The Mechanical Warfare Supply Department was now responsible for Tank production, and they had the task of arranging for the building of the 1000 Tanks which had been sanctioned on September 29.
In November the M.W.S. Department made an unofficial forecast of the probable rate of production. This forecast they confirmed officially on February 1.
The total output of Tanks was to be roughly as follows:
| 1917 | |
| January | 50 |
| February | 50 |
| March | 120 |
| April | 120 |
| May | 140 |
| June | 200 |
| July | 240 |
| August | 260 |
| September | 280 |
Of these, after March at least eighty per month were to be of the Mark IV. type, of which, with the Mark IV.a, there was to be a total of over 1000.
In August or September, a proportion of the output was to be of the greatly improved Mark V. type. Actually at the end of March only sixty Tanks could be scraped together for the Battle of Arras, and most of these were machines that had been repaired after the Somme.
Not a single Mark IV. machine arrived in France until April 22, after the Battle of Arras had been fought and won, and no Mark V. machines until March 23, 1918. The entire programme was, in short, many months late.
The M.W.S.D. were, however, not altogether blameable for the occasionally somewhat astonishing discrepancy between their promises and performance.
It is, in fact, related for the defence that even the airy promises had their purpose—that the very discrepancies which the Fighting Side viewed aghast were deliberately created by the wily M.W.S.D. as bogies with which to scare supine manufacturers or reluctant Government Departments.
“What!” the M.W.S.D. would say. “You can’t do better than that! But look what we’ve actually promised! And just see what sort of names our partners the Fighting Side are calling us already! You must do better.” A duly enraged Fighting Side must have made an unsurpassable Jorkins.