THE BIGGEST BLUNDER OF THE WAR.

Tens of thousands of men were killed who might never have been... battles lost when they could have been won .....Scores of towns were needlessly bombed to destruction..
Sentences like that were repeated time and again last week as some of Britains greatest military experts helped me to piece together the facts about what many of them now know to have been the greatest tactical blunder of the war.
In telling this almost unbelievable story I am doing more than recording the history of past blunders and miscalulations. I am convinced I am drawing attention to a great danger for the future.
The facts are these.
Britain posseses a secret weapon which many experts consider more important In its way than the atom-bomb. Yet, although millions of pounds were spent on it, and although It was ready for use by 1942, it was never used in the way it was intended in the last war.
Worse still: The War Office have announced that it is not likely to be used by this country in any future war, the official statement to me ran: we are keeping the technique alive for demonstration purposes, but weapon would not be used in any major engagement.
Which mean. to me that there was nothing to stop Mr Marcel Mitzakis the man who spent many years perfecting this war winning weapon, from selling the secret to the Russian!
At least I can put that fear at rest. MR Mitzakis,vho is British and an ex-army officer will do nothing of the kind.
To the inexpert in waging wars, this secret weapon may not look so brilliantly original or particularly menacing.
It is nothing more than a tank with a special light built into it.
But a few dozen of these tanks could throw on to a battlefield a dazzling light that would turn night into day.
In face of it an opposing army would be thrown hopelessly into rout. The eyes of its soldiers would be useless. The intensity of the beams that flicker would make it on the opproaching army.
And so skillfully is the light projected that no machine gun fire could penetrate the source of the light, which is protected from the bowels of the tank through a narrow slit in the armour.
There is not an anti-tank gunner who could find that slit against the tremendous flickering dazzle that would confront him by this secret weapon in action.
All this Britain had in the war and yet never once was this astonishing machine sent into action.
You may feel that there may have been good reasons unrevealed to me and the inventor why it was not used, if that is your view, listen to the emphatic opinion given to me by Lieut-General Sir Gifford Martel, who for a long period of the war, was Chief of all the tank forces in the British army.
It was a great misfortune that the tanks were never properly used.
In North Africa we could have cleaned up with them, and against the German defences in Normandy we could have broken through with a tenth of the casualities that we suffered at Caen.

"We had a weapon that would have enabled us to occupy the whole of Germany before the Russians got there, We did'nt use it - and you can see the results today.

This deplorable story of the secret weapon that was thrown away is told in chapter after chapter of muddle and vacillation.
Marcel Mitzakis whose parents were Greek, conceived the idea from a British naval officer named De Thoren. The pair offered it to the War Office as long ago as 1933.
It was turned down, but Mitzakis pressed on, even after De Thoren died, he offered it again to the War-Office, and this time not only was it rejected but he was given permission to sell his invention to France.
It was not until British observers at which the French Government arranged saw how successful the tank was that our War Office woke up. They changed their minds and invited Mitzakis back to London for talks, that was in 1937.

HUSH HUSH
But still nothing happened-- until the war started, then every resource that the War-Office and ministry of supply could muster was put at Mr Mitzakis disposal to produce the tank.
A secret training school was started at Lovther Castle ancestral home of the Earls of Lonsdale, workshops were set up and laboratories as well.
Quickly the tanks were produced and the code name CDL was given to them, it stood for Canal Defence Light, and it was supposed to hoax the enemy into thinking it was something to do with the Suez canal.
From that moment, CDL became the most secret letters in Britain, and the CDL school the most hush-hush military organisation.
But, although fully equipped searchlight tanks became available from 1942 onwards, not one wasever used in either Africa or Italy! Eventually it was made known that they were being saved for a special Purpose, ---- for a surprise attack soon after D-day.

By April 1944 a few weeks before D-day, 600 searchlight tanks were ready and waiting.
D-day came and went. While the British and Canadian Armies were pouring out their blood against the Caen and Orne defences in daylight the men trained to use the secret weapon that could have shattered the morale of the Nazis by night were kicking their heels in Britain.
One Brigade was taken to France in July 1944, It was allowed to stanidly by while the German 7th army slipped out by night through the Falaise Gap.
Eventually all the CDL regiments were disbanded. They had never fired a shot or shone a light in battle, although some of them were used to help to cross the Rhine, they were simply used as searchlights. When te war against Germany was won there was still one man who knew about the CDL tank and had faith in it--Lord Louis Mountbatton in the far east.
Urgently he asked for some of the tanks to be sent to him. By the time they arrived the war with Japan was over too!
The knowledge that his fourteen years of research had been wasted came as a shock for Mr Mitzakis, but hi. friends in high military circles thought at least he would be given monetary compensation since the country had spent almost 20 million pounds on his invention.
In fact he and his associates were awarded £20,000--- which was almost exactly the amount they had spent in developing the secret weapon in the days when the War office were not interested.

Why was the CDL tank not used ? it is impossible to give a final answer, but I will quote the views of Mr Mitzakis,''it was because" he says the secrecy about the tank was carried to such absurd lengths that even the Generals who should have used it did'nt know what the bank could do!
It is a story so appalling that there are many senior officers in the British army who contend to this Late stage a full scale enquiry should be set up to find who was really responsible for the blunder.
In no other way, they say, can Britain be sure that another brilliant war--winning weapon will not be thrown away should conflict come again.
The intensity of the beam was 13,000,000 candle power, and even at one thousand yards or nine hundred metres the beam was sufficient to cause temporary blindness, it was immpossible to aim a gun at the source of the light, with six tanks abreast and all lights on the infantry could walk in the triangle of darkness and not beseen by the enemy and that was a good five hundred yards in front of the tanks so they could pick the enemy off like mesmerised rabbits

The tank was also equipped with a 75. millimetre canon which were semiautomatic and these gave added power to the infantry it was quite a lethal combination.

When the Regiment was disbanded as a CDL regt it was swiftly reformed into an armoured troop carrier regt with the name Kangaroos, which in the words of a Canadian officer, never since the substitution of the musket for the cross-bow there has never been no development in infantry equipment comparable to the arrival of the Kangaroo.
The perfect battle was fought at Blerick in Holland where no infantryman walked into action they were taken in on kangaroos, using flails, bridging tanks to get them right on to their objective with very minor losses after crossing a mile wide minefield and anti-tank ditches, from that day on they were in big demand to take part in every operation, unfortunately there were only two regiments of us, one was Canadian.