at Vimy, northwest of Arras, and then coming back over the River Scarpe to the east of Arras at Athies. That would take the pressure off the garrison. General Martel’s 50th Division would provide the infantry support to the Tank Brigade. As both the infantry and the tanks were still arriving at Vimy Ridge, the attack would begin at 11:00hrs in the morning. Looking at the maps, it looked like the road that ran between Arras and Doullens would be a good start line, though it would be something like an 8-mile march from the overnight positions to get to the start line.

The plan was for two columns: The left column, 4th Bn RTR, with the 6th Bn Durham Light Infantry (DLI), with a reconnaissance battalion provided by Y Company and scout platoon of the 4th Northumberland Fusiliers. The left column would have artillery support from 368th Battery (92nd Field Regiment RA), and the infantry would have the 206th Battery of 52nd Anti-tank Regiment RA. The right column, 7th Bn RTR, with 8th Bn DLI, reconnaissance would be Z Company 4th NF, the 365th Battery (92nd Field Regiment RA) and the 2-pdrs of 260th Battery (Norfolk Yeomanry). The flank of the right column would be protected by elements of the French 3e DLM which would provide Somua S35 chars. The 12th Lancers armoured cars would also be operating to the west of Arras.