In January 1943, he was posted to Fort Knox in the United States for six months to advise on gunnery, where he was "sold" on the Sherman tanks. During the Battle of Gazala in mid-1942, Witheridge had been blown out of his M3 Grant medium tank and though he recovered from his wounds, he was declared unfit to return to combat duty. A veteran of the North Africa campaign, Witheridge had experienced first-hand the one-sided battles between British tanks armed with the 40 mm 2-pounder gun and Rommel's formidable tanks and anti-tank guns. Īround June 1943, a colleague of Brighty, Lieutenant Colonel George Witheridge of the Royal Tank Regiment, arrived at Lulworth. In a radical adjustment, Brighty removed the recoil system and locked the gun in place, thus making the entire tank absorb the recoil, but this was a far from ideal situation and there was no telling how long the tank would have been able to handle such a set-up. The turret of the Sherman was too small to allow for the very long recoil of the gun. Despite the A30 Challenger undergoing initial trials at Lulworth, Brighty was convinced that the Sherman was a better mount for the 17-pounder. The earliest can be credited to Major George Brighty of the Royal Tank Regiment while he was at the Lulworth Armoured Fighting School in early 1943. Several unofficial attempts were made to improve the firepower of the Sherman. These two tanks and their successors - the Comet and the Centurion, which were already on the drawing board, were to replace the Sherman in British service and the prospect of diverting resources to mount the 17-pounder on the Sherman seemed undesirable. The second was the A30 Challenger, which was based on the Cromwell but with an even more powerful 17-pounder gun. First, there was the Cromwell, which was expected to use the Vickers high-velocity 75 mm gun this gun would have had superior anti-tank performance to the US 75 mm and 76 mm guns that were mounted in the Sherman. Although the British Army had made extensive use of the American-built Sherman, it was intended that a new generation of British tanks would replace it. The idea of fitting a 17-pounder gun into a Sherman tank was rejected by the Ministry of Supply's Tank Decision Board. Between 2,100 and 2,200 were manufactured before production ended in 1945. Because the Firefly's barrel was visibly longer than that of a normal 75 mm Sherman, crews tried to countershade camouflage it so the tank would look like a regular Sherman from a distance. It soon became highly valued, as its gun could almost always penetrate the armour of the Panther and Tiger tanks it faced in Normandy, something no other British tank could reliably do. This proved fortunate, as the Cruiser Mk VIII Challenger and Cruiser Mk VIII Cromwell tank designs experienced difficulties and delays.Īfter the problem of getting such a large gun to fit in the Sherman's turret was solved, the Firefly was put into production in early 1944, in time to equip the 21st Army Group, commanded by General Bernard Montgomery, for the Normandy landings. Though they expected to have their own tank models developed soon, the rejected idea of mounting the 17-pounder in the Sherman was eventually accepted, despite initial government reluctance. The British Army made extensive use of Sherman tanks. Conceived as a stopgap until future British tank designs came into service, the Sherman Firefly became the most common vehicle mounting the 17-pounder in the war. It was based on the US M4 Sherman but was fitted with the more powerful British 76.2 mm (3.00 in) calibre 17-pounder anti-tank gun as its main weapon. The Sherman Firefly was a medium tank used by the United Kingdom and some armoured formations of other Allies in the Second World War.
0 kommentar(er)
