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The Butterfly Effect: A British AAR

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Politics is sexier in khaki!

I'll consider this foreplay to my tank porn... especially considering the indications are promising that I won't be disappointed by the outcome of the review! :D

Dury.
 
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Simple solution. Fold the army into the Royal Navy. Just make sure all the tanks are amphibious and there are enough Royal Marine uniforms.
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A fascinating update, Pippy - particularly approve the involvement of Lord Hankey.
 
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El Pip has a new update up! *plays Legend of Zelda "you got something important" theme*

El Pip said:
Sir Edward Grey's infamous line "The British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the Navy" had bothered the Army from almost the moment it was uttered, reflecting as it did the relative rankings of the two services within the political establishment.
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Doesn't that sum up British military history in a nutshell?

Chetwode sounds like an good chap to have on hand when navigating the reform minefield.
 
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Holy Updates, Batman!

I see the FAA is keeping up the Air Ministry tradition - while the improvements to the Skua and the dropping of the Roc (now there's a design with no excuse, and doubly no excuse for building the thing) are improvements on OTL, it's still the good old British three-step:
1) Declare ambitious global objectives without having the resources to implement them
2) Refuse to collaborate with potential partners for fear of compromising independence
3) Fail to properly define the requirements or identify proper solutions rapidly enough, resulting in resources being spread over way too many designs/structures, none are which are quite what the mission requires.

If the FAA continues to focus on keeping Blackburn and Fairey in business, rather than prioritising aircraft that can take on contemporary land-based designs, they're going to end up going to war with Fulmars and Sea Gladiators.

As for Chetwode, he has a similar problem - success will be defined as persuading the Old Guard that they can't go on ignoring armoured/motorised units and tactics, persuading the Fullerites that they can't win a war without infantry and artillery support and knocking the dog's breakfast of armour designs and formations (Light tanks! Infantry tanks! Cruiser tanks! Armoured divisions! Tank regiments! Combined-arms task forces!) into something approaching rationality. The big risk is that the success of the Army against an enemy lacking proper AT equipment will convince everyone that light armour is a potent anti-infantry force and that it doesn't need proper artillery support, either from SP units or <gasp> tanks with a proper dual-purpose main armament.
 
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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! :eek:

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. :D

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.
 
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I think one can blame the specifications for the crap Fairey & Blackburn (mostly) put out--the requirements for low stall speeds and "multi-purpose capability" together were guaranteed to produce big, slow, marginal airframes--as Churchill called them "knockabout aircraft for general purposes."

I'm really curious if Chetwode will recommend dispensing with the Infantry/Cruiser tank distinction--concentrating on one "all-around" design can't but help?
 
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Agree that FAA specs were at least as responsible as poor design work for a lot of the rubbish the FAA ended up having to fly. But the low stall speed requirement derived from the small decks (with no arrestor wires) on most of the early carriers and the requirement for everything to do two jobs (badly) was itself a consequence of the small size of the air wings. Both of which ultimately came from the FAA (a) not having the resources to do everything & (b) never being able to work out what its core mission actually was.

The 2-pounder was a perfectly respectable gun for the late 30s. Its main problem in service (at least in the early war) was that it lacked an HE round (no reason why it couldn't have had one, and I read somewhere that a round was actually produced but never issued!). Later of course, you hit the issue of undersized tank designs which cannot be upgunned to face mid-war Panzers.

The gun that really needs to be smothered in its cradle is the what-were-they-thinking? 65mm smoke mortar that "armed" the CS versions of the early cruisers. Hint to the designers - if your beloved high-velocity 40mm is unsuitable for use against infantry, how about replacing it with something that can deliver HE rounds, rather an abortion incapable of live fire against any target! Better, use a readily-available 13pdr or 18pdr in a fixed mount similar to the German sIG. Better yet, drop the whole "tanks will only fight tanks" idea and fit all of them with proper DP main armament.
 
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I like bearded Pip, or more correctly piP, better. He updates about army.

I'm torn about your hint of upcoming Cruisers. On the one hand, they always struck me as a waste of steel - why get to a fight quickly if you get knocked out by the first decent hit. On the other hand, they are the Sasha Grey of tank porn (looks good with pretensions of being a real tank but easily abused by others).

I also agree with your comments about the 2 pounders. Good guns for their time, just used too long after their time.

Hopefully piP will be doing another update soon.
 
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DonnieBaseball - Maybe, but I can and do blame Fairey for the Albacore. It was from a 1936 spec, i.e. after they'd already done the Battle and the P.4/34 (Fulmar). Yet they still produced a biplane that was worse that the Swordfish, surely they must at least partly to blame for that.

Blackburn's main problem (well one of them) was the tendency to make exceptionally tough airframes, not in itself a bad thing (I'm sure the Skua pilots will appreciate the toughness), but when it wasn't in the spec and you don't tell anyone (so they can get you a larger engine to compensate) that is very much a designers problem.

Universal tanks would be lovely, sadly I don't think the tech is there for an all-rounder. Tanks have to get alot bigger, at least double in mass, and many ideas have to be thought up before you get a well armoured, well armed, manoeuvrable and tolerably fast design. To give a flavour;

The Centurion, the first British tank to get the Universal Tank classification, was 50t, had sloped thick armour, an aero-derived engine and a 17pdr gun. The brand spanking new (for '37) Cruiser MkI is 14t, has pitiful armour, uses a bus engine and has a 2pdr with no HE. There is a hell of a way to go! :eek:

merrick - While the FAA does use the cop out 'It was those evil RAF men that done it' excuse quite a lot, in this case I think it's fair. There never was a proper FAA Air Staff till 1939 when the 5th Sea Lord actually got a staff, even then they were swamped by the logistics of the handover. No Staff means no place to formalise doctrine or sort out 'core mission', save for the full Navy Board which meant the surface fleet (and indeed submariners) sticking their nose in. It was never going to end well.

Those CS tanks were part of a long and mad tradition of unarmed CS tanks streching back many years. Indeed the guns were more than capable of firing HE, they just weren't issued with any as it was felt it would distract the crews from their smoke laying duties....

This is what happens when you don't actually have a tank doctrine or any armoured divisions, no-one can stand up and say 'That's mad, stop it.' If nothing else Chetwode will change that I can assure you.

Davout - Your both in and out of luck. The good new is bearded piP will be doing the next few updates. The bad news is he's just as busy as normal Pip so will not be able to keep up the ludicrous update schedule recently enjoyed.

And the Cruiser tanks have to be discussed, if nothing else they were all developed and prototyped by 1937 and so are just lying around at the moment. You've got to do something with them or they'll make the place look untidy. ;)

--
Edited Note - I've just noticed this has topped 200k views (!?) and that milestone probably occurred on the 4th anniversary of the first update. Two milestones I never thought I'd see.
 
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El Pip said:
Edited Note - I've just noticed this has topped 200k views (!?) and that milestone probably occurred on the 4th anniversary of the first update. Two milestones I never thought I'd see.
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I know, I thought you'd have this over quickly so we could all be home by Christmas! ;)

Seems to me that OTL the Army would get a new tank, try it out and go "Nope, that ain't any good. Lets try again..." and then get a new one that took no account of the lessons from the previous one. Sort of working on the infinite monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters theory... except with tanks and designers! :(

Can't wait to see what an actual coordinated effort will be able to achieve... like for a start getting rid of those ridiculous MG turrents off the Cruiser Mk I, reducing the crew to 5 and using the savings to add armour and/or storage for HE rounds.

Can't wait for piP to come through with the goods!

Dury.
 
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El Pip said:
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...
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Like that time during the American Revolution in which Charles Cornwallis ran around the backcountry of the Carolinas, chasing after the Americans without much success and losing his own men in places like the Cowpens, King's Mountain, and Guilford Courthouse?

Of course, in Cornwallis' case, even when he got to the coast in Virginia, he still managed to run into trouble.
 
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Nathan Madien said:
Like that time during the American Revolution in which Charles Cornwallis ran around the backcountry of the Carolinas, chasing after the Americans without much success and losing his own men in places like the Cowpens, King's Mountain, and Guilford Courthouse?

Of course, in Cornwallis' case, even when he got to the coast in Virginia, he still managed to run into trouble.
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Of course, he wasn't even in command of the troops at King's Mountain or Cowpens...but lets not let the facts get in the way, shall we?

:rofl:
 
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El Pip said:
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.
Click to expand...

Well, there´s nothing wrong in maintaining the traditional unit names and replacing horses with Universal Carriers either.
 
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Congratulations on 200k views Pippy!

And to carry on the argument, I think you're selling the technology short when you write off the all-round tanks. Sure, 14 tons is too little but the Panzer III and (especially) Panzer IV - both already prototyped by 1937 - turned out as first-rate all-round tanks on only 25 tons or so. And pretty much everyone bar the British managed to produce a decent dual-purpose tank gun in the 37-47mm range. (Yeah, the PAK-36 was low-end, which is why the Germans rapidly ditched it for something better. Of course, their tanks were designed with some expansion room...)
 
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merrick said:
*snip*
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Well, a Cromwell or even a Mathilda with a more powerful engine and a British DP gun should give the Germans food for thought. I draw your attention to the way I handled it, I armed the Cromwell with the 17pdr and had the Infantry support role taken over by the Heavy Tank Brigades who are too slow to keep up with the Mediums anyway. Admittedly it's a by-product from the times when I attached HT brigades, but methinks it makes sense even when one considers that the 17pdr lacks a decent HE round at this time. This only would be prohibitively expensive if it weren't jut re-gunning existing Churchills like I did when my Armour was still in Africa.
 
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Congratulations, Pippy. I'm impressed with your dedication to this AAR and you have earned every one of those 200k+ views.

Vann
 
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Congrats on the milestones--this AAR is most deserving.

Re FAA: IIRC the Albacore was a biplane because the Admiralty rejected Fairey's original monoplane design to that spec as being too much of a "technical risk"! Also, I assume the Skua and Albacore won design competitions (the way the Firefly and Barracuda beat out designs from Supermarine & Hawker amongst others) and were not no-bid contracts.

Very curious to see where tank design goes. Are sloped armor and a reliable engine practical propositions for a British tank c. '36?
 
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Congratulations on your accomplishment, El Pip.

TheExecuter said:
Of course, he wasn't even in command of the troops at King's Mountain or Cowpens...but lets not let the facts get in the way, shall we?

:rofl:
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Well, he was in overall command.

Anyhow, my point is that the British ran into trouble when they were in the backwoods of the Carolinas while achieving good successes near the coast at places like Savannah and Charleston.
 
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Duritz - There was some progress between the Cruiser I to IV, some problems were recognised and fixed. However the V was built on a budget (the 'good' design was rejected as being too expensive hence the cheap terrible one got built) and everything from there on was done in a wartime panic as Britain had fallen behind. Sadly this meant an unholy combination of risk-taking by cutting corners and ludicrous fear of change by keeping 'trusted' (but rubbish) components.

Nathan Madien - The 'Don't stray from water' issue for the Army was mostly a pre-20t Century problem, for instance in the Zulu War Isandlwana was very dry but Rorke's Drift was by a river. Not a co-incidence I think. ;)

TheExecuter - Never let facts ruin an argument!

Karelian - UCs? You except horsemen to fight as mere motorised infantrymen?! I shall have to right a stiff letter to the Prime Minister expressing my extreme displeasure at this suggestion!
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merrick - True enough, an all-rounder is indeed a real proposition but that is different from a universal tank (i.e. one tank for all jobs and no need for a heavy/light model as well.) The German example proves the point the PzIII was anti-tank, the PzIV support. Sure the IV progressed towards becoming the all rounder but when that was outclassed the Germans went for the Panther, Tiger combo of medium/heavy.

Perhaps my fault for not explaining it better first time, all-rounders are of course possible but the idea of using just one type of tank would be heresy to pretty much every tank man the world over, even into the 1940s. So yes to all-rounders, no to universal tanks.

trekaddict - Perhaps, however bear in mind this very early 1937. The Matilda II is only just being drawn and the Cromwell is several years away as is the 17pdr (they've only just got the 2pdr, let alone the 6pdr). So while a good idea for the future, the Army has got to use what's available not try and guess what's coming.

Vann the Red - There is a thin line between dedication and shear bloody-mindedness. ;)

DonnieBaseball - I wasn't aware of that about the Albacore, I know it was ordered off the drawing board so I suppose it makes sense. If your not going to see it fly before ordering I guess you can't take too much technical risk. It was the classic British inter-war problem, military chiefs buying things just to spend the money in case the Treasury took it away. :(

I know the Skua certainly did go to competition, there was a Vickers option that looked like a Stuka and an Avro mockup (the Type 666! :eek: ) which I can't find much about. Certainly in the case of the Skua it was the spec at fault no the designer, but even with a good spec Blackburn never really seemed to do a good job.

So I could be convinced to perhaps save Faireys, but if I get a chance I will kill of Blackburn. Ideally before the Firebrand rears it's lethal head. :shudder:

Nathan Madien - British successes in North America have always require being near the sea with the Navy close at hand. For instance the razing of Washington needed a Royal Navy officer at hand to make sure everything was thoroughly torched.
filthyrichjh8.gif
 
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