NUMBER OF LAND FORCES. (Hansard, 8 March 1932)

§ Lord APSLEY

I have no wish unduly to increase the work of the War Office by lengthening the Debate, in spite of the fact that before the Great War and during the South African War, according to the OFFICIAL REPORT, the Debates were prolonged to a very late hour. There is one matter to which I 1770 should like to refer. Page 34, on Vote A, states that in 1928 two cavalry regiments, one at home and one in Egypt, were selected for conversion into cavalry armoured car regiments. I have looked up the establishment, and I find that they consist of 438 and 422 respectively. I understand that they are organised on an establishment of three squadrons, each squadron consisting of three troops, each with five cars, that is, four cars and one car for the troop commander. On page 40, Vote A, there is a reference to armoured cars in the Tank Corps. It says: There is a depot at Woolwich, forming part of the Royal Tank Corps centre, where recruits are trained. The period of training is 35 weeks. Drafts for the armoured car companies abroad are found from Tank battalions, and are given special training in armoured car work before going oversea. On looking at the establishment of those armoured car companies in the Royal Tank Corps, I find that they consist of 190 all ranks, and that there are two of them, both in Egypt, but one is only temporarily there. Their establishment is four sections of four cars each. It seems to me that there is a great deal of duplication in this organisation. On going further into it, one finds that it works out in a more complicated manner still, because the Royal Air Force have armoured cars in Iraq, and I understand that the Navy have them also. Yet no proper text-book of training for armoured cars is got out by the War Office from which one can get instructions. It brings still more complicated issues in regard to the Territorial units, because some of them get their cars from one branch of the Army and some get them from other branches.

With regard to the Royal Tank Corps and the armoured cars under their jurisdiction, I would, with all due respect, point out that it must be, and is, very difficult for the Royal Tank Corps to administer and train armoured car companies, 'because it is completely foreign to their work. The Tank Corps is a tactical unit pure and simple. They have one mission only and that is to gain a specific tactical advantage and position. They have their objective, they are given it, and they have to take it, and to do it they must have two things—careful ground of reconnaissance and the element of surprise. They are simply a modern 1771 reproduction of an arm that has existed in all ages, from the time of Hannibal's elephants, the chariots of Alexander the Great, the medieval knights, and the contact squadrons of Napoleon.

It does not matter which you take, their mission is the same. If you put a tank corps on a special mission by themselves they will suffer the same fate as Goliath suffered at the hands of David. The Windmill Hill periodically sees Members of this House and Dominion Prime Ministers, sometimes the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), and it may be King Amanullah, watching tanks perform marvellous evolutions in which they carry all before them; but any driver in the Tank Corps will tell you that they can only do that after very careful preparation of the ground and very careful rehearsing, and even after that some of them get into trouble. Once you get tanks away from a reconnoitred ground they get into trouble at once.

Reconnaissance and strategic work have nothing to do with the Tank Corps at all; there is nothing complementary in the work of a tank battalion and an armoured car company. I suggest that this matter might be straightened out. The establishment of a company with four sections of four cars is, as a matter of fact, quite hopeless for reconnaissance purposes. A car corps commander might have a car of his own, and a troop of five cars is the only possible unit for an officer to command in the field. Armoured cars are becoming more important, they are in1 fact performing the work which the contact squadrons used to perform in Napoleon's days, of keeping in touch with the enemy miles and miles away from communications. I believe that one newspaper discovered the fact that an armoured car actually won the War because it got behind the German lines quite by mistake and got a complete plan of the Hindenburg line. I hope the Financial Secretary will take this matter into consideration. There should be one organisation, one text book, That would, I am sure, redress the anomaly which exists and which is seriously hampering the training of this section of the Army at the moment.