To expand upon my earlier reply, my British Army of WWI wank, with no financial controls is on the lines of the following:Yes, if the UK maintains a substantial standing army, WW1 has the real potential to be a short war.
- Still have 20 infantry divisions in the UK in August 1914, but they would all be equipped with modern weapons and there would be a 100% material reserve to allow for rapid expansion to 40 divisions in an emergency. AFAIK Lord Haldane, who created the Territorial Army in 1908 from the Volunteers and Yeomanry wanted the TF to have 28 infantry divisions, but was thwarted by the Cabinet because the Liberal Government he was part of wanted to cut military expenditure, A) because they disliked high defence spending and B) they wanted to spend more on their welfare reforms like the Old Age Pension. IOTL he was only able to obtain enough money for 14 infantry divisions equipped with Boer War vintage weapons. In my "Army Wank" he fails to get the 28 divisions authorised, but he does succeed in getting the 14 divisions he was allowed equipped with modern weapons with a 100% material reserve.
- IOTL the British military arms industry had the capacity to support 6 infantry divisions with modern equipment. ITTL the 100% material reserve meant it had to effectively support 40 so that it was 6-7 times the size of OTL in August 1914.
- All the infantry battalions had 40 machine guns in August 1914 instead of 2, increasing the number of MGs per division in August 1914 from 24 to 480. IOTL the 2 guns were Vickers weapons. In the wank there were 12 Vickers MGs and 28 Lewis Guns per battalion.
- There were only 8 heavy artillery pieces per regular army division consisting of 4 60-pdrs and 4 Boer War vintage howitzers as the 9.2-inch had only just been approved for service. ITTL there were 16 consisting of eight 60-pdr and eight 9.2-inch. These were organised into brigades manned by the Royal Garrison Artillery held at Corps level or under GHQ BEF. IRRC there were only 3 heavy batteries with 4 guns each in the whole TF. ITTL TF was provided with modern heavy artillery on the same scale as the Regular Army. All the Regular and TF heavy artillery was towed by Holt tractors instead of horses.
- The Royal Field Artillery was equipped with a gun/howitzer that combined the performance of the OTL 18-pdr gun and 4.5-inch howitzer. This facilitated the organisation of the RFA into brigades of 24 guns instead of 18 guns. Thus an infantry division had 3 brigades = 12 batteries = 72 gun/howitzers or one brigade of 24 guns per infantry brigade and one battery of 6 guns per infantry battalion. IOTL they had 54 18-pdr in 3 brigades and 18 4.5-inch in one brigade.
- The 42 RFA brigades of the Territorial Force had 24 of these gun howitzers each. IOTL there were 42 with 12 Boer War guns each and 14 with 12 Boer War vintage howitzers each, because IOTL their RFA batteries had 4 guns each, when regular batteries had 6 guns each.
- IOTL the Regular and TF divisions had 2 field companies of Royal Engineers each, but ITTL they had 3 field companies and a field park company.
- The Royal Flying Corps was 4 times the size of OTL. It was able to send 16 Aeroplane Squadrons to France with 192 aircraft with another 60 in its Aircraft Park. Left behind were 12 Reserve Aeroplane Squadrons and a quadrupled Central Flying School, which became the core of the training organisation. Furthermore there were 40 kite balloon sections (12 regular and 28 TF) in the UK, plus a mounted establishment for the cavalry and a handful of kite sections in Egypt and the colonies. The Indian Flying Corps provided the kite balloons for the 9 infantry divisions and 9 cavalry brigades in India.
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