19th January 1936, Mechanisation Committee, War Office
The committee hadn't originally intended to meet so early in the year, but the issues over Italy in Africa had meant an urgent response for the idea of getting armour reinforcements to Egypt had pushed things forward. They also had a report from Vickers about the ongoing design of future tanks to consider.
The most urgent issue was Egypt. As the tank men had pointed out before, while there were tanks available in the UK that could be redeployed, that was all there was - the Army wasn't well equipped. What made that problem worse was that many of the tanks were old, and while maintaining them in the UK, and making them available for training and exercises was one thing, sending them out to the desert and keeping them going there - with very little in the way of maintenance facilities - was a nightmare that would likely result in inoperable and immobile tanks scattered all over Western Egypt rather than a fast, deadly mobile force.
While that wasn't what the senior officers wanted to hear, the tank men were quite adamant about the problem. Certainly they could send them out as a deterrent, but it would be a paper force, and it would also severely limit training in the Home command. Their preference was one of the Vickers suggestions for modifying their light tanks. From a support point of view, this was much easier to handle. They already had support available, and they were familiar with operating them in various parts of the world. The light tanks available were far less worn out than their mediums, and Vickers were already building more for an existing order.
After considerable discussion, the committee decided on a course of action. Vickers would modify some of the Army's existing light tanks, and some of the new ones under construction, to take the COW gun. They'd looked at the issue of the space in the turret the new gun would need, and while not ideal it was felt to be adequate. This would have the advantage of being a fast modification. Vickers had also said that if they got the order now, they could build either a version of their Mk VI with a turret modified to take either the current 3pdr or the new 2pdr guns, or build some of their 6-ton tank with the same armament choices.
The armament decision came down, after some argument, on the existing 3pdr. This was available immediately, and the men were familiar with it. It would be better to use the first production run of the 2pdr to supply the infantry, who lacked any real defence against even light tanks. The Army had never ordered the 6-ton tank, but it had sold well abroad, and Vickers had noted in their report that issues raised initially by the Army had been solved or proven to be not critical. They could build 24 of these this year, again assuming a quick decision on the order. On paper, the tank men admitted this would be a better tank for the role envisaged, although it would mean supporting a different tank. Vickers had one available that they could use for familiarisation and training, which would help matters. Given the time constraints, they recommended to ask for immediate funding for 24 of these tanks, as well as money to do the conversions to the COW gun.
While no-one felt that this would actually solve the Italian problem, at least the failure of the diplomatic moves after the revelations before Christmas had made some sort of military reinforcement more acceptable to the Treasury. Fortunately it did seem that the difficulty of actually conquering Ethiopia - something the Foreign Office had assumed would be simple, a different view to that taken by some of the Army people who'd actually seen the country - meant that it was unlikely anything would threaten Egypt in the immediate future, and the French had made some noises about providing help, or at least making sure the Italians had to keep an eye on their own Western frontier. Still, getting some extra funding from the Treasury was never to be ignored. There was also the issue of improving the frontier defences, as well as infantry and air force reinforcements, but these were questions for a different meeting. What the tank men did point out - quite firmly- was that this proved the need for a new medium tank to be quite urgent.
