MOTORISED ARMY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 128, 13 March 1939, Page 8

MOTORISED ARMY

BRITISH MANOEUVRES. NEW TANKS APPEAR. LONDON, March 2. Britain’s now mechanised army is concentrated at Aldershot for manoeuvres and will move northward to attack Yorkshire. The plan is designed to represent the spearhead of an expeditionary force such as that which would first he sent to the Continent. ] In the contingent are 60,000 regulars and some territorials operating under wartime conditions. .By this means the High Command will gain practice in the general mobilisation, not only of troops, hut also of machine-guns, tanks and searchlight units. Interest is attached to the motorised divisions, and also to thousands of armoured transport vehicles on trunk highways, some of which are being tested for the first time. It will be an army on wheels and the largest ever employed in British manoeuvres. New light assault tanks which have been designed to crush hostile machinegun nests, and the newest heavy tanks, “land battleships,” will take part. Meanwhile, Bren guns have been issued in sufficient numbers to the regulars to be used in the rifle competitions for the Bisley championship. The Air Force is already exercising, the manoeuvres being on a war-time scale. 1 The “Daily Telegraph” military correspondent Group-Captain Payne, analysing the Anglo-French air forces says: “The Government has already extended the plan under which 3500 first line aeroplanes were to be completed and manned in 1940.” Captain Payne continues . - that in 1938 the monthly production of warplanes was estimated at:— Germany 300, Britain 250, Italy 200, and FranceSO. Britain and France have since more than doubled this rate. , France has inaugurated a new production drive to make 2500 .first-line aeroplanes in 1940. An additional 1000, it is rumoured, are being bought from the United States. The growth of the French industry can be gauged from the fact that the aircraft industry’s plant and machinery, which was valued at £2,500,000. in 1936, will represent an outlay of £11,000,000 in 1946,