The British Army left enough equipment behind to equip about 9 divisions.
Discarded in France were field guns, anti-aircraft guns, about anti-tank guns, machine guns, nearly 700 tanks, 20,000 motorcycles, and 45,000 motor cars and lorries.
Army equipment available at home was only just sufficient to equip 2 divisions.
The British Army needed months to re-supply properly and some planned introductions of new equipment were halted while industrial resources concentrated on making good the losses.
Officers told troops falling back from Dunkirk to burn or otherwise disable their trucks so as not to let them benefit the advancing German forces.
The shortage of army vehicles after Dunkirk was so severe that the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was reduced to retrieving and refurbishing numbers of obsolete buses and coaches from British scrapyards to press them into use as troop transports.
http://www.vintag.es/2017/03/rarely-seen-color-photographs-of.html#more
Hi Jesse,
ReplyDeleteYou just showed exactly why the Battle of Britain was so important to us. If Hitler had invaded before we re-equipped we would have been sunk, but he couldn't do so until he had control of the channel by air and sea. It's been argued that the Royal Navy would have kept him at bay but fortunately we didn't have to find out.
As it was the battle was very close run (Goering after the war described it as a draw) and we only gained the upper hand for sure when Hitler concentrated the Luftwaffe's efforts on the blitz instead of destroying the RAF.
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed, by so many, to so few" Churchill.
Cheers
Tony