How American legend is born! GRIN!

The late Churchill (D-day timeperiod through the northern Europe campaign) carried a quick firing 75mm gun but it was a development of the QF 6-pounder (I want to say by Vickers though might have been an Ordinance design) and installed from new.

The purpose was the logistical advantage of common ammunition between the major allies, an incredibly important thing in northern Europe and ignored and misunderstood for its importance by historians.

Some of the earlier 6-pounder equipped tanks indeed got a depot-level conversion using the American 75mms, but this was done at a very modest level in Italy, again for logistical commonality. A shrinking number of 6-pounder versions were still in use in 8th Army in Italy simply because they got them in North Africa and the Italian campaign got the leftovers while the northern Europe campaign got the meal. But here gives rise to the notion the poor British cobbled together the late Churchills, often said with some sort of condescension about how great the M4 75mm gun was.

Actually, the 6-pounder and US 75mm were reasonably comparable even though the 6-pounder had a smaller bore. If memory serves the 6-pounder with an AT round was superior to the US in that role while the 75 with an HE round was likewise to the 6-pounder in that role. There we have two excellent reasons for the 75, a superior general support gun firing HE (the infantry tank role) and logistical commonality.

A very reasonable question then is why the Sherman Firefly, the British Sherman that went the other way logistically with their own discrete ammunition? Again, different roles, made more distinct by the Germans actually. The Sherman "Firefly" is pretty role specific with the ability to put an AT round into a Tiger with a high velocity 17-pounder main-gun. They served side by side with both the US and QF-75 equipped tanks, both the US-76 and Ordinance 17-pounder were vastly superior AT guns, but the 75s were superior against soft targets using an HE round, the latter becoming more important in Europe as the campaign progressed to its close with fewer Tigers and more teenagers to shoot at.

I must be really bored if I'm writing all this vent about repetitious bad history, but academics and Osprey historians drive me mad with their lack of understanding regarding logistic and tactical requirement driving technical requirement in war, especially ignoring the logistic.

In reality, the Churchill was originally designed for a far different role, that of an infantry support weapon in an environment of fixed trenches and Siegfried Lines that never became reality and, unlike so many other weapons, adapted well to different realities throughout the war. Hardly pointless, really. GRIN!