Where could Universal Carriers make an impact?

[Admiral Beez]

I've always liked the British Universal Carrier. Is there anything it could not attempt?

Put a hundred of the Carrier, Armoured, 2-pounder (40 mm) into Malaya in mid-1941 and we'll give those IJNA light tanks something to think about.

 

[GTX]

If you want the definitive reference(s) get these books:

 

[Shortround6]

I've always liked the British Universal Carrier. Is there anything it could not attempt?

Put a hundred of the Carrier, Armoured, 2-pounder (40 mm) into Malaya in mid-1941 and we'll give those IJNA light tanks something to think about.

If they had just shipped another 100 towed 2pdr AT guns to Malaya in Mid 1941 the IJNA tanks would have been burned out hulks miles short of Singapore.
Also ship enough ammo to train the gunners with,

 

[Shortround6]

If you want to really look for the domino that may have started the whole Far East Fiasco (FeF) this is one to consider.

From Wiki.
"On 17 April 1939, before a prototype was produced, the first 100 vehicles were ordered from the LMS. Additional orders soon followed, with English Electric and Leyland Motors joining the production effort, for a final production total of 1,771 Covenanters"

Except that it was so bad that only one ever went overseas (for testing in Egypt) and the rest were used for "training". The crewmen/mechanics certainly new curse words and combinations thereof.

Now let us, in this thought exercise, imagine that this thing/abomination is canceled on the drawing board and LNS, English Electric and Leyland all join in on the Crusader project and hundreds (thousands?) more Crusader's are built in 1940-41 and hundreds are actually shipped to Africa at this time with a much better result in NA in 1940/early 1941 and freeing up 100-150 MK VI light tanks and dozens of A13s to be shipped off to Singapore and the Far East by the summer of 1941. Also a small percentage of the AT and Field artillery.

Or that continued production of the A13 or minor improvements while the Crusader was worked on. According to some accounts the Crusader prototype was actually ready 6 weeks before the Covenanter prototype. One or both did have turrets, That is also a question, this lozenge turret was NOT an improvement over the A13 turret in many ways.
The A13s were far from perfect but they were better than NO tanks in 1940/early 1941.
The amount of wasted effort at this stage of the war boggles the mind.

 

[Warspite63]

I've always liked the British Universal Carrier. Is there anything it could not attempt?

Put a hundred of the Carrier, Armoured, 2-pounder (40 mm) into Malaya in mid-1941 and we'll give those IJNA light tanks something to think about.

Agreed - it was a great little vehicle ....practically the armoured equivalent of the jeep. Pretty much ubiquitous. And one of the few armoured vehicles can be accurately described as being 'cute'. So there.