7th Armoured Division (United Kingdom) had fallen foul of his superiors. The division was meant to be equipped with 220 tanks. However, at the outbreak of the Second World War, in September 1939, the 'Mobile Force' only had 65. Most of the unit's troops had already been deployed for two years by 1940 and it took as long as three months for mail to arrive. On 16 February 1940, the Mobile Division, which had changed names during the middle of 1939 to be called the Armoured Division, became the 7th Armoured Division. After the Italian declaration of war, the Western Desert Force, under the command
1st Armoured Division (Poland) and then France in 1940, the remaining Poles that had fought in both campaigns retreated with the British Army to the United Kingdom. Stationed in Scotland the Polish 1st Armoured Division was formed as part of the Polish I Corps under Wladyslaw Sikorski, which guarded approximately 200 kilometres of British coast in 1940-1941. The commander of the Division, General Stanislaw Maczek, was Poland’s premier mechanized commander, and many of his subordinate officers from the unit he commanded in 1939, the 10th Mechanized Brigade, had made their way to Britain with him. They were organized on the British Armoured Division model,