Davout - I didn't actually do that last update, it was my evil mirror twin Pip. It would have bene clearer but for the palindromic nature of his mirror username. If only we had custom avatars you could see his
Evil Beard
On the serious point bureaucracy has to focus on means as they can be controlled, if you tried to judge civil servants by ends there would be strikes. Next thing you'll be asking them to be effective and work for the national interest not their own!
trekaddict - Alas not, the 2pdr is literally brand spanking new; it only entered service in 1936. Even allowing for being rushed to the front I'd imagine it only saw very limited service and even then only against light tanks and armoured cars (a few Italian divs had AC brigades attached, I'm assuming that also includes a few tanks). On the plus side it was pretty quickly worked out that the 2pdr, while a hell of alot better than say a PAK.36, was limited at best, so maybe it wont take till '38 for people to start designing a 6pdr.
However more importantly the 2pdr came with the Cruiser MkI tank, more of which later, so any discussion will have to wait for the tank porn.
Karelian - You must remember the Official British history of WW1 only came out
after WW2 had ended. There was a great deal of 'That war was nasty, lets not mention it again' going about, it was really the elephant in the room that had to be dealt with, better by a slightly longer review than a rude lesson from ze Germanz.
On the plans, well to be fair to the Old Guard they weren't
that bad, even the arch-reactionary Montgomery-Massingberd (truly the wrong man at the wrong time) listed 'Mechanising the cavalry' as one of his achievement after retirement. So there will definitely be no horses, at least not in the flesh anyway.
DonnieBaseball - I must confess I was pleased I could justify this one, as it had to be a Field Marshall the field was thin but Chetwode stood out a mile. I was worried I'd have to bend someone out of character (or doom the Army to a wasted opportunity) but fortunately I found him.
Vann the Red - Woot! Objective achieved.
Duritz - I would be disappointed if the final outcome didn't leave you fully sated. There will be many army vehicles, oh yes.
Sir Humphrey - There is a good argument that could actually work. Certainly it would be a good challenge AAR to see; Navy, Royal Marines and Nav bombers only.
Le Jones - I had a feeling you might, I nicked the idea of using him from you.
Nathan Madien - It may sum up British history, but that doesn't mean the Army has to like it. And whatever you do don't mention that their worst disasters occurred whenever they went too far from the coast...
As for Chetwode, what impressed me is that he managed the Indianisation of the Indian Army so well that;
A. Britain didn't sack him.
B. His motto remains in place, both in the arch and as the ethos of the current Indian military academy. As far as I can tell today he is seen as one of the better 'fathers' of the Indian officered Indian Army.
If he could walk that tightrope, while Ghandi was at his rabble rousing worst, surely internal Army politics is a breeze.
merrick - Well (1) and (2) are inevitable, indeed I'd say (1) is probably desirable, you have to declare ambitious goals so that when the Treasury cuts you down you still end up with something useful.
As for manufacturers, I really, really want to kill Blackburn but I'm not sure I can. The company history appears to be mostly mediocrity interspersed with miserable failure (The Buccaneer being a very honourable exception) so it wont be a big loss and should force a slightly better allocation of resources while producing less utter lemons. The problem is will the FAA trust anyone else to build aircraft? Not sure, depends on what they do for the next gen fighter.
I think Chetwode's big job will be actually giving the British Army a doctrine, something it managed to (technically) get by without having until the late 1980s. Given one of the big outcomes from the suppressed WW1 review was 'We didn't really ever sort out a post-tank doctrine' that's a good starting point. If the existing ad-hoc documents and ideas can be dragged together into a cohesive whole things could work out well, if you have a doctrine then you don't get a dog's dinner of armoured units because you know what your doing.