October 1938, The Battle of Lulworth Cove.
The staff at Lulworth Cove were used to tankies turning up to shoot things, after all that was what they were there for. This time they were going to have tanks actually shooting at each other, which was a first for them.
It had all started back in June, when there had been a slightly unofficial shoot-off between the Czech LT-35 and an A10*. The intention had been to show that using the gunner as the elevation control was a better method, as it allowed firing on the move. The results had been embarrassing - the Czech method of mechanical elevation control seemed to work better, they'd won the contest at all ranges over 500 yards, and even then the A10 crew had had to be careful not to go too fast. Given the senior tank officers who were extremely keen on the idea of firing on the move like this, the result hadn't been promulgated too widely.
This had become more interesting after the annual exercises in the summer. For the first time the new A11 tank had been involved, and due to the size of its gun Vickers had provided it with a mechanical elevation control. Earlier in the year, when they did the first shooting trials, this had worked well, although the tanks had to stop and fire. As these were heavily armoured infantry tanks, this hadn't seemed like too harsh a restriction. The problem had been that after the exercise the A11 crews had complained that they were being unfairly 'marked down' on accuracy against the A10 crews. A certain amount of bad feeling and suggestions of bias had resulted.
Given the situation, one senior officer had mentioned that it was a pity they couldn't let the two types compete 'for real', as that would show the real advantage of firing on the move. The problem was, of course, that you couldn't have two tank crews actually firing at each other. That problem itself had suggested a thought to one of the junior officers at Lulworth. What if you could arrange such a contest in a safe way? Obviously you couldn't use the main tank guns, but what about the machine guns? That would be safe, but those guns were hardly representative of the main gun. Still, maybe something could be bodged up? So he decided to have a word with a couple of the senior armourers. They thought on it, agreed it was a crazy idea, then asked him to come back later.
A few days later, they had some interesting drawings, which after going through looked like they might actually work. What they had done is to first assume they'd removed the tank main gun. That was no huge problem, it was a standard maintenance practice. Then the replaced it. They'd started with a Boys rifle, then added some wood to make the resultant assembly the same size as the main gun. Some lead weights gave it a similar balance - not perfect, but close enough. They'd obviously need to do two different ones, but reckoned they could knock one up in a few days. Finally, since the Boys was, after all, an anti-tank gun, they'd suggested training ammo, just to be safe.
The reaction of his senior officer was one of guarded interest, once he'd gone through all the safety issues. Of course, they'd have to make up the testing guns, and get a couple of tanks and crews down for a few days, but it would certainly settle a lot of arguments, and after all one of their jobs was to make their crews the best possible gunners. He authorised the armourers to make up a couple of test guns, while he got in contact with some more senior RTC officers.
A week later, the tests commenced, despite much muttering among the range safety officers. The tank crews themselves weren't worried - they'd all volunteered, and had complete confidence that a Boys Rifle would do more then scratch the paintwork. They had agreed that the losing crew bought the beer, so as far as they were concerned everything was good to go. In theory, this was going to be observed and marked by the range staff. In practice, quite a few RTC officers, some quite senior, had 'happened to be around' and so thought they might as well watch.
The competition was to start at 2,000 yards apart, and shooting could start at 1600 yards. The radio operator in each tank had a stopwatch, because the rifle was faster to reload than the gun, especially the 6/18 pdr, and rate of fire was part of the test. The infantry tack could shoot while stationary or moving, but the cruiser had to shoot on the move. The range staff had binoculars and telescopes to tell when a tank was hit. The results were not what the senior officers had been expecting.
At long ranges (over 1,000 yards), shooting while stationary won easily. The A11 alternating between moving, then stopping suddenly to shoot, before jerking into motion again. The A10 crew admitted later they had real issues hitting on the move until they slowed down a lot, at which point the other tank had no more difficulty hitting them that while stationary.
The A10 did do better at short ranges, but only under 500 yards, and not moving close to their maximum speed. It was a glum A10 crew that evening, who had to supply the A11 tankers with a considerable quantity of beer.
When reported, there were a lot of surprised officers. Firing on the move, aimed by the gunner, had been practice for so long they couldn't understand how it wasn't working. In fact it was such a shock that two more days were spent on the exercise, leading to the same results. If anything the performance of the A11 improved.
This would cause serious discussion over the next couple of weeks. Obviously the tanks needed to use the most accurate method of shooting. But firing on the move had seemed up till now to be such an advantage. So after two weeks of arguing in circles, someone decided to ask Vickers what they thought the best options were.
Vickers (who'd unofficially heard of the results already) were quietly amused. They were already certain that balancing a gun on a man's shoulder was out of date, especially since they'd been looking at the size of guns needed to kill one of their own infantry tanks. However the Army had insisted, and while they'd slipped a mechanical system past them for the infantry tank, the opposition to the same method for the cruiser had been strongly resisted. So their solution had to take into account the still-strong insistence of firing on the move. Their solution was twofold. First, in the short term, the tanks should move to move-stop-fire-move. They already had a mechanical system to help in this, fitted to the A11, and this would be easy to add to new cruiser tanks. They saw no problem in building more units to be fitted to the existing tanks, in fact they could probably get this done by the base workshops as long as they provided the parts and some initial instruction.
To solve the still-wanted firing on the move, they suggested another mechanical system which would automatically stabilise the gun (in the same sort of way the gunner did now). This would solve the problem of having to stop, and allow much bigger and heavier guns as well. They knew that at least one American company was working on the problem, and they had some ideas of their own. It would take a while to develop and test - they thought 18 months or so (in public - in private they thought it would take a lot longer), and then new tanks would have it fitted, and older tanks could probably be retrofitted if needed. This technical solution was seen as a lifeline by the fire on the move group, who while still unhappy could agree to live without it as a short-term tactic.
There was considerable discussion as to why the fire on the move technique had suddenly proved so poor. No-one could quite tie it down, but the most accepted reason was that tanks were a lot better and faster now. The mechanical assist made stopping and firing quickly a lot easier, thus meaning they weren't a stationary target for a long time, the tanks could accelerate faster, and the much higher speeds made it much more difficult to hit while moving. While tanks had sped along at 6-7mph this hadn't been obvious, at 25mph it was proving a lot harder.
Vickers agreed to modify all new tanks with the necessary equipment - as the turrets in their two tanks were a similar size, this was fairly easy. Nuffield would have to think more on the A13 design, it wasn't yet certain how difficult it would be to convert them, although it would be less of a problem to incorporate it into new models. The turret on the Vulcan would be another problem, but Vickers promised to help on both tanks once they had a modified design for the A10*.
(while not using actual tank-on-tank action, a test of halt-fire-move and firing on the move apparently took place at Lulworth in the summer of 1939.The halt-fire-move won. Nothing changed immediately. Here I've had it happen earlier, with a test harder to rebut (ok, a little author fiat here), and much easier to change things as there is already the necessary mechanism available)
