Valentine was a British infantry tank of the Second World War. The first prototypes were built in 1940, and serial production was carried out in 1940-1944. In total, about 8,300 copies of this tank of all versions were built, which makes it one of the most produced British tanks during the Second World War. Valentine was powered - depending on the version - or an engine AEC A 190 with power or the GMC 6004 engine with 130 to 210 HP. The armament of the vehicle is - depending on the version - a single 40 mm, 57 mm or 75 mm cannon and two 7.92 and 7.7 mm machine guns.
The Valentine tank is based on the Cruiser Mk. II (A10) and due to the huge losses in equipment suffered by the British army in the French campaign in 1940, it was quickly put into mass production. The Valentine had relatively weak armor, a lot of weight, but it made up for this with decent mobility, a very low failure rate and a good upgrade potential. It was also cheap to produce, which additionally determined its production until 1944. A dozen or so versions of this tank were made in the course of serial production. One of the first, widely produced, was the Valentine Mk. III, which had a larger turret than the previous versions, which increased the crew from 3 to 4 people. Another important variation was the Valentine Mk. VIII with the 57mm 6-pounder ROQF cannon, instead of the 40mm gun. The last mass-produced version was the Valentine Mk. The XI, which featured a 75mm ROQF cannon and was most often used as a command tank. Valentine tanks were sent to the USSR under the Lend-and-Lease program, and they were also used by the Canadian army and the Polish Armed Forces in the West (PES).
At the outbreak of World War II, the British Army had only two Armored Division: the Mobile Division and the Egyptian Mobile Division. In 1939-1940 they were transformed into the 1st and 7th Panzer Divisions. In the course of the war, another 9 armored divisions were formed, but not all of them entered action, and some of them did not go beyond the stage of formation and training. In 1940, the position of the British armored division envisaged two tank brigades, which included after a motorized infantry battalion, as well as numerous support units, including anti-tank artillery, field artillery, relatively numerous repair and transport units and sapper units. The division formed in this way consisted of about 220 tanks of various types. However, in 1944, the structure of the British armored division changed based on the experience of the fighting in North Africa and Normandy. The post from 1944 provided for the deployment of one armored brigade with three armored regiments of 78 tanks each ((total - 234 tanks), a motorized (de facto mechanized) infantry brigade with three battalions and relatively strong field artillery and support units - between It is worth adding that in the declining period of World War II, the British Armored Divisions were mainly equipped with Sherman tanks (also in the Firefly version), A34 Comet or the light M5 Stuart.