‘Firing armour piercing rounds the gun was said to be able to
penetrate 11mm of armour at 100 yards’
the two-man machines that came after it.
A3E1 appears to have been the fi rst and last
tank to have been designed and built by Royal
Ordnance between the end of World War One
and the appearance of their Medium tank A7E1
in 1928.
They built tanks of course to other people’s
designs, mostly Vickers-Armstrongs but as far
as design was concerned, they seem to have
been limited to turrets and gun mountings
which might be said to be their specialties.
Evidently the War Offi ce preferred Vickers-
Armstrongs’ designs over those of Royal
Ordnance and this clearly rankled with certain
senior personnel at the latter. This was given
voice by Maj George MacLeod Ross in his bookThe Business of Tanks published in 1976.
MacLeod Ross, who was a Royal Engineer
had been appointed assistant superintendent
of design in 1933. He joined Col E M Campbell
Clarke, a Royal Artillery offi cer, the deputy
superintendent of design who, in 1938 was
promoted to vice-president of the Ordnance
Board. MacLeod Ross was a devoted disciple
of Clarke, as he makes clear in his book. Clarke
was credited with the design of the 25-pounder
gun and the range of British anti-tank guns. No
mean achievement, even for a gunner although
his record on tanks such as A7E1 to A7E3, the
Light Tank L4E1 and the Morris armoured car
did not redound to his credit.
Meanwhile Vickers-Armstrongs, under the
direction of their head of tank design Sir John
Carden had gone ahead, in its customary
fashion, with the design of a new three-man
light tank, based upon accumulated experience.
First, it produced two prototypes, designated
L3E1 and L3E2, both of which went to MWEE
for testing. The former carried a much larger
turret, topped off by what was known in
those days as a Bishop’s Mitre cupola for the
commander and armed with a pair of machine-
guns in a dual mounting; Vickers water-cooled
weapons of .303in inch and .5in side by side
and therefore co-axial although it seems thatA Light Mark V in service with 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers, notice the smoke grenade discharger on the turret side
and the wireless aerial on the folding mount at the back