British 1936-42 purchase options, logistics and export/import of military hardware (1 Viewer)

[Shortround6]

Something to be mindful of when listing all the sizes/calibers/models of guns used is the actual numbers.
British (and other armies) had a number of 'legacy' guns that were available in small numbers in storage and training camps/facilities that they had no intention of replacing and in many cases, ever making additional ammo for.
Now for the British, some of these pre-war plans got tossed in the rubbish bin after Dunkirk. The ordnance staff started visiting every armory, storehouse, museum and out of the way castle dungeon for anything that would shoot and they accepted a kinds of crap from the US that the US was willing to get rid of while the US factories were issuing new guns to the expanding US forces.
Between the wars the British army was small (most nations were) and the British didn't start to build up their army quite as quick as some other nations. from 1924 to 1932 the Army got about 9% of the defense budget. Thinks improved after that but even in 1938 the army barely got 25% of the budget. Huge increase even in the April of 1939 but that was too late.
It was a mad scramble to get modern weapons of any sort, recruit and house/feed soldiers and train them. Actual number of planned divisions tended bounce around on the planning papers.

In a "what if" some of this stuff can be addressed. But to a certain extent Britain could not do everything. Armies allocation of steel/materials and factory space had to compete with the FAF and the Navy.
The Army made a number of mistakes in doctrine and training that were fundamental. Changing tank gun sizes/types is not going to change most of them. Building 24 ton tanks instead of 13-15 ton tanks can bring it's own problems. The British tank programs were many and varied and delays were rampant.
On the 31st of Jan 1941 the 9th Lancers reported that they were using 10 different types of tanks to make up a total of 44 tanks.
3 Cruiser tank MK 1s (A9 with thin armor)
6 Cruiser tank MK I CS (A9 with thin armor and 3.7in mortar)
2 Cruiser tank MK III (A 13 with thin armor)
1 Cruiser tank MK IV (A 13 MK 1 with Vickers gun)
15 Cruiser tank MK IVAs (A13 MK II with Besa gun)
5 Cruiser tank MK Vs (?? Covenanter or Crusaders?)
3 Infantry tank IIIs (Valentine)
6 Light tank MK VIB (.5in Vickers)
1 Light tank MK VBC (15mm Besa)
2 Light tank MK VII. (Tetrarch 2pdr)

They may have had a better mix before they really saw heavy combat. One can guess that the mechanics/drivers got a lot of varied training.

Perhaps they would have been better off with 20-24 tanks of 20-30 tons and larger than 2pdr guns. But this assumes you can get a Cruiser tank MK VII (Cavalier) into production in late 1939/early 1940 instead of just ordering into production in June 1941 and getting the first pilot model in Jan 1942.
I am using the Cavalier as a guide as it used the same engine and transmission as the Crusader, no Merlin engine or Merritt-Brown gear box. Adjust weight and armor thickness as desired.
I will note that the British armor regiments generally took until late 1942 to actually figure out how do combined arms operations. Sone/most of the infantry support tank Regiments figured it out somewhat sooner. Since they fought in support of the infantry they tended to fight together for common objectives on a regimental/brigade level and the infantry tanks were not fast enough to go swanning about the battle fields on their own. The British tended to pair up an infantry tank regiment with an infantry regiment for long periods of time (several battles or operations) which lead to a better understanding and comradery.
The Cruiser Regiments tended to have a different mind set. While they had support infantry and artillery in the same division they tended to view them as 'support' troops.
The tanks would dash in, take the objective (or penetrate behind the lines) and the infantry and AT guns (and artillery ) would catch up, secure the objective, consolidate/dig in while the tanks rearmed/ refueled and dashed off to the next objective. Leaving the infantry and AT guns all too often to defend the objective from the all too common Axis counter attacks without any tanks to help them. Tanks got a very bad reputation with some of the British Infantry in NA.
How much was due to orders from higher up I don't know. But there is a difference between using your Infantry/AT guns as support troops (mop up) and fighting a coordinated battle in support of each other at the same time.
British battles were sometimes set to time tables. Like so much bombardment time (or none) with the ground attack starting at certain time and the tanks reaching the 1st of objective (of several) at certain time with the infantry and AT guns operating on a different time table. The supporting artillery had their own time tables. The batteries would leap frog forward so a certain number of guns were always ready to fire except..........when they hit rough going and could not reach the new firing position in time. Poor communications sometimes meant that the leading tanks outran their artillery support. The Tanks sometimes charged forward anyway in order to keep to the schedule. There was at least one case of field gun battery getting stuck and by the time they got unstuck they were too late to fire the first planned mission so they skipped it and went on to the 2nd firing point to fire the 2nd pre-planned mission according to the time table. The tanks got shot up by dug in AT guns. Now having a Grant style 75mm may have helped but that may have been drawing the wrong lesson. Or it would have helped with the 1st objective. But would they have enough HE ammo to to the same thing to the 2nd objective and be, perhaps, even further away from proper artillery support?
The British "cavalry dash/charge" mentality took a long time to change.
It might have worked well against the Italians with their poorer communications and poorer artillery support (Italian Artillerymen were brave and well trained, but they were short of guns and ammo for long fire missions) but such tactics did not work well against the Germans. Using 6pdr guns instead of 2pdrs wasn't going to change a lot of things that the British were doing wrong.

 

[Elan Vital]

With the caveat that France was also paying for fortifications and conscription rather than a small volunteer army, British military expenditure as a share of GDP appears to have been consistently lower than France until 1938 or so. British rearmament started at least as early as 1934, but the Army's demands were consistently moderated in favor of the RAF (in 1934 recall that Army proposals were reduced by 21%?) and the Navy. This certainly helped the British compete well with Germany on the air front in WW2 in spite of the relative population difference, but for 1939-40 at least this deliberate prioritisation didn't yield a lopsided advantage in the air for the Allies.

On the other hand, it left Britain until the 1939 decisions without even the promise of providing a real ground contingent on the continent, which is part of why France was in such a desperate diplomatic situation to both secure Britain's support as the strongest industrial power in the region they could ally with; and that of a substantial ground ally like Italy, Czechoslovakia or Poland at the very least and ideally the USSR. A dilemma which, given the decisions of all actors involved, left France with only Britain by 1940 (until the neutrals would no longer be).

Of course there is the talk about "economy being the 4th arm of Britain", but one can wonder if the UK didn't miss at least 3 critical years (34 to 37) to obtain a more balanced rearmament without sacrificing efforts on the RAF and RN.

 

[EwenS]

Some information on the British Medium & Heavy artillery park in NWE in 1944/45 here.

21 Army Group gun park - figures and queries

I've been looking back at some old figures on the guns by calibre in 21 Army Group, with a particular reference to non-Divisional Field and AA...

ww2talk.com

 

[Shortround6]

The British army managed to standardize on the artillery parks in NW Europe vey well.
Things in Italy may not have gone quite as smoothly or were done at at somewhat slower pace?
Things in the Far East seem to have gone slower. Since the Japanese were not an artillery power house it terms of numbers of guns and amount of ammo this didn't make much difference to the campaign.

 

[Glider]

Its my understanding that apart from the obvious factor that the Far East always were a lower priority than those forces fighting in Europe. The Terrain had a significant impact and that some units were equipped with Heavy mortars instead of field guns.

Wish I could find a source to support this but admit that I cannot.

 

[EwenS]

Its my understanding that apart from the obvious factor that the Far East always were a lower priority than those forces fighting in Europe. The Terrain had a significant impact and that some units were equipped with Heavy mortars instead of field guns.

Wish I could find a source to support this but admit that I cannot.

The difficulty with understanding artillery in India / Burma is that there were 4 different divisional organisations by early 1944 each with varying amounts and types of artillery / more mortars. Then there is not only the RA units to consider, but the growing number of Indian Artillery (Royal Indian Artillery from 4/45) units as the campaign went on, that frequently go unnoticed.

1. Mixed Transport Division
2. Animal and Mixed Transport Divisions
3. Light Division (with only 2 infantry brigades)
4. Assault Division

I still struggle to understand who had what and when!

That then seems to have been reorganised into a new "Standard" Div structure. Artillery was then:-

2 Field Regts each of 3 batteries with 25pdr
1 Mountain Regt with 3 batteries of 3.7in howitzers
1 AT Regt with 3 batteries equipped with the 6pdr (sometimes combined LAA/AT regt)

At least 3 Medium Regts were allocated to Operation Zipper in 1945 (incl one RIA) as well as two RIA LAA Regts and a Heavy AA Regt (Hong Kong & Singapore Regt RA)

There were only one self propelled field artillery regiment in action during the Burma camapign in 1944/45 (18th Field Regt RA with the M7 Priest). A second regiment, 208th Field Regiment RA) converted to the M7 in April 1945. Both would have participated in Opertaion Zipper.

I also remembered this site detailing RA units in WW2, but not their Commonwealth cousins.

British Artillery Regiments

List of RHA and RA field artillery regiments in World War 2

www.britishartillery.co.uk

 

[Shortround6]

Its my understanding that apart from the obvious factor that the Far East always were a lower priority than those forces fighting in Europe. The Terrain had a significant impact and that some units were equipped with Heavy mortars instead of field guns.

Wish I could find a source to support this but admit that I cannot.

You may be right. But the British did use, in small numbers, medium artillery.
Sometimes things get confusing as at times the "British" did not use a certain weapon but allies did or commonwealth nations did.
Direct fire of a "British" 5.5in gun on Fort Dufferin, Mandalay March 10th 1945.

The gun breeched the fort walls in 4 places.
498th Battery, 134th Medium Regiment, R.A.
This may have been the last time (before 2022) that such a large artillery piece was used for direct fire.
Edit. They were using M3 Lee tanks for armored support.

 

[EwenS]

Edit. They were using M3 Lee tanks for armored support.

While the 150th RAC (10th York & Lancaster Regt) in 254th Indian Tank Brigade, was equipped with M3 Lee during operations against Fort Dufferin, by 1945 the 14th Army armoured units were using a mix of M3 Stuart light tanks, M3 Grant & Lee and M4 Shermans in the three Indian Tank Brigades operating in Burma in 1944/45.

There were also Valentine bridgelayers and a squadron of Grant Scorpion flail tanks.

 

[Glider]

The difficulty with understanding artillery in India / Burma is that there were 4 different divisional organisations by early 1944 each with varying amounts and types of artillery / more mortars. Then there is not only the RA units to consider, but the growing number of Indian Artillery (Royal Indian Artillery from 4/45) units as the campaign went on, that frequently go unnoticed.

1. Mixed Transport Division
2. Animal and Mixed Transport Divisions
3. Light Division (with only 2 infantry brigades)
4. Assault Division

I still struggle to understand who had what and when!

That then seems to have been reorganised into a new "Standard" Div structure. Artillery was then:-

2 Field Regts each of 3 batteries with 25pdr
1 Mountain Regt with 3 batteries of 3.7in howitzers
1 AT Regt with 3 batteries equipped with the 6pdr (sometimes combined LAA/AT regt)

At least 3 Medium Regts were allocated to Operation Zipper in 1945 (incl one RIA) as well as two RIA LAA Regts and a Heavy AA Regt (Hong Kong & Singapore Regt RA)

There were only one self propelled field artillery regiment in action during the Burma camapign in 1944/45 (18th Field Regt RA with the M7 Priest). A second regiment, 208th Field Regiment RA) converted to the M7 in April 1945. Both would have participated in Opertaion Zipper.

I also remembered this site detailing RA units in WW2, but not their Commonwealth cousins.

British Artillery Regiments

List of RHA and RA field artillery regiments in World War 2

www.britishartillery.co.uk

Thank you for this, much appreciated

 

[Elan Vital]

Of note that the Cabinet files related to 1939-40 production plans and other subjects can be downloaded from the National Archives, I gathered some here: CAB 83 – Google Drive

Esp CAB 83-4 and -5
Interestingly, it seems a 90° simpler carriage for 2 pounder AT gun was under testing in February 1940 and would have resulted in greater production rate (up to 30% greater).

The fact that the decision to massively expand the Army for operations in Europe was only made in 1939 is very apparent, esp with heavy and superheavy artillery which was in storage with no replacement in development and no upgrades done save for a new 9.2" Howitzer developped since 1938.

 

[yulzari]

One understands the very real pressures of the moment that prompted a decision to maintain production of the 2 Pounder rather than stop and set up for the 6 Pounder which delayed it entering service until May 1943.

What I fail to understand is why the period British tanks were not designed by 1940 to be able to accomodate the 6 Pounder in a three man turret even if the 2 Pounder had to be carried pro tem. What actually happened was the turret crew had to be reduced to two with the commander doubling up as loader.

 

[Shortround6]

What I fail to understand is why the period British tanks were not designed by 1940 to be able to accomodate the 6 Pounder in a three man turret even if the 2 Pounder had to be carried pro tem. What actually happened was the turret crew had to be reduced to two with the commander doubling up as loader.

Somebody/s In the high command were really falling down on the job.
What the 1939/40 cruiser tanks prioritized over the possibility of a larger gun was thicker armor for the same weight, which was achieved by reducing the hull depth (hull floor to hull top) and the depth of the turret (turret ring to hull roof). But this meant you had less volume in the hull and more importantly, less room inside the turret.
What the high command was failing to realize was the amount of time it took to bring a new design from initial sketches on paper to actual hardware, not on a test track, but in numbers in actual service regiments. The requirement for the Cavalier/Centaur/Cromwell was issued in late 1940.
Unfortunately instead of trying to upgrade the A13s they had ordered the Covenanter and Crusader off the drawing board in late 1939 and they wasted a lot of development/de-bugging time trying to get them to work, which delayed the bigger tanks that could hold the 6pdr in a 3 man turret.

The Covenanter could not have screwed the British any more if it had been the result of a very successful German spy ring.
In addition to have few/if any, actual improvements over the Cruiser tank MK IVA, it siphoned off 3 of the 4 manufacturers of Cruiser tanks. Nuffield bailed on the program and came up with Crusader. So in late 1940 and much of 1941 Production of the Cruiser IVA slowed, stopped and was replaced in 3 factories by the Cruiser MK V, which was issued to no combat tank regiments, ever and the over 1700 built were used for "training" while the tank regiments in North Africa were chronically short of tanks, of any sort in 1941/mid 1942.
They only built 665 Cruiser IVA which is why they were issuing Valentines ( and keeping light tanks for too long) to Cruiser tank regiments.

The Covenanter still managed to gain over 20% in weight. In part due to the new engine and gear box.
The Crusader was stuck with the same turret as the Covenanter.

I really wonder what a "modernized" A 13 could have been developed into. Same basic engine as the Crusader/Cavalier/Centaur. A deeper hull that could have adopted a bulge going out over the tracks to hold a bigger turret ring. A few more inched of height in the turret to hold a bigger gun and keep elevation and depression.
Short cut to a slightly better/larger Crusader?
Some (not all) of the Crusader's engine problems were from trying to cut 6-7in out of the height of the Liberty engine and designing a new cooling fan system to fit the lower height engine compartment.

 

[PFVA63]

...
"I really wonder what a "modernized" A 13 could have been developed into. Same basic engine as the Crusader/Cavalier/Centaur. A deeper hull that could have adopted a bulge going out over the tracks to hold a bigger turret ring. A few more inched of height in the turret to hold a bigger gun and keep elevation and depression...."

Hi,
That could make for an intersting what-if model build

 

[Elan Vital]

One understands the very real pressures of the moment that prompted a decision to maintain production of the 2 Pounder rather than stop and set up for the 6 Pounder which delayed it entering service until May 1943.

What I fail to understand is why the period British tanks were not designed by 1940 to be able to accomodate the 6 Pounder in a three man turret even if the 2 Pounder had to be carried pro tem. What actually happened was the turret crew had to be reduced to two with the commander doubling up as loader.

Yes. I don't recall if I read it in pre- or post-Fall-of-France documents, but it was mentionned that 6 pounder would be only produced by new industrial capacity while the existing capacity would keep building 2 pounders first. The British also didn't get some of the 25mm Hotchkiss AT guns that remained to be delivered by France, and they lost the chance to get French 47mm AT guns which could be delivered in around Autumn 1940 as they would start to build up a surplus to their own requirements (or at least high enough production rates to set aside some for the British). The latter could have partially plugged the gap in terms of more powerful AT guns until the 6 pounder enters mass production.

 

[Glider]

I believe that the one trait that the UK had which was a huge liability was that it often didn't look ahead, other being that in a lot of areas we did not learn or disseminate the lessons of war. This applies to a number of areas, in particular tanks.

You start the war with what you have, and lessons have been learnt. However I feel that there can be no excuse when thinking of planning for the replacement of the Matilda II and the A9. Even allowing for a desire to keep two basic types (Infantry and Cruiser) by 1939 it is clear that war is coming and the irrational desire to save money lacks any logic. After all the Navy and the Airforce were going through a very significant and expensive expansions with new types of aircraft and ships being developed and built.

By 1939 the Army knew that a replacement for the 2pd was being planned although they didn't know what the final design would be. There can be no excuse for not building into the new designs the ability to up gun them. The German Pz III started with a 37mm and ended with the 50mm L60 or a short 75mm so it could be done.

The Valentine was a missed opportunity, it pretty much had the same armour, speed, weapons and limitations as the tank it was supposed to replace, the Matilda. What was the point? A different replacement may well have initially been equipped with the 2pd, which is 1940/1 was a pretty effective weapon, but could have changed seamlessly to a 6pd when the weapons were ready.
The A13 was we can all agree a waste of time and effort, but the A14 could be upgraded to a 6pd and with some imagination an A14 could have been in place instead of the A13 and may well have made a difference. Even the initial Crusaders had additional Mg turrets, why I will never know as experience in France had proved that they were a waste of time, weight and manpower.

 

[Shortround6]

British tank development was certainly wasteful. But.............

The A13 was we can all agree a waste of time and effort, but the A14 could be upgraded to a 6pd and with some imagination an A14 could have been in place instead of the A13 and may well have made a difference.

I cannot agree to that. The A13 was not a bad tank at all, at least for 1936-38 when it was designed and developed. Initial production order was placed in Jan 1938. Unfortunately to was for only 50-65 vehicles and that was the start of the problem with the fast (Christie) Cruiser tanks. If you want tanks equipping the army in 1940 you needed to order them in late 1937/early 1938.Now at this point they had been running at least one prototype since October of 1937 so they had some idea of what they were buying.
Unlike us modern armchair generals the British had no idea of what the bigger German tanks were capable of, aside from a few photos.
The A13 was rapidly turned into the A13 MK II with over 1200lbs more armor and because of the power of the Liberty engine the extra weight had almost zero impact on performance.
Some of the later A13s were converted to A 13 MK standard.
What seems to be unknown is how much further they could have taken the original A13/A13 MK II design, like add even more armor? Push the turret walls out to the same shape as the spaced armor giving more room/volume in the turret. The Basic 4 wheel per side suspension seems to have had some room left as the Covenanter gained over 7,000lbs using 4 wheels per side.
Even in most of 1940 it was good tank. The Germans built 435 (?) Pz III Fs from Sept 1939 until July 1940. A few of the factories had starting building the G model in April 1940 and the first 50 (?) still had the 37mm guns. They also were built with 30mm armor on the front and sides. Unfortunately, since the British were retreating they didn't capture/recover any German tanks for detailed examination. The Germans on the other hand had a number of British tanks to examine. This also includes ammunition. a bit more later.
The A14 was sort of a dead end. The rival A16 offered a bit more but............in the interest of speed they tried to use a 500hp Thornycroft marine engine. How good or poor this was I don't know, there were problems with the installation and Thornycroft may not have been in a position to supply large numbers of engines per month. Yes you could build more engine production facilities but that takes time. The tank was ready for trials in Sept 1939 but broke down on the way to trial grounds and interest was already very low so that was that. It seems to have had only 30mm armor and gone about 21-22 tons. The huge size was certainly a problem.
The real problem with the A13 was the A13 MK III/Covenanter with design work starting in early 1939(?) (mock up approved in April 1939) which sucked up design capability for very few real improvements (Wilson Gear box) and then production capacity for a tank that could not be deployed over seas forcing the continued use of the A 13 MK IIs well past their use by date.
If the British had not been trying to sort out the engine and cooling system (and new smaller turret) of the A 13 MK III, perhaps they could just added another 1000-1200lb of armor to the A 13 MK II, stuffed the Wilson gear box in the back, mounted the 2in bomb thrower in the turret and a few other tweaks.

Even the initial Crusaders had additional Mg turrets, why I will never know as experience in France had proved that they were a waste of time, weight and manpower.

Yes the whole little MG turret thing was a bad idea. However the experience in France was too little and too late. The Crusader was NOT designed as a result of experiences in France.
Nuffields got an order (off the drawing board) for 201 A 15s in July 1939 and the pilot model (the 1) was running March of 1940, In mid 1940 the order was expanded to 400 tanks and later to 1062, in the end they built about 5300 Crusaders. In part because they had nothing else.
In France the only experience the British might have gotten with the machine gun turrets were with the A9s, however...........
There were not all that many A9s in France. There were only 125 ever built and in 1940, some were already in Egypt, some were in England as training tanks and some did arrive in France. Some of the A9s that did arrive in France were the CS version but they didn't have much (any?) ammo for the 3.7in mortars and many of the A9s were used as command tanks and did little front line fighting.
It is a mystery as to why they didn't just leave the turrets off and plate over the holes sooner of the Crusader but it was too late do much of anything else (make the hull smaller?) without delaying production and with the Covenanter fiasco the British could not take any time to redo the Basic Crusader hull.

The Valentine was a missed opportunity, it pretty much had the same armour, speed, weapons and limitations as the tank it was supposed to replace, the Matilda. What was the point? A different replacement may well have initially been equipped with the 2pd, which is 1940/1 was a pretty effective weapon, but could have changed seamlessly to a 6pd when the weapons were ready.

The Point of the Valentine was that is much cheaper and lighter than the Matilda II. The 2nd point is that it could be built by Vickers using some of the tooling from the A9/A10 suspension/tracks and using a similar engine installation.
Now maybe if British had been building a few hundred A13 modified model per month that they could actually use instead of the several hundred useless Covenanters per month (hope sprung eternal at the war ministry) they might have gone for a larger/more capable design for the Valentine.

 

[SaparotRob]

Or if Britain didn't have crushing debt and the decimation of a generation, Britain could've had the resources to develop the Centurian.

 

[Glider]

British tank development was certainly wasteful. But.............

I cannot agree to that. The A13 was not a bad tank at all, at least for 1936-38 when it was designed and developed. Initial production order was placed in Jan 1938. Unfortunately to was for only 50-65 vehicles and that was the start of the problem with the fast (Christie) Cruiser tanks. If you want tanks equipping the army in 1940 you needed to order them in late 1937/early 1938.Now at this point they had been running at least one prototype since October of 1937 so they had some idea of what they were buying.
Unlike us modern armchair generals the British had no idea of what the bigger German tanks were capable of, aside from a few photos.
The A13 was rapidly turned into the A13 MK II with over 1200lbs more armor and because of the power of the Liberty engine the extra weight had almost zero impact on performance.
Some of the later A13s were converted to A 13 MK standard.
What seems to be unknown is how much further they could have taken the original A13/A13 MK II design, like add even more armor? Push the turret walls out to the same shape as the spaced armor giving more room/volume in the turret. The Basic 4 wheel per side suspension seems to have had some room left as the Covenanter gained over 7,000lbs using 4 wheels per side.
Even in most of 1940 it was good tank. The Germans built 435 (?) Pz III Fs from Sept 1939 until July 1940. A few of the factories had starting building the G model in April 1940 and the first 50 (?) still had the 37mm guns. They also were built with 30mm armor on the front and sides. Unfortunately, since the British were retreating they didn't capture/recover any German tanks for detailed examination. The Germans on the other hand had a number of British tanks to examine. This also includes ammunition. a bit more later.
The A14 was sort of a dead end. The rival A16 offered a bit more but............in the interest of speed they tried to use a 500hp Thornycroft marine engine. How good or poor this was I don't know, there were problems with the installation and Thornycroft may not have been in a position to supply large numbers of engines per month. Yes you could build more engine production facilities but that takes time. The tank was ready for trials in Sept 1939 but broke down on the way to trial grounds and interest was already very low so that was that. It seems to have had only 30mm armor and gone about 21-22 tons. The huge size was certainly a problem.
The real problem with the A13 was the A13 MK III/Covenanter with design work starting in early 1939(?) (mock up approved in April 1939) which sucked up design capability for very few real improvements (Wilson Gear box) and then production capacity for a tank that could not be deployed over seas forcing the continued use of the A 13 MK IIs well past their use by date.
If the British had not been trying to sort out the engine and cooling system (and new smaller turret) of the A 13 MK III, perhaps they could just added another 1000-1200lb of armor to the A 13 MK II, stuffed the Wilson gear box in the back, mounted the 2in bomb thrower in the turret and a few other tweaks.


Yes the whole little MG turret thing was a bad idea. However the experience in France was too little and too late. The Crusader was NOT designed as a result of experiences in France.
Nuffields got an order (off the drawing board) for 201 A 15s in July 1939 and the pilot model (the 1) was running March of 1940, In mid 1940 the order was expanded to 400 tanks and later to 1062, in the end they built about 5300 Crusaders. In part because they had nothing else.
In France the only experience the British might have gotten with the machine gun turrets were with the A9s, however...........
There were not all that many A9s in France. There were only 125 ever built and in 1940, some were already in Egypt, some were in England as training tanks and some did arrive in France. Some of the A9s that did arrive in France were the CS version but they didn't have much (any?) ammo for the 3.7in mortars and many of the A9s were used as command tanks and did little front line fighting.
It is a mystery as to why they didn't just leave the turrets off and plate over the holes sooner of the Crusader but it was too late do much of anything else (make the hull smaller?) without delaying production and with the Covenanter fiasco the British could not take any time to redo the Basic Crusader hull.

The Point of the Valentine was that is much cheaper and lighter than the Matilda II. The 2nd point is that it could be built by Vickers using some of the tooling from the A9/A10 suspension/tracks and using a similar engine installation.
Now maybe if British had been building a few hundred A13 modified model per month that they could actually use instead of the several hundred useless Covenanters per month (hope sprung eternal at the war ministry) they might have gone for a larger/more capable design for the Valentine.

First I must thank you for the obvious time and effort that was put into your response that was exceptionally informative. It had a lot of information which I admit I wasn't aware of. However I still stick with some of my points.

I can understand that the idea behind the Valentine was a cheaper and easier to produce Matilda. However by then the Army clearly knew that the 6pd was in the offing and allowed for this in the design of the Matilda replacement.

Your comments on the real issue was the A13 Mk III (Covenanter) were very informative. However by then the UK would have known about the early Pz IV with the short 75mm and that the 6pd would be coming along soon. So there can be little excuse for not future proofing the design after all the Crusader could take the 6pd gun so it was possible.

 

[Elan Vital]

G Glider S Shortround6

Some observations regarding the previous posts based on what I have:

The CAB files curiously mention that up until 1938/39, all British tank orders were apparently just "educational" orders to train new suppliers, with homeopathic quantities of tanks assigned to them (25 tanks per supplier for some orders). A9 apparently even was just adopted during an "Italian scare". While I get the principle of the educational orders which eventually expanded the industrial base (and which was also done in Germany to some extent), such small orders per factory and on the global scale probably did not encourage the development of the tooling and manpower necessary for decent monthly outputs, and odds are that some of the A9/10 suppliers didn't get the necessary orders to get efficient transitions to new batches either.
Vickers was already more experienced and could probably have been assigned very large orders at once. I note that in France, other than the peculiar industrial setup for the Char Bs, you mostly had a single assembly factory per tank model or 2 at most, although there were multiple suppliers for the castings and for machining said castings. Peacetime production rates per factory already grew to interesting numbers by 1939.

Valentine was indeed the result of trying to obtain the most heavily armored vehicle while reusing parts and tooling for A9/A10, and as such with a 16-16.5 ton limit. A10 orders were cut a little to move over to Valentine. It was simpler than Matilda II and turned out to be generally the least maintenance intensive and most reliable of the early war British tanks.

65 of the A13 Mk I were ordered as it wasn't yet sure at the time that Mk II would handle the extra armor well. Some officers did believe Mk II would do well and recommended it earlier and sometimes with a little more armor and reduced top speed to keep stress mostly the same. During/shortly after the battle of France, the conclusion was that Cruisers should have a lot more armor (at least 40mm), so there was even a proposal to uparmor A13 Mk II to the maximum possible extent while reducing top speed to 25 instead of 30 mph. Even if they had to change parts, I suspect that they could have done so. Given that A13 Mk III started at 16 tons and eventually grew to 18 tons, the British could probably have uparmored the Mk II with no issues even if they had not embarked on the "small Cruisers" and instead used the Mk II as the main stopgap while developping a genuinely more ambitious Cruiser.

I note that A13 Mk II used a spaced armor setup while A10 used a turret made out of 30mm plates. I have serious doubts that the spaced assembly was better given contemporary experience on thin spaced assemblies with modest air gaps, especially against 37mm caliber shells.

The A14/15/16 story is full of missed opportunities. The Thornycroft was only on the A14, A16 used the Liberty uprated to 414 bhp (this was perfectly possible and indeed the carburettors tested at the time allowed even greater outputs), with intent to use a 500 bhp Meadows or a diesel engine, both of which could have been probably interesting. A14 weight estimates grew quite a lot, IIRC to about 28 tonnes, so A14E2 was meant to have a transversely-mounted 8-cylinder derivative of the Thornycroft RY12 with a shorter hull to reduce weight to 21 tonnes. The transversely-mounted engine concept itself would have been very interesting to have for the British (the French were starting to have a number of projects with such a setup, one made it to real prototype stage but was stopped by the Fall of France).
A16 probably occupied a pretty significant portion of Nuffield man-hours. A15 Crusader (the previous A15 was a sorta more extreme A14) was the result of the fact that Covenanter itself was just a "Light Cruiser" (no MG turret) and that the existing Heavy Cruisers (A14 and 16) were quite heavy and expensive. Besides the fact that the Liberty engine was known by Nuffield, A15 also used it (and additionally rear cooling system) to give room for the MG turret and balance it, while having a lighter engine than the Meadows to make up for some of the extra weight and stay within the OG 18 ton limit.
Col Davidson suggested an A10/Cromwell-style ball MG setup for A15 before the war to simplify it and save weight since in his opinion the extra firing arc of MG turrets was no longer necessary and was increasingly impractical with heavier armor.

I already mentionned what a heavier Cruiser could have entailed, but you can already see here that it would probably have been a much better use of precious design time and ressources to have a heavier (20-25 tons) Cruiser that did not spend most of that extra weight on the MG turrets. Would also be a better use of all the work on heavy duty suspensions from the historical A16 (including a torsion bar concept). It would leave more room to keep improving the A13 Mk II in the meantime without the radical changes of Covenanter/Crusader which could be better incorporated in a heavier Cruiser. If it means we can even have a serious effort on an efficient 500 hp Meadows/diesel engine and transverse engine layout well before the Meteor and the dedicated tank diesels, then it's even better.

Or if Britain didn't have crushing debt and the decimation of a generation, Britain could've had the resources to develop the Centurian.

Well, France had to deal with rebuilding much of its northeastern regions and a big financial crisis with the Franc as a consequence of WW1 fiscal policies, and didn't recover quickly from the Great Depression due to deflationary policies. Germany had to deal with enormous economic damage plus deliberate sabotage of its own economy and finances to not pay war reparations, plus loss of territory. The USSR had to deal with major loss of territory, industry and population, local destruction by Germany and multiple mass death events throughout the interwar period.

If Britain couldn't fund a more significant rearmament while having suffered the least physical and financial damage, then who could?

 

[Shortround6]

VIckers was, by far, the most experienced British tank design team and manufacturing firm during the 30s.
They may not have always agreed with the British Army, however there were various factions even the British armored forces and without any real experience almsot everything was based on "theory" (firing on the move).
Vickers did get a lot of overseas sales and licenses and they built some of the larger between war medium/heavy tanks.
But a manufacturing plant that could build hundreds of 5 ton tanks per year and a few larger tanks was not the plant that could build hundreds of 15-20 ton tanks per year.
The British army seemed to want a specific tank for every role and some of the roles seem to have been a little dubious. A 'heavy' cruiser that had 15mm more armor than a 'light cruiser' and 1-2 extra machineguns? While carrying the same main guns and pretty much the same ammo? While wanting both heavy and light infantry tanks?
While producing light tanks by the hundreds.
It was the light tanks

That made up the majority of the tanks in the BEF and in North Africa in the early part of the war.
They made up a large part of the tanks sent to Greece and a few would up in the Dutch East Indies.
From Wiki..............
September 1939, ...............there were 1,002 Mk VI light tanks, 79 Mk I (A9) and Mk II (A10) cruiser tanks and 67 Matilda Mk I infantry tanks.
The British Army lost 331 Mark VI light tanks in the Battle of France of 1940.
....against the Italians late in 1940 with the 7th Armoured Division. At this time, the British had 200 light tanks (presumably Mk VIBs) along with 75 cruiser tanks (A9, A10, A13) and 45 Matilda IIs.
A lot were used for training and I would say that a 3 man 5 ton training tank makes a lot more sense than an a 4 man 18-20 ton training tank (Covenanter).

As far as the British planning goes, better cruiser tanks have to fight against the Infantry tanks and in Sept 1939 you had some British generals thinking that the war would turn into a 1914-18 slug fest that would require large (7 man crew) heavy armor (80mm?) and the ability to climb a 5 ft wall but speed was only 15mph. This was the A20 and 4 pilot models were ordered in Feb 1940. 1st run in June of 1940 but plagued with gearbox problems. What ever data they did get showed that they needed to restrict the gun to a single 2pdr instead of the hoped for larger gun (or multiple guns). However with the Dunkirk and with less that 100 tanks (?) left in England Vauxhall was asked to refine the design/scale it down and get it into production possibly in less than a year. With the aid of extra draughtsman loaned by the Mechanization board they got a pilot tank running in Nov 1940 and 14 tanks were delivered in June from an order off the drawing board.................however....................numerous defects lead to frequent breakdowns which lead to a number of rework programs in 1942-43 and Vauxhall engineers being assigned to Service units. Aside from it's combat debut at Dieppe in Aug 1942 it's next combat was at El Alamein Oct 1942.
Just listing this out to show the time scale between starting a project and getting several Regiments showing up with serviceable equipment. The British (and others) were often very optimistic.
Borrowing from the US Chrysler got a contact to build/manage the Detroit Tank Arsenal on Aug 15th 1940, and to deliver 1000 M2 medium tanks at a rate of 100 tanks per month to be completed by Aug 1942. In real life the contract/s were amended build M3 mediums within a few weeks. This helps show the preplanning and time needed to get large programs into place.

For the British the best bet/s were.......
To try to build off existing programs to tied them over until they can make better tanks.
Try to minimize the number of different tanks. No light and medium Cruisers, no 8-9 ton light tanks, one general purpose cruiser to simplify things.
Use exiting engines while working on a new purpose built engine. Depending a "new" engine in a new hull/suspension is asking for trouble.