January 1936: British army, you run the show

[michaelmaltby]

"...one wonders if an army competent for sustained operations against an industrialized country, like Germany, was considered a priority by Whitehall or 10 Downing Street"

Indeed. A great portion of the modern era Britain subsidized other European states such as Prussia to maintain a large standing army . As I stated early in this thread, Britain didn't prioritize the need for a modern army the way it appreciated that the Royal Navy was critical to existence.

 

[Robert Porter]

As I mentioned and quite agree with the sentiments above up to a point, we did not know at the time but Germany was largely a paper tiger and was gambling on the reticence of European, primarily British, states to engage it militarily as would have been necessary to stop its expansion. By the time that was no longer possible to avoid it was too late to avoid the very land war they did not want to fight. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that any number of avenues were available if pursued to have contained Germany but pretty much the entire western world, including the US, was war weary and had their collective heads in the sand. I do agree that the Soviet was not a viable military threat at the start of the war, but it was engaged in becoming one.

The best way, at least the historical consensus says, to have avoided the war was not to have treated Germany so shabbily at the end of World War 1. I rather subscribe to the theory that there was no viable way to avoid the war as the continent had more or less been in a continual state of war since before the Roman Empire. Most of that war had moved to proxy wars in the various continents being "colonized" by the Western powers. The Spanish American war is an example of such a proxy war. Neither side directly engaged the other in all out war.

I do agree we are probably living in, to paraphrase Churchill, the end of the beginning of whatever the next societal groupings will take. Nations as we know them will morph into something new. What form that will take will probably be more economic than political.

 

[Shortround6]

The British did appreciate the need for a modern army and indeed the British army in 1939/40 was a modern as anybody else's, at least in terms of types of equipment available (with a few exceptions). Failings were the scale of equipment issue and in some cases doctrine.
The actual size of the army was something else but Armies can be expanded in size faster than Navies and Air Forces, at least if you have core/cadre units and designs for tested weapons in hand with sufficient production resources.
As far as France 1940 goes even 15 better equipped divisions wouldn't have made any difference compared to the 10 under equipped
Divisions that were there. For comparison the Dutch army was roughly twice the size of the BEF, the Belgian army was roughly four times the size of the BEF and French Army was comprised of a total of 71 infantry divisions (granted about 19 were rather ill-equipped), 5 fortress divisions, 3 armored divisions (4th added during the campaign), 5 light cavalry divisions, 3 light light mechanized divisions.
The British could NOT save France.

However the British could have made better choices in figuring out doctrine/tactics before the war and made better choices in armament/scale of issue and other details that would have allowed for much better results in North Africa and later campaigns.

The British had made at least 1250 No4 Mk I rifles in the early 30s for test, this is more than simple tool room prototypes, some sort of small scale production tooling must have existed. It was approved and then filed away until needed. Production didn't deliver rifles in quantity until 1941. The No 4 was supposed to be cheaper to build than the No 1 MK III. I am not sure if theArmy existed on left over No 1s during the 30s or if there was ongoing production of the No 1. sources vary. Small scale production of the No 4 should have been started during the mid to late 30s.
The 3in mortar was about the simplest way to increase the Battalion firepower. It was under performing in the mid to late 30s compared to world standards and 2 tubes per battalion was below most other armies scale of issue.
The idea of concentrating ALL heavy MGs into a machine gun corp (or divisions) to be parceled out in packets of companies per inf regiment (or platoons per battalion) as needed, was also contrary to world practice. Now in reality, in some theaters a sub unit of the MG Corp may have been loaned/assigned to a particular regiment/battalion for an extend period of time and become a defacto member of the regiment/battalion but it means that infantry officers were not trained to think of the Vickers machine guns as organic battalion firepower and had to learn how to use them to best advantage "on the job" with the help of the MG detachments leader/s. And I think we can imagine how that went at times. Subaltern Jones trying to tell Major Smythe that no, that position the Major had selected for the MGs was really NOT the best place for them.

Britain was not alone in failing to realize the fast pace of armoured vehicle development, although it really shouldn't have been that hard to foresee some of it. British built about 1000 of these.

Which were pretty useful for fighting these

but almost useless for fighting these

Please note added armor to front of turret, front of superstructure and that the front of the hull is added armor over a previously rounded hull front. The British .5 Vickers or 15mm Besa was useless against the front of these upgraded MK II tanks, while the 20mm gun would penetrate the British light tanks at considerable distance.

Since the British were making 12-14 ton cruiser tanks at the same time as the Light tanks and the French were build 12-14 ton two man tanks by the thousand during the late 30s it is a little hard to figure out why the British built so many 5 ton tanks. Several hundred may have needed but these tanks made up the bulk of the armor in the BEF and North Africa.

 

[michaelmaltby]

"The British could NOT save France."
France could not save France.

 

[michaelmaltby]

1939 Newsreel .....


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNX5ZE3C1Gg

 

[Old Wizard]

 

[Shortround6]

Getting back to doctrine and tactics. The British armored formations pre WW II were very armor heavy and support unit (including infantry) light even if the bulk of the tank numbers were made up of light tanks.
Many other countries and unbalanced formations (Brigades or divisions) but the British were pretty much as far on one end of the scale as you could go.

A British tank "division" (and there were only 2, one in England and one in Egypt) couldn't hold ground (pre 1940 it had ONE infantry battalion).
It couldn't assault defended positions very well. Lack of infantry and surprisingly, lack of artillery in sufficient numbers. Especially considering the lack of HE and smoke capability of the tanks themselves. The early 3.7in tank Howitzer/mortar was a weapon and ammo unto itself and had nothing in common with the 3.7in Pack howitzer except the bore diameter.

Basically they were sort of mechanized cavalry and not heavy divisions. Useful for exploiting a breech in the enemy lines once it had been made. But far less capable of dealing with trouble spots than the German tank divisions. The divisions in both armies were evolving at this time (and would continue to evolve).

The British were depending on infantry divisions with attached infantry tanks to assault defended positions. A problem with attaching a tank unit to an infantry unit for a particular attack or operation is the lack of familiarity and co-operation. The tanks will try to fight their own little battle regardless of what the infantry are doing, the artillery belongs to the infantry division commander so requests for support are not going to be at the top of the list. After a tank unit had worked with a particular infantry unit for a while each came to appreciate the others problems and became more "invested" in the other units survival. In the early desert fighting many infantry units had a poor regard for tank units as they tended to draw enemy fire (including artillery) and tended to bug out leaving the infantry holding the bag. Of course the tanks needed secure areas to re-arm, re-fuel and perform maintenance.

Changing the gun in the cruiser and/or infantry tank doesn't do much to change the fundamental flaws in British doctrine/tactics.

In the early years the German MK IVs with their short 75mm guns not only fired HE support but provided the long range smoke support for the tank formations (until supporting artillery could be called in.)
The German 105 howitzers also had a much larger smoke charge in their smoke shells than the British 25pdrs did. Better or different artillery fire doctrine/practices could make a difference.