File:Cruiser MkIII ‘T9143’ “Agility” (really T4425) (35738632034).jpg

Official designation:- Tank, Cruiser Mark III, A13 Mark I. British serial T4425. British cruiser tank of which sixty five saw service between 1938 and 1941. It was the first cruiser tank to use the Christie suspension system. This example was built in 1939 by Nuffield Mechanisation & Aero Ltd and was used for development of the improved turret armour for the Cruiser IV. It retains this revised turret which is why at first glance it looks like a Cruiser IV. It is painted to represent a standard Cruiser III ‘T9143’ named “Agility” of the 10th Royal Hussars, 1st Armoured Division, in France during June 1940. On display in the Tank Story Hall at The Tank Museum, Bovington, Dorset, UK. 26th July 2016

The following info is from the excellent Tank Museum website:-

“In September 1936, a British Military Mission visited the Soviet Army’s manoeuvres with BT7 medium tanks. The Soviets had evolved all BT tanks from a single Christie M1930 that they had imported from a private American supplier - Walter Christie, of New Jersey.

Colonel Giffard Le Quesne Martel (the Deputy Director of Mechanisation) judged that Soviet supplies to Britain would be impossible, so escalated to the War Office a requirement for import of a Christie tank, while he met with William R. Morris (Lord Nuffield), a car manufacturer. In October 1936, the War Office financed Morris’ import of Christie’s last M1930. The turret-less hull arrived in Britain on 17 November 1936, and was delivered to the Mechanization Experimental Establishment at Farnborough for preliminary trials, where it was designated A13E1. The Mechanization Board resolved to design a superior derivative. By a contract dated in November 1936, the Mechanization Board passed the M1930/A13E1 to Morris Commercial Cars, which purchased the intellectual property rights.

Meanwhile, on 16 November 1936, Martel ordered the Superintendent of Design to produce for A13E1 a mock-up of a turret that it had designed for a prospective infantry tank (A12; later Matilda II). This turret accommodated 3 men, a 40mm 2-pounder gun, coaxial Vickers 7.7 mm machine-gun, and a 60 mm armour basis.

Unhelpfully, in February 1937, Martel was allowed to write loose specifications for medium tanks, including armour no thicker than 14 mm, and a gun no larger than the two-pounder gun. Consequently, the Mechanization Board and Morris developed the M1930 unambitiously and hurriedly (around one year later) into A13E2, which was larger and faster than alternative projects, but no more lethal or survivable. The turret, although starting off as an evolution of the A12’s, was more like the turret on A9 (Cruiser I – see E1949.352).

On 23 December 1937, the General Staff agreed to order at least 50 Cruiser IIIs in January 1938 to equip one of the three tank battalions in the Tank Brigade. On 22 January 1938, the War Office contracted for 65 Cruiser IIIs, after which production would switch to a version with better protection (A13 Mark IIs; Cruiser IVs).

Effective 1 January 1938, Morris Commercial Cars spun off a subsidiary (Nuffield Mechanisations & Aero Limited), next door to Wolseley Motors Limited at Ward End in Birmingham. In December 1938, eleven months after the contract, Nuffield delivered the first production Cruiser III for running trials, although without armaments. Once complete, it was issued to the army on 20 March 1939. By the start of the Second World War on 3 September, 43 Cruiser IIIs had been delivered. Production ended on 13 November 1939, after 65 deliveries (67, counting the pilot tanks).

In June 1940, 40 of these landed in France with 1st Armoured Division, where most of them stayed when the personnel were evacuated. A few served in North Africa into 1941.