In Britain prior to 1936 the Master General
of the Ordnance was the supreme authority responsible for tank design and
procurement. Under him the Director of Mechanisation supervised actual design
work in conjunction with the Mechanisation Board, which was a committee made up
of senior representatives of the "user" arms. By the outbreak of war
in 1939, the Master General of the Ordnance had become the Director General of
Munitions Production and all designs and procurement responsibilities were
transferred from the War Office to the newly-established Ministry of Supply.
Overall tank design responsibility then came under the Director-General of
Tanks and Transport with, in 1940, a Controller of Mechanisation supervising
the Director of Mechanisation, who worked with the Mechanisation Board as
before. In May 1940, following British reverses in the French campaign, a new
War Cabinet was formed under Winston Churchill, who approved the setting up of
a Tank Board to examine faults in the existing design and procurement system
and to advise on improvements. They proposed a Director of Armoured Fighting
Vehicles (DAFV) to represent the War Office (General Staff) interest, with
separate Directors of Design and Production, all under the Director-General of
Tanks and Transport, who took the place of the old Director of Mechanisation.
Early in 1941 the Tank Board was
reorganised and given executive powers to expedite War Office requirements in
matters affecting tanks. Included on the board were the Director-General of
Tanks and Transport and the Director of Artillery (for tank gun, anti-tank gun,
ammunition, and SP equipment matters), plus DAFV and General Staff
representatives. In September 1942 a Chairman, Armoured Fighting Vehicles
Division, was appointed, who also became chairman of the Tank Board and was the
chief executive responsible for tank design in the Ministry of Supply. The Tank
Board was also reconstituted to contain equal representation from the Ministry
of Supply and the War Office (who represented the "users"). This
general organisation remained in force until the end of the war.
British
design authorities
On the design side itself, however, there
were several important changes largely due to the vast industrial participation
in tank production, which had increased dramatically since the outbreak of the
war. Such vehicles as the Churchill and Valentine, for example, were designed
mainly by the firms which built them, with only relatively minor help from the
Department of Tank Design, the organisation, which, following the 1940 reforms,
carried out actual design work under the Director-General of Tanks and
Transport. In late 1941 the Department of Tank Design was placed under the
Controller General of Research and Development, and as the war progressed the
department changed its function from designing proper to co-ordination of
design and production facilities. In other words, instead of actually designing
a vehicle itself, the Department of Tank Design passed requirements to one of
the tank producers and approved (and if necessary improved) the design the
producers drew up. The old "drawing board" orders, which had
generally resulted in tanks (like the Churchill and Covenanter) with a
formidable record of "teething troubles", became a thing of the past.
Under the new organisation at least six pilot models were generally built.
Similarly, a proper "design parentage" organisation was built up
whereby one particular company took full charge of design and production of one
particular vehicle and supervised all necessary subcontract work for the
vehicle in question. The Churchill (Vauxhall) and Valentine (Vickers) in 1940
set this pattern, subsequently adopted with all later British tanks, and the
Department of Tank Design did not itself design a complete tank again until
1944-45, when it was responsible for the Centurion. By 1945 the Department had
become very influential indeed and, in the circumstances, left a most
creditable wartime record in the face of continually fluctuating War Office (ie
“user") requirements, frequent friction between War Office and Ministry of
Supply, and a good deal of War Office conservatism.
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