For two years the EMF participated in exercises which demonstrated the capabilities of mechanised forces against traditionally organised and trained infantry and cavalry.

The weight of air attack had not been sufficient to overcome German resistance and the Tank Corps had still needed to pause until artillery caught up with the advance.

Basil Liddell Hart, a retired officer, journalist and writer on military theory, advocated mechanised forces of all arms, able to carry out operations of war other than the all-out offensive.

[6][a] Major Giffard LeQuesne Martel, at the Experimental Bridging Establishment, a former staff officer to Fuller, designed armoured vehicles as a sideline and proposed that tanks should be subordinated to infantry formations, while many cavalry officers maintained that the horse still had a part to play on a modern battlefield, despite the evidence of Western Front in the First World War.

The Cardwell Reforms of 1868–1874 had linked the metropolitan army battalions with those on overseas service but this tended to reduce British-based units to training and reinforcement cadres.

On day 3, Chetwode sent his tank battalion on a 30 mi (48 km) outflanking manoeuvre but his infantry divisions failed to pin down Godley's units which were easily able to retreat.

[10] The Secretary of State for War, Sir Laming Worthington-Evans announced in March 1926 the formation of an experimental all-arms force.

[11] Following vacillation by the War Office and pressure from Fuller and Lindsay, the Inspector of the Royal Tank Corps, Milne arranged for the formation of the Experimental Mechanized Force in May 1927.

[12] Milne was already inclined against the pure tank theorists and organised the force as a balanced, all-arms command, which amounted to a prototype armoured division, as far as resources allowed.

In what became known as the Tidworth Affair, Fuller turned down the appointment and resigned from the Army, because the War Office refused to allot extra staff to assist him.

Liddell Hart wrote an article in the 22 April edition of The Daily Telegraph alleging that the Army was reneging on its commitment to assemble an experimental force.

In spite of the claims by Trenchard to Milne, only the army co-operation squadrons took much notice of air support for ground forces.

[19] Eastland Force armoured car and tankette reconnaissance parties spotted the move but lacking wireless communication, sent a despatch rider whose motorcycle broke down.

The General Staff produced a training memorandum in early 1928 which criticised poor co-ordination in the EMF and its failure to organise sufficient fire support before attacks.

The RAF contingent proved to be of great value to motorised units blocked on roads and infantry pinned down by enemy fire; Collins was convinced of the value of low-level ground attack.

Sceptics at the War Office doubted the realism of the exercise but other soldiers were enthused by the prospect of a mobile form of military operation superseding trench warfare.

Bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and troop transports would participate; single-seat fighters would be of great value in pursuing a defeated enemy force.

The manual was intended to provide the framework for staff exercises and was a concise yet wide-ranging document which foreshadowed many of the features of armoured operations in the Second World War.

The tanks would exploit success by causing a collapse of the opponent's defences and cut supply lines, creating chaos in which mobile warfare leading to decisive results could occur.

[26] In late 1933, the new CIGS, Field Marshal Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, established permanently a Tank Brigade under the command of Percy Hobart.

In February 1934 Massingberd desired to include a tank brigade and a cavalry division, with mechanised transport and light vehicles for reconnaissance, in a Field Force for continental operations.

The exercises concentrated on the capacity of an opposing air force to obstruct the advance of British tanks, an important feature of defensive battle.

The brigade was to prepare for strategic or quasi-independent attacks on an enemy's organisation behind the front line, by exploiting weakness rather than confronting strengths.

The exercise required a long approach march from an assembly area and the crossing of a defended obstacle, the Kennet and Avon Canal.

The exercise was to begin at 2:00 a.m. on 19 September against the 1st Infantry Division (Major-General John Kennedy), which left only four hours of darkness, insufficient for the move to be completed before daybreak.

The raids would begin at dawn on the next day; Hobart rejected plan because it required the division of the Tank Brigade into mixed columns.

[30] The Mobile Force planned a wide flank move at night, around rather than through the enemy, then a daytime lay-up for maintenance, followed by the raids on day three.

[34] In 2014, John Plant wrote that the exercises in England had been unrealistic operations on Salisbury Plain or road-bound, with no obstructions from demolitions or anti-tank obstacles like minefields, broken bridges, rivers, defiles and ridges.

The section drew on the Kirke Report (1932) into the lessons of the Great War, which found that the static warfare of the Western Front had been caused by the firepower of modern weapons and the superiority of defensive methods.

[36] The General Staff had decided by the mid-30s that a horsed cavalry division would be useless in a continental war and that the importance of tank and other armoured formations could not be overestimated.