Peter Beale - Fallen Sentinel - Australian Tanks in World War II

Street’s death may have been part of the reason for the slow progress made in producing tanks and forming the armoured division in the second half of 1940. During July and August, cablegrams passed between the Department of the Army and the Military Liaison Officer, London, on the type of tank to be manufactured. One factor in preparing a specification for the tank was the quality and weight of armour plate that could be made in Australia.

The design of any piece of military equipment requires consultation with a variety of stakeholders. The needs of the user are paramount, but these must be tempered by the manufacturing facilities available, the skills of the workforce, and the provision of materials and components. The various parties must jointly contribute their views and expertise to arrive at integrated solutions to the problems of the production of military materiel.

In July and August, the Munitions Department was confident that tank production could be successfully undertaken, and was eager to proceed, but felt that closer contact with the Army was required, particularly in the initial stages of the project. As a result, a joint committee was formed in September 1940 which was to be primarily concerned with specifications and preliminary planning for the supply of materials, the use of substitutes and certain problems of production. 58

War Office advice as a result of the campaign in Belgium and France indicated that inadequately armoured tanks were considered death traps and they issued a revised and detailed general staff specification early in December 1940 which provided for armour of at least 50mm in thickness. 59Shortly before the War Office specification was issued, the Australian General Staff released a memorandum on the proposed Australian cruiser tank. This memorandum, dated 11 November 1940, is more a philosophical statement than a specification, but is important as an indication of what the Army wanted in a tank. An extract from the memorandum reads:

Tanks are required to operate in and disrupt the organisation of hostile rear areas, thus virtually isolating the troops in forward areas and severely reducing their powers of resistance. In order to achieve this object tanks may be forced to break through a defensive area which has been organised and prepared to meet such an eventuality. Whether this is necessary or not, it has become inevitable in modern war that deep penetration by armoured forces will be met, and counter-attacked, by the armoured forces of the defending army.

For their operations in rear areas, the attacking tanks must be prepared to engage unarmoured troops who may defend themselves with obstacles and anti-tank weapons. The tank must therefore possess considerable immunity from the fire of anti-tank weapons and from field artillery which is prepared to engage tanks in the vicinity. This partial immunity is achieved by a combination of speed and armour. The natural development, greatly accelerated since the outbreak of war, has been to increase the hitting power of anti-tank weapons, including those carried on tanks. This necessitates an increase in armour provided no reduction in performance is entailed; otherwise the slower moving vehicles will be outmanoeuvred in tank-versus-tank actions.

The tank must carry a weapon with which to engage hostile tanks and also weapons of the anti-personnel type. Thinly armoured tanks can receive their coup-de-grace so easily from those better protected that the whole basis of their tactics is destroyed. The pre-war concept of fast, lightly armoured tanks for reconnaissance has not withstood the rapid development of tank and anti-tank weapons. 60

Expert practical advice was required to design the Australian cruiser and the services of Colonel W.D. Watson, OBE, MC, Vice-President of the UK Mechanisation Board, were provided to the Australian Army in September. 61Watson came via the USA, where he met Mr A. Chamberlain, an Australian ordnance production engineer who had been sent to the USA to collect information on tank production. Together they talked to the American experts on tank design before Watson left for Australia, finally arriving in December. Prior to his arrival, the Director-General of Munitions reported that ‘after negotiations with the Army Chief Staff officers it now appears possible to lay out a program and create facilities for the design and production of tanks.’ 62The timing was fortuitous.

By early November, the armoured division had gained support from at least two prominent military men. According to Hopkins,

Early in November the CGS, Lt-Gen Sturdee, saw me when I was in Melbourne. Sturdee spoke of Cabinet’s concern over our lack of armoured forces, and said that they wanted to know how long it would take to raise an armoured division. I told him it would take about six months from Cabinet approval until the first armoured units came into being, and the others would be formed progressively after that. 63

At this point, Hopkins must have prepared a proposal with commendable dispatch, although the project to raise an armoured division had been entrenched in his mind for some time. He wrote a paper, ‘Formation of an armoured division’, in which he advanced a plan for creating the division, procuring the equipment, and recruiting and training the personnel. 64It is curious that he makes no reference to or acknowledgement of the proposal in Agendum 150/1940. Hopkins wrote:

A week later Sturdee told me that the project would go ahead as I had suggested, and I was to be appointed Deputy Director of Staff Duties (AFVs) at Army Headquarters. I was also given direct access to the Deputy CGS, Major-General Northcott, this making the AFV section more or less independent within the General Staff.

On 15 November, General Thomas Blamey, having heard Sturdee’s opinion that the AIF required a maximum strength of four infantry divisions, wrote from the Middle East to Menzies offering his opinion on the composition of the AIF:

I would stress that four divisions do not by any means represent Australia’s maximum. I would urge that consideration be given to building this force up by the addition of at least two armoured divisions as soon as practicable. We have stuck to the infantry divisions probably because the AIF of the last war was composed of infantry divisions. Is it not the effect of looking backward? Surely it is time for a little forward thinking! 65

The views of these two powerful advocates of the armoured division were reinforced by a proposal to the Military Board by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff (DCGS), Major General Northcott, on 27 November 1940. The proposal, ‘Formation of an Armoured Division, AIF – Provision and training of personnel’ reads in part:

This proposal is for the formation of an Armoured Corps Training Organisation and the recruitment and training of personnel for armoured formations.

The Military Board has already represented the importance and urgency of this measure (War Cabinet Agendum 150/1940). Progress has been delayed for technical reasons, but these are now clarifying. It is therefore considered that immediate steps should be taken to raise and train personnel so that they are ready to receive AFVs when production commences. This project should be given first priority.

In summary, the Board recommends that:

• an Australian Armoured Corps be constituted

• the armoured portion of an armoured division be recruited and trained