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THE
PRICE OF SECRECY
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Canal Defence Light, or CDL, was one of the best-kept
secrets of the Second World War but like all secrets it
spawned innumerable legends, many of which are with us today.
And the trouble with legends is that they won't go away,
indeed if they hang around long enough they become accepted
facts.
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Even so the purpose
of this piece is not to demolish legends but to look at another
unfortunate result of excessive secrecy; unfortunate at least
to historians. By an odd quirk of fate the only CDL tank to
survive is a Matilda which is displayed in the Tank
Museum. Yet if one were to rely on surviving records - &
particularly photographs - for evidence, the existence of
the Matilda CDL would be doubtful. The attached drawing,
from an official (and highly secret) report and despite the
fact that the artist got the proportions all wrong, is virtually
all the visual evidence that there is. |
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The best known CDL
tank, the type used operationally in Europe and India, was
the Grant. Plenty of photographs have survived but
not an example of the real tank.
Most mysterious of all, however, is the Churchill CDL.
Surviving documentary evidence is limited to a stowage diagram
and a chapter in Douglas Sutherland's book Sutherland's
War (Leo Cooper 1983). Sutherland served as a tank commander
in 152 Regiment RAC and the book includes a sketch
of a Churchill CDL inadvertently illuminating the Prime
Minister at an awkward moment. |
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Photographs of Churchill or
Matilda CDL would be of considerable interest if any
are known, as would any information at all on the use of
CDL turrets on landing craft, as shown below.
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To view previous
article(s) in this series, click here
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