A13 Cruiser with 25pdr

[Kingsman]

With apologies to William, I'd like to re-awaken this previous recent topic - linked below and which has gone dormant now - as there was a fundamental error in the original post concerning the vehicle platform. 

 

The original topic says "Crusader", but the quoted Tech Report says Cruiser Mk IV - which is not the Crusader.  The Crusader A15 was the Cruiser Tank Mk VI.  The Cruiser Tank Mk IV was in fact the A13 Mk II !!.  So we're looking at an experimental 25pdr SPG based on the 4-wheel A13 chassis, obsolete in 1941.  No wonder there were concerns about its viability!  The quoted Tech Report is dated 1944 so there is an assumption that the conversion was also 1944, which is not necessarily so.  If the report was early 1944 the conversion could have been 1943, or perhaps it was merely a summary of prior activity up to that point.

 

However desperate we may have been, and by 1943-44 the SPG supply situation was not exactly problematic with Priests and Sextons, it smacks of desperation to consider using an A13 chassis.  Having said this, the 25pdr was preferred to the 105mm and the Sexton was only just becoming available.  But if something along those lines was seriously being considered then we had 500 otherwise-useless Cavaliers - A24, Cruiser Mk VII - and several thousand non-combat-worthy Centaurs A27L Cruiser Mk VIII kicking around.  Both had the 5-wheel chassis and the Cavalier had the uprated 410BHP Liberty (but even less reliable, hence why Centaur went back to the 340BHP version).  Those chassis would have been far more viable SPG prospects than the A13 and the prototype Archer 25pdr conversion seems fully viable.

 

There don't seem to be any photos of this conversion, regardless of its chassis.

 

 

[Seahawk]

Would be interesting to understand more of the context around this eg who where wrote the Tech Report in the first place and what the preceding 89 paras were about.  Without that we have no clue as to whether, for example, it was simply a practical design exercise for trainee designers to cut their teeth on.