Carden Loyd tankette/carrier

[Ultravanillasmurf]

We also forgot how horse drawn the German army was, all the way through the war.

[carlos marighela]

Nice work compiling those numbers, that's handy!

One shouldn't be surprised at low mechanisation rates. The bulk of the army was spread from one side of the Empire to the other and it was largely organised for Imperial policing. Right up to the end of the 1930s battalions were organised on the Imperial model, with an MG company to each.

[Arlequín]

Thanks. A subaltern remarked after the Armistice in 1918, that now the Army could get back to 'real soldiering'.

 

What has become apparent to me is a circular cycle. Support weapons went to battalions Post-WWI to support the Imperial role, but all 'European War' experiments re-concentrated the MGs into MG battalions and created brigade AT companies (from battalion AT platoons created Mid-'30s), and divisional AT regiments.

This line of thought won out from '38 onwards and so the BEF of 1940 went to France with a WWI mindset of centralised control of support assets. All through WWII we then see experiments with re-integrating support back into battalions, that essentially returns the Army to the same model it adopted after the armistice; but motorised.   

We also forgot how horse drawn the German army was, all the way through the war.

All armies, even the U.S. were still mostly horse-powered in 1940, even Britain had a horse division left until 1941, despite its apparent 'total mechanisation'.

All things being equal though, the British only had to find vehicles for 120 or so battalions before 1939, the Germans had 54 divisions and the French 98 at the end of that year. Truck for truck things were possibly fairly even at the start of the war.

[Vintage Wargaming]

I'm away from all reference sources at the moment but is itv just possible the MAFVA Census is incomplete? There is some Pathé News footage of the DLI in their Vickers Tractors but they were strippe of their special equipment the following year for troops going to Palestine. Can I re-emphasise the  Carden Loyd was an MG carrier and not intended to be a tankette. There is a whole interesting series of vehicles tried out to meet the spec for an MG carrier, my favourite being the Burford Kegresse half track, and ending up with the MG Carrier Mk 1, leading on to Bren, Scout, Cavalry and Universal Carriers

[Arlequín]

I didn't check for gaps but it didn't jump out to me that there were any either. They were in series order, so each number or group of numbers ran on, rather than it being listed by vehicle types, followed by the numbers.

I imagine that once the experiment was completed/foreshortened with the DLI, that the tractors were passed to other unit(s), possibly to the support echelons of the 'Mixed Battalions' subsequently created, prior to delivery of actual MG carriers. Certainly when the two armoured car regiments changed posts, their vehicles were left behind and taken over by the incoming unit, who painted their own unit markings on them.

Certainly the Carden Loyds did the rounds, starting off in the Experimental Mechanised Force and its successors, before being used as proxy light tanks in the RTC and cavalry until real ones arrived. I seem reading that they were still being used as light tanks in 1937, before being retired finally in 1938.

So while we might get the impression they were numerous, they seem to just be the same few vehicles being passed around over a ten year period.

If anyone wants to look for themselves, the download link is: http://www.mafva.net/other%20pages/PRE48CENSUS[1].doc

It runs up to 1948, so there's something for everyone there, even VW's Burford-Kegress halftracks.

[Truscott Trotter]

All armies, even the U.S. were still mostly horse-powered in 1940, even Britain had a horse division left until 1941, despite its apparent 'total mechanisation'.

Apart from the Soviets 

[Arlequín]

  The Soviets utilised 3.5 million horses in their Army in 1940, about 60% of their national stock.

They had a complete cavalry army corps, besides other cavalry units, horse-mobile artillery and logistics units.