True enough, Winston Churchill reportedly hung out in the nude often enough at his place of residence, or so I heard.
Yeah but, what’s your point? That’s all covered in the American ETO forum…
It seems the basic problem with most British tanks in WWII is the narrow hull designs which inhibit the upgradability of the vehicles by hindering the placement of a larger turret, hence gun, on them…
I like churchill,… I knew one vets who knocked a phanter with a Churchill
Only british tank that counts is UKsherman.
The Churchill was a very good infantry tank. As far as killing other tanks? Well, the 6pdr. gun was pretty much obsolete by 1942 if not 41’. Attempts to put a 17pdr. came to nothing for reasons mentioned already. But the tank was adaptable to a number of roles and was almost perfectly suited for Asia as the Aussies found, especially as a flamethrowing tank.
Does anyone know if the US Army or Marines used the Churchill?
yes sir, infact i do like churchill same as you stated there,… russians love this tank much than other lend lease tanks,…
as for addition of a churchill knocked a panther tank,. just an addendum,… with some skills it able to brought down a beast…
Hi all
I know it’s a best tank thread, but for a minute lets look at innovations to armoured warfare in WWII.
Germany was without doubt the leader in tactical doctrine, and had their industry been geared for total war early enough and stuck with producing realistic tanks, panthers and mkIV’s rather than gigantic, unreliable, fuel consuming bohemoths…who knows.
Russia, lost most of it’s pre-war rubbish early on, it’s new designs, KVs and T-34s were superb in each of the 3 ideals of tank design, only really let down by poor crew training, then set the standards for years to come with the later IS series and T44-54-55s etc.
UK, pre-war had some of the most forward thinking tactical armoured warfare specialists, but designs were bogged down in misguided, infantry/cavalry (cruiser) thinking, poor reliability, and being stuck by limitations of railway gauge dimensions (limiting hull/turret rings mainly) etc. However one area I think the UK reigned supreme was in design of specialist armoured engineer vehicles, without which, amphibious landings, beach clearance, mine clearance, normandy hedgerows and rhine crossings would have been much more difficult.
US, initiated mass production techniques from the automotive industry, but US tanks although reliable and available in vast numbers were certainly not outstanding in any area-armour, gun or manoeuvreability, US doctrine stated that tanks were be engaged by specialist tank destroyers, not other tanks.
So for me Hobart’s Funnies…otherwise the cromwell, fast, excellent engine/suspension, low silhouette, half decent armour (but not sloped), same gun as the sherman, which like a double decker bus in height it beats in almost every respect, but required major re-design to up-gun. One thing I always wonder however, following the defeats in north africa against the Afrika Korps armour, why we never followed the German practice of placing anti-tank/aircraft guns in older tank hulls for use as SP guns (to get vehicle output increased), if they couldn’t be mounted in turrets, apart from the Archer conversion I can’t think of any others?
I was wondering that myself. I mean, the Soviets put their artillery guns in tanks, such as the SU-122 and SU-152, so why not the English…? Unless you count the self propelled artillery gun the Canadian made, the Sexton, but then you would need to count the Canadians as the English when the weren’t.
The Archer was a 17pdr AT-gun mounted firing to the rear in a Valentine chassis, there was also the Avenger, a cromwell chassis mounting the 17pdr. Although appearing cumbersome firing to the rear, it actually avoided the main disadvantage of vehicles like the Soviet Su85, Su100, and German Jagdpanzer IV, where the long barrel caused a considerable overhang which limited cross-country manouevreability and turning circle when mounted low in the chassis. They were also able to reverse into ambush postion and then drive away after firing. Though with the shortage of vehicles in N.Africa I’m surprised they couldn’t cobble together mounting some AA gun (the 3.7 inch AA gun which later became the 32pdr AT gun) in some chassis or other?
By “English”…I think you mean British, and no Cannucks aren’t Brit’s, neither are they Americans 
:rolleyes:…But you’re right the sexton virtually replaced the american built priest in British and Canadian armies as SP artillery.
The Bishop was a 25-pndr in an armoured box on a Valentine hull (with too limited elevation).
Keep on saying ‘English’ for ‘British’. The rest of the non-English-speaking world does. And, if nothing else it annoys the Taffs and the Micks and the Sweaties, which can’t be bad.
That depends if you’re a Taff, Mick, or Sweaty…
The limited cross-country preformance was a drawback for the Jagdpanther and Jagdtiger, but for the Germans, putting the gun on the back of the tank wouldn’t have worked for their thick, sloped armour. If they put the gun on the back, that would have changed the already complex layout for their tanks into something even more complex; like putting the engine in the front of the tank, when that was the crew area of the vehicle.
They did more or less try with the Elefant, shoving the gun into a rear superstructure, but at 70 tons, was more like a pill box on tracks…“sweaty sock”, haven’t heard that for ages
They did, it was called the Tortoise and like its US counterpart, the T-28, it wasn’t ready until after the War.
The 3.7" was an excellent gun though and could have been used in a greater AT role than it was…
My source states that the Tortoise could have been developed into a proper tank, but was thought of in terms of attacking fortifications like the Siegfried Line in the archaic role as an infantry tank/assault gun (much like the American T-28). When developed, there was little need for this role so development languished as its power as a battle tank with a real turret was thought to not be needed and too expensive to produce, so by the time Britain began encountering Tigers, the project was too far behind to have been developed into a proper tank…
Yeah knew about the late war Tortoise, but earlier in the war with the desperate situation in N.Africa I surprised they didn’t knock up something like the German Marder or Stug in any old Valentine/Matilda chassis, I’m sure the army engineering workshops out in Egypt could even have fabricated something?? Didn’t the allies achieve air dominance in Africa by '42ish? Could that have freed up the AA guns?..all hypothetical what if’s, sorry.
Surprised to read that the 3.7 inch (94mm) and the US 90mm AA guns were superior to the German 88mm as AA guns, altitude, range, weight of shell…and on a par with, as AT guns, however, they were both twice the weight and produced in relatively low numbers compared to the 88.
The British did developed the Archer tank destroyer that mounted a 17 Pounder gun.
The 90mm did become the main US tank gun once the idiocy of perpetuating the “tank destroyer” doctrine as it was erroneously conceived was finally realized. This is due largely to the efforts of the Ordinance Dept. --the US Army branch that kept making some very good weapons designs only to be continually overruled by Army Ground Forces Command-- despite much confusion, intercedent conflict, and factionalism in the US planning of AFV production. But yes, the weapons were not as mobile in their towed configuration as the 88mm was, but the rare “Super-Pershing’s” modified 90mm gun exceeded any tank weapon on the battlefield by 1945. And US tank destroyers were essentially being used as mobile anti-tank guns by the end of the War despite the inexplicable decision to try to use more towed guns (and yes, a 90mm prototype was produced)…
As for the British 94mm, I suppose they felt that the 17pdr was good enough and probably cheaper than developing and mounting a version of the 3.7" gun for tanks, and they were having problems just making enough of those to go around. But I believe the main problem of the British Army using the 3.7 AA in a ground role was as organizational as it was equipment. They simply had a much stricter division between air defense artillery troops and direct infantry support artillery than did the Wehrmacht…
Excellent find! I posted a pic of one here.
Mod note: post moved to that thread, as it is a pretty good one…
Sweet.
Could that be a match for the JS2’s and JS3’s? The armour probably wouldn’t be thick enough to protect from the JS’s guns.
It was for the King Tiger; as were several prototypes like the US T-29/34 projects…
The JS2 was never really all that combat effective in an anti-tank role and was used primarily as an assault gun…
There’s a big thread here on the Pershing an the US prototypes that never made it into the War: