Valentine's Day today!

Nice pics all the same.

 

It's interesting that the factory at Smethick is producing both the Valentine and the Churchill tank and must have been a very busy place.

My late father worked for English Electric at Preston before joining the army and this factory (West Works) was producing Valentines, whilst the (East Works) was producing parts for the Hampden and then Halifax bombers, which were assembled at Samlesbury works and then flown off from the runway to operational squadrons.

Regards
Tom

 

It's the time to comemorate a great tank again, and the men who fought in them

 

Ohhhh, I missed the day! So here's another Valentine for all of you. A bunch of them actually.

 

Possibly not quite the right place but definitely the right day... tons of rivety loveliness

























All pictures from Vickers Works Photograph Album, reproduced with permission of Beamish Museum

 

Great minds think alike...
... and fools seldom differ.

I don't think these photographs have been publicly available before.

 

Ah, the only kind of Valentine that doesn't make me say "bah, humbug." I do like the 25 pdr one, looks like a big improvement on the Bishop.

 

Vintage Wargaming.

Do you have any photographs of the snake?

 

Fraid not - these are all the Valentine pics. There are a few Harry Hopkins and Alecto ones. I wasn't sure what to do with the small number of WW2 pics - all the others are on my interwar tank development blog

 

The big problem with the Bishop was the restricted elevation of the gun, leading to restricted range. I cannot see that the squat version could be better in this respect!

Chris

 

All Valentines should have been sent to Russia, basically it was a light tank at a time when light tanks had no business being on a battlefield. Particularly when their effectiveness against just about anything the Germans put up was zero so the job that they were supposed to do was not done. Which cost lives.

If the Archer had been created at the start then credit would be due then. Why it took so many years to work that out is just one of those things we don't talk about old chap. Cheers :P

 

In 1941-early 42 the Valentine was
1) In volume production in both Britain and Canada, and easier to produce than the somewhat more combat effective Matilda
2) Mechanically reliable, probably more so than any other contemporary British tank
3) Fairly comparable in armor and gunpower (if not speed) to the Panzer III with the 37 and short 50mm, the most numerous German tank in service at the time
4) Capable of carrying heavier armament, namely the 6 pdr due to appear shortly
5) Popular with the Soviets, who wanted more

Not ideal by any means and I'm no great admirer, but it had the above points in its favor. The Churchill was much better, but it had serious teething troubles and did not prove itself in the field until Tunisia. The Matilda was better protected than the Valentine, but it was less sound mechanically, the use of castings slowed down production, and the Matilda could not really be up-gunned. So I understand why the Valentine remained in production and service. Naturally you want something better, but until that something better is ready (improved Churchill) you go with what you've got.

And effectiveness was not 'precisely zero.' The 23rd Armd Bde played quite an important role supporting the infantry at Second Alamein, and they did as good a job as they could given the limits of the equipment. (See Perret's The Valentine in North Africa.) The infantry of XXX Corps certainly preferred the Valentines to no tank support at all, which was what they often got prior to that. Also, it was not a light tank in the British definition.

 

Hi all,

Reviving this thread because these really are lovely, lovely pictures.

Owen, I don't suppose you have a higher resolution image of the Archer interior? How did you get that vantage point?

The Tank Museum has one or two of these, such as the Valentine modified to carry a 6-pounder AT gun with gunshield - it appears with that credit in the 2nd "Armor PhotoHistory" about the Valentine by Dick Taylor. (Well worth getting if you feel inclined)