with an infantry company. The tanks were forced to withdraw from the position after several hours however, because they attracted artillery fire that caused the infantry to suffer heavy casualties. The Locust never saw active service with the British Army again and was classified as obsolete in 1946. A number of Locusts were used by foreign militaries in the post-war period however; the Belgian Army used Locusts as command tanks for their M4 Sherman tank regiments, and the Egyptian Army used several company-sized units of Locusts during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Development history Background The Light Tank (Airborne) M22, also known as the Locust, began development in late 1941 in response to a request by the British military earlier in the year for an airmobile light tank which could be transported onto a battlefield by glider. At the time the request was made, the War Office considered using the equipment in Britain's fledgling airborne forces, which had been formed in June 1940 by order of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. When officials at the War Office examined the equipment that would be required for a British airborne division, they decided that gliders would be an integral component of such a force. These gliders would be used to transport troops and heavy equipment, which by 1941 was to include artillery and some form of tank. Plans to transport an airborne tank went through a number of revisions, but by May 1941 it was considered feasible for a tank weighing to be carried for in a glider, although the latter would have to be specifically designed for the task. In a conference held on January 16, 1941, it was decided that the General Aircraft Hamilcar, under development at the time, would be used to transport a single tank or two Universal Carriers. A decision had recently been made by the War Office that light tanks were no longer to be generally used in the British Army; on the whole they had performed poorly during the Battle of France and were considered to be a liability. As a result, the Vickers-Armstrong Light Tank Mk VII Tetrarch light tank was now considered obsolete. This made it available for use by the airborne forces and it was chosen by the War Office as the tank to be transported by glider. However, it had not been designed specifically as an airborne tank or to be airmobile,