How the dinosaurs died out - the last heavy tanks (part 1)

2024 Author: Matthew Elmers | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:49

The FV214 Conqueror Heavy Gun Tank is the last British heavy tank

The rapid development of tanks in the interwar period of the last century gave rise to many concepts of their use, and many different classifications, but the outbreak of the Second World War caused just a phenomenal pace of development of both ideas and the tanks themselves. Sometimes, in the development process from the concept to the adopted tank, many stages go through and the end result may be very far from the original idea. This can be fully seen on the example of the British heavy tank Conqueror.

The failure of the A43 Black Prince project (the development of the Churchill infantry tank) required the creation of a completely new tank to accompany the infantry - this role was assigned to the A45 project by English Electric in 1944.

The first prototype was supposed to be received no earlier than 1946, its weight was determined at approximately 56 tons and a maximum speed of about 30 km / h. The war ended, and summing up the results, it was decided to abandon the untenable concept of dividing tanks into "cruising" and "infantry", instead a program was put forward to create a "universal tank" and its variants for various purposes under the general designation FV200. It was assumed that the A41 Centurion tank already in service did not have sufficient stock to modernize it in accordance with the specifications for the FV201 cannon tank, and the A45 was chosen to occupy this niche.

The prototype was a slightly enlarged Centurion with improved protection, a more powerful gun and a modified chassis (in particular, 8 road wheels were used per side, instead of six). The previous weight and top speed limits remained in effect. In addition to the tank, as part of the FV200, a number of highly specialized vehicles were developed, ranging from bridgelayers to mine trawls, an abundance of projects put the FV201 on the lower rungs of the priority ladder, and only in October 1947 the first prototype entered the test range.

The year 1949 came, and thunder struck - after rethinking the current state of affairs, it was decided that it was inexpedient to develop a large number of narrow specialization vehicles with small supposed series and leave the Centurion as a medium tank, the modernization of which turned out to be more than real.

An additional reason was the appearance in the Soviet Army of a large number of IS-3 tanks, which the A-45 was unable to compete with. The development of most of the FV200 series vehicles was canceled (with the exception of the ARV), but the project was proposed to be redesigned in order to meet the requirements of the FV214 specification for a heavy cannon tank capable of withstanding any Soviet tanks (primarily the IS-3) at typical combat distances. The hull and chassis were supposed to be taken unchanged from the FV201 and installed on it a newly designed turret for the new American 120mm gun. A lot of time had already been spent on the project, and in order to gain experience in the construction and operation of such machines, the idea was born to launch an intermediate version into production - an already created chassis, but with a turret from the Centurion medium tank (since the 120mm gun was not mastered by the industry, but the tower was just to be developed).

The resulting hybrid was designated the FV221 Medium Gun Tank Caernarvon, and the first prototype was presented for testing in 1952. Meanwhile, more and more changes were made to the FV214 project, which received the name Conqueror, and the first pre-production cars left the workshop only in 1955. In total, only 180 tanks were built in two versions, and the last of the FV214 Conqueror Mark 2 was adopted in 1959.

What was the last British heavy tank?

Designed according to the classic layout, with the rear engine compartment and the placement of the gun in a 360 ° rotating turret in the central part of the hull.

The driver is located on the right, in front.

The power plant is an M120 engine with a capacity of 820 hp. at 2800 rpm, which is a further development of the famous V-shaped 12-cylinder gasoline engine Meteor, and a small auxiliary engine with a capacity of 29 hp, which provides electricity to numerous tank systems (outside of battle, a generator driven by the main engine is sufficient) … Such a significant increase in the power of the M120 is obtained thanks to the use of fuel injection, instead of the traditional carburetor. The torque is transmitted through a mechanically controlled dry friction main clutch to an unsynchronized gearbox providing five forward speeds and two reverse. The transmission is integrated into a single steering unit that provides a fixed turning radius for each speed (from 140 feet in fifth, to 16 feet in first gear, and turn around one track in neutral).

The suspension of the tank consists of eight bogies (4 per side) interlocked in pairs road wheels. Each bogie contains three springs located concentrically, horizontally between the balance arms. There were no shock absorbers. The upper branch of the track rested on four supporting rollers.

Both the transmission of the tank and the suspension are rather archaic solutions, and required great skill from the driver, they needed careful maintenance, causing a lot of problems (especially considering the weight of the tank, which exceeded 65 tons!).

The tower is a single cast piece, with a strong slope of the frontal surface and a developed aft niche.

The tank commander was located in the turret niche and controlled his own fire control turret (FCT), which was equipped with a stereoscopic rangefinder with a base of 124.4 cm, a remotely controlled 7.62mm machine gun and had rotation control independent of the turret. Automatics kept the turret aimed at the target even if the turret was rotating (in other words, the commander's turret rotated in the opposite direction at exactly the same speed as the turret). The loader is to the left of the gun, while the gunner's seat is to the right.

The 120mm rifled gun ammunition includes only armor-piercing sub-caliber and high-explosive armor-piercing shells with plastic explosives, a total of 35 separate loading rounds.

To prevent strong gas contamination of the habitable space, the gun is equipped with an ejector, and a complex mechanism for removing spent cartridges is installed in the turret, the hatch of which is located immediately behind the gunner's workplace. In fact, frequent refusals forced either the commander to throw out the casings manually, or the loader was forced to open his hatch and get rid of them after each shot.

Since the main task of the tank was to combat enemy tanks (and primarily with heavy tanks at long range), it was required to ensure a high probability of hitting with the first shot. To meet this requirement (in the absence of sufficiently compact and high-speed ballistic computers at that time), a system of particular interest was developed, the description of which is best demonstrated using the example of the crew's actions to hit the target. Having detected the target in the periscope sight, the commander, by rotating the turret and tilting the sight mirror, displays its image in the center of the field of view.

The left eyepiece simultaneously displays the range scale connected to the gunner's sight. Having measured the distance using a stereo range finder, the commander introduces an appropriate correction on the scales of his own and the arrow of the sights (with the help of an electric installer), after which, by pressing a button on the turret control handle, he forces the turret to turn in the direction of the target, combining the line of sight of his sight and the gunner's sight (the turret is rotates in the opposite direction relative to the tower, without losing sight of the target). If everything is done correctly, the target will appear in the field of view of the gunner's sight, and the gun will have the desired elevation angle. In principle, the commander is then able to fire a shot himself, but the gunner has an additional device for taking into account the roll angle of the tank (which is a ball in a curved transparent tube, with adjusted aiming), which the commander does not have. Therefore, he takes control of himself, making the final adjustments and firing a shot. The commander observes the result and either proceeds to search for new targets, or gives the command to repeat the shot, making corrections for the observed hit point. If the tank is moving at a speed of more than 2.5 km / h, the stabilization system of the gun is automatically activated, but this causes difficulties for the gunner at the moments when the tank is almost stopped, or is just starting to move. A second 7.62mm machine gun is installed coaxially with the gun, the total ammunition is 7,500 rounds.

Each crew member has his own hatch, they all have a similar principle - the lid moves to the side after it is raised above its seat.

The armor of the tank is monolithic, made of rolled armor plates (hull) and cast parts (turret and turret), although it had a significant thickness in the frontal projection, but it no longer provided adequate protection against the cumulative shells and missiles that were widely used at that time.

The extremely narrow specialization of the tank, significant technical problems and general low reliability negatively affected its service. After the creation of the magnificent 105mm L7 gun for the Centurion tanks, the fate of the bulky and expensive to operate Conqueror was a foregone conclusion - in 1966 the last of them was decommissioned. Ironically, many FV214s have found their final resting place in training grounds, as targets for Centurion tanks that were supposed to be replaced in service.

Now the only copy is on display at the Bovington Tank Museum.