The Ram and Tank Production in Canada, 1939•Fi1945
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Canadian Military History Volume 11 Issue 1 Article 3 2002 “Not Competent to Produce Tanks”: The Ram and Tank Production in Canada, 1939–1945 Graham Broad University of Western Ontario Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Broad, Graham "“Not Competent to Produce Tanks”: The Ram and Tank Production in Canada, 1939–1945." Canadian Military History 11, 1 (2002) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Broad: “Not Competent to Produce Tanks”: The Ram and TankN Productionot competent in to produce tanks The Ram and Tank Production in Canada, 1939-1945 Graham Broad n September of 1926 the London D aily gun carriers, midget tanks that looked like ITelegraph published an article by Captain Sir bumper-cars in a midway ride.5 In 1939, Basil Liddell-Hart entitled "The Remaking of Germany alone had adequately prepared its Modem Armies” in which Hart, already one of armed forces for mobile warfare. Though only a Britain’s foremost military historians, fraction of Hitler's army was mechanized when proclaimed th at infantry’s day was done and that war erupted in September, the massed the ascendancy of armoured warfare was at formations of tanks that formed the core of the hand. The crux of his argument was that the W ehrmacht cut like a scythe across Europe. machine gun, mobile now by virtue of motorized gun carriers, had made the advance of If, as one historian has observed, “the unprotected troops across no-man’s-land individual soldier...was central to the impossible. Only massed formations of tanks. mythologized version” of the First World War Hart concluded, could breach enemy lines. In and, in society’s remembrance of it, "battles were Germany, France, the Soviet Union, and the won by men, not machines,”6 there can be no United States, military m en like Heinz Guderian, m istaking the fact th at the Second World War is Charles de Gaulle, M.N. Tukhachevsky. and remembered as a war of machines. It was a war George S. Patton had already arrived at the same fought with tens of thousands of tanks, planes, conclusion: the tank was the future of warfare, and guns; it was a war of materiel, fought in the redemption of mobility, the triumph of mind factories as well as on battlefields, a war, as one over m u d .1 general was later to remark, "for bulldozers.”7 It in no way belittles the sacrifice made by CWM CN CN CWM 13756 In Great Britain, however, the apostles of thousands of Canadian soldiers to acknowledge armoured warfare were sneered at in an army that all their exertions might have amounted to Ram Tank by George Douglas Pepper anxious to return to “proper soldiering, ” which little had the Allies not produced the im plem ents did not involve tinkering with expensive and of war at three or four times the rate of the Axis untried mechanical toys.2 The French plunged powers. Ultimately, the Allies won the Second most of their military energies into the fantasy World War because the Axis could not endure a of an impregnable line of fortifications. The protracted war against a coalition whose advocates of "deep warfare” in the Soviet Union economic resources were several times greater perished in the army purge, victims of Stalin's than its own. Against the high level of Caesar-like suspicion of men who think too professional competence of the German officer much.3 In the United States, isolationism, corps, the tremendous fighting qualities of the pacifism, and the Great Depression colluded to average German soldier, and the technological bring tank development to a halt, and only 35 superiority of the W ehrm acht's tanks, sheer tan k s were built in the 20 years after the end of weight of numbers was often the only advantage the First World War.4 Canada, a pygmy with a which Allied ground forces possessed.8 proud military heritage, weathered the pall and decay of armed forces in the 1920s and 1930s Canada’s contribution to the war of materiel worst of all. As late as 1938, the mainstay of was impressive. Nearly a million motor vehicles Canada's arm oured forces was a dozen machine- of all types rolled off the assembly lines of 24 © Canadian Military History, Volume 11, Number 1. Winter 2002. pp.24-36. 25 Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2002 1 Canadian Military History, Vol. 11 [2002], Iss. 1, Art. 3 military hardware, including tanks, in Canada.15 in a fixed position on the left side of the chassis, Moreover, the loss of virtually all of Britain’s making it difficult for the tank to maneuver into modem tanks in France meant that British tank firing position.21 production would be stretched to the limit to supply its owm forces. In the short term there These faults prom pted W orthington an d his would be no possibility of equipping the tiny engineering staff, working in consultation Canadian armoured divisions with British tanks. with the British Tank Mission in Washington, to Canada would have to build its owm.16 propose a modified Grant for Canadian production. The envisioned tank, to be called Such was the extent of the C anadian arm y's the Ram (the animal wms displayed on desperation for tanks of any kind that in the Worthington’s family crest). wrould retain the autum n of 1940 Colonel (later Major-General) Grant's chassis but mount its main gun on a Frank Worthington. Canada’s foremost advocate revolving turret rather than on the hull, giving of armoured warfare, arranged for the purchase the tan k a 360-degree range of fire. Furtherm ore, (for SI20 each) of 265 Renault tanks of 1917 it would have a much lower silhouette than the vintage from storage in the United States. Grant, thus exposing a smaller target to the Hopelessly obsolete, they nonetheless proved to enemy.22 The completed Ram was a five-man, be useful training vehicles.17 But the newly 30-ton medium tank, armed with a 6-pounder authorized 4th and 5th Canadian Armoured main gun and two .30-calibre machine guns. It Divisions needed 1,200 modern tanks between was reliable, quick, and maneuverable for its Photo by Nicholas Morant, NAC PA 176006 PA Morant, Nicholas NAC by Photo them. The Canadian Pacific Railway in Montreal size.23 The prototype was tested in July at the Valentine tanks being constructed at the Angus Shops in Montreal, 26 May 1942. received orders for light infantry-support tanks Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland called Valentines, but these w'ere earmarked for (significantly, six months before the United States entered the war) where test crew's Canada’s automotive industry, the fourth largest indeed the tank that replaced it, the M4 British use.18 Moreover. British tank doctrine in the world, during the six years of war. Canada Sherm an, was in m any respects obsolete as well, wras at last evolving, and Canadian doctrine considered it to be a much better tank than the produced more trucks than German, Italy, and b u t also and p erhaps predom inantly because of evolved with it. The light tanks on which the Grant. Worthington also believed that the design Japan combined, supplying half of the British the overarching importance that Canada’s British armoured forces were based had been of the M-4 Sherm an, successor to the Grant, was army’s motor transport.9 This explains why the military leadership attached to standardization next to useless in France: w hat the arm y required based in large part on the Ram prototype.24 British army was fully mechanized by 1942, on a North American basis. was a medium or “cruiser’’ tank which could while the German army was increasingly reliant roam independently of infantry in armoured ! on captured vehicles and hundreds of thousands On the outbreak of war in September 1939 spearheads of the kind which the Germans of horses.10 Canada's tank program was far the military gave no consideration to producing u se d .19 smaller, but a remarkable accomplishment tanks in C anada and the government agreed that With the automotive industry tied up in nonetheless. While Canada’s total production of its forces would be supplied with tanks of British orders for motorized transport and the CPR's 5,766 tanks and self-propelled guns was dwarfed manufacture.12 Not only did a report to the Angus Shops in Montreal producing Valentine by the nearly 62,000 produced in Germany, it British Ministry of Supply in March 1940 tanks, capacity for medium tanks had to be nonetheless exceeded the production totals of conclude that Canadian firms w'ere not created from scratch. The Montreal Locomotive the junior Axis partners, Italy and Japan, and competent to produce tanks,13 but Canadian that at a time when nearly the entire Canadian industry as a whole was also drastically Works rapidly constructed a huge new' tank arsenal, eight acres long, in order to build an automotive industry was converted to the underutilized for the first eight months of the American-designed medium tank, the M-3 production of motorized transport. war. Precious months, during which Canadian firms might have mobilized for war work, Grant, in Canada.20 From a manufacturing Moreover, while Canada's production of slipped by.