The Paper Bulldog: The Infantry Tank Mk IV A22 Churchill

Near the end of the 30’s, as the great powers of Europe built their armies for ever more likely confrontation, a gap appeared in the armored doctrine of the Royal Armored Corps. The current doctrine called for a few different types of tanks. On the one hand was the infantry tank. Designed to be small, cheap, well armored, and machine gun armed, these tanks would be fielded similarly to the FT of the Great War as a infantry supplement to help break through enemy lines. On the other hand was the cruiser tank. Fast and well-armed, this tank would exploit the breakthrough’s and keep the enemy off balance, as well as actively attack their armor. In all, it was a modernization of late great war strategy.

The gap, though, had appeared in the breakthrough stage of the doctrine. The small, machine gun equipped infantry tank may have been very suitable for attacking trenches and foxholes, but a well dug in enemy with dedicated bunkers and fortifications was invulnerable to the little tanks. Indeed, it would even be invulnerable to the larger infantry tanks that were armed with anti-tank guns to deal with whatever armor was about. There needed to be a tank with the explicit purpose of destroying fortifications. This tank would need to have larger guns, more armor, and unshakable offroad performance, more than any other tank in the military. This tank would be a specific breakthrough tank. This was the genesis of the Churchill.

The Churchill is a tank that has, from what I can tell, a bit of a bipolar reputation. There are stories surrounding this vehicle that sound like they cross the line of reality and enter the realm of legend, or in a less optimistic light, fiction. There are lots of folks who hold this tank in very high regard. But on the opposing end, there is a school of thought that decries the Churchill as being a tank a war too late, obsolete on introduction. So, the question now will be to what end of the spectrum does the Churchill fall under?

To tackle this, there will be 3 articles. The first will cover the Churchill’s I and II. The second will cover Churchill’s III-VI. And the final will cover Churchill VII.

Let’s begin.

Armor:

The Churchill tank, in its original guise when first produced in June of 1941, was the most heavily armored tank in the world. Its lower front plate was 76mm thick, the same thickness as the main plate of the previous record holder, the KV-1. This lead up to a highly sloped 38mm plate, which ended at the formidable 3.5-inch-thick front plate (90mm in metric). This plate had, on the right-hand side of the hull, a square door for the driver (also 90mm), and on the left the secondary armament, which we will get to in a moment. Surrounding the secondary armament was a additional 3.5 inch plate to make up for the large slot that had to be cut in the original plate for the weapon, meaning that there was areas of overlap where the armor was 7” thick! The sides of the tank were well armored too, with a total of 2.5 inches (63.5 mm) of armor on the side hull, with 3-inch armored doors for the driver and bow gunner. At the rear, the plate thickness was still a respectable 2 inches (51mm). behind all the hull armor was the frame that it was riveted onto, a half inch of mild steel that helped with spalling and added to the armor.

The turret was cast, in a similar manner to the Matilda II, and similarly possessed very thick armor. The turret front was an even 100mm thick, with an internal 50mm gun mantlet for a shocking ~6 inches of armor. The sides were still formidable, tapering down to 90mm and eventually a paltry 76m at the rear.

In this case, we are not going to discuss anything too earth shattering with the armor and will lump in its actual combat effectiveness with the discussion on the 6 pounder Churchill’s. But we will give some lip service to the performance of the Churchill I’s and II’s armor against its most likely 1941 and 42 competitor, the German 5 cm gun. The shorter barrel 5 cm is completely impotent against the Churchill from the front, and it is only with the long barrel that a penetration becomes possible. Not likely, but possible, at a range of over 300 yards. it is impossible for the standard round to penetrate the front plate (not including the overlap and not including the turret) and only at point blank does it become likely, and even then only if the lower front or drivers hatch is hit. To even consider a penetration at 500 yards the APCR round must be used, and again only if it hits those weak spots. From the sides penetration is more achievable, with about 750 yards using APC on the flat side being the limit. In all, for 1941 certainly and even for 1942, the Churchill is an incredibly well armored tank.

Armament:

This is going to be one of the focal points of this discussion, because there is a lot to cover as far as the armament of the Churchill I and II, and this will also in essence cover the armament of most of the early war British tanks. So, pay attention.
The Churchill I was originally intended to use the 6-pounder cannon, which had been in development since shortly before the war had begun and was complete before 1940. However, with the Fall of France Britain could not afford to retool for the better gun and needed to replace all the equipment lost. And so, the 2-pounder would continue onward for longer than intended and would be the initial main armament of the Churchills.

The Two Pounder was the standard British anti-tank gun since 1936, and compared to its contemporaries it was probably the best anti-tank gun in the world at the time of introduction, and still somewhat capable in 1940 and 41, able to defeat all German armor save for the new Panzer III H and the Panzer IV E and F from roughly a kilometer away flat on, and about 500 yards even at the optimum angle for defeating the round. Against its Italian foes it fairs even better, able to defeat every tank in the Italian arsenal (that was used) from about 1250 yards flat on and a little over a kilometer at best angle except for the M15/42 and the semovente 75/18, which could only be defeated at around 750 yards.

However, and spoiling slightly the production section, the Churchill does not enter the field until very late in 1942, by which time the 2 pounder AP shot has started to become noticeably less effective. Against the latest German and to some extent Italian tanks, the shells were simply not cutting it anymore, their 50mm of homogenous armor penetration at 30 degrees and 500 yards no longer reliably penetrating the 50mm front plates of most of their foes. Against the German tanks showing up with 50mm of face-hardened plate, penetration could only be achieved at 500 yards flat on and was impossible if angled. When factoring in the fact that the uncapped round was more likely to shatter on the German face-hardened armor the standard 2 pounder shot was rapidly becoming obsolete.

To stave this off, there were two solutions that were applied. the first, a stop gap, was to ‘supercharge’ the round. Simply put, more propellant was added to the standard Mk 1 AP/T (Armor Piercing Tracer), boosting the velocity from 2600 M/s to 2800 M/s and creating the Mk1 APHV/T. This round only provided a marginal increase in penetration, an extra 10mm against flat homogenous armor, and only a 5 mm increase at 30 degrees. In practice, this increased its ability to penetrate targets by about 100 extra yards. So, flat on against a Panzer III or IV with 50mm plates a penetration could be expected at less than 600 yards. With angling it was very unlikely that a penetration could be made at any range.

The more permanent solution was the new MK 1 APCBC/T. introduced at the end of 1942. The cap provided better penetration against face hardened armor and better performance against sloped armor, able to penetrate the 50mm plate of older Panzer III and Panzer IV’s (instructively, these are also the frontal turret armor thicknesses that these tanks maintain for the whole war) from about 1250 yards flat on, and 500 yards at an angle. While this may sound good, the Panzer III was being upgraded with spaced 20mm armor on the front hull and turret, dropping the penetration range of the new round back to 500 yards flat on and impossible If angled. It was worse against the new Panzer IV G and H, with no penetration possible against the front hull plate at any range While the gun was still very effective on the flanks, and even against such things as the turret of any Panzer IV, its usefulness as a front-line anti-tank weapon had reached an end.

As far as the Churchill I and II was concerned, these were the only rounds of notice. However, while we are talking about the 2 pounders, we may as well discuss all the rounds that it had ever used, because there is an awful lot of confusion concerning this subject. First, lets talk about the two rounds that predate the Churchill.

The first is the ever-elusive Mk 1 AP/T Shell. This was the original round that the gun was specified to fire, having a 19.2-gram lyddite (or picric acid) explosive filler. This was made in the prewar period and is important because it was the round that turned the British off shells for the rest of time due to its appalling performance. First, its point-blank penetration of 48mm against flat face-hardened armor at 500 yards was about 20% worse than the 59mm of the shot. The main issue was with the fuse. The British standard that needed to be met was the shell penetrating and detonating behind a 15mm face hardened plate 70 percent of the time. The shell did not meet this requirement in testing. On the face of it this sounds wrong, because we saw that the shell can penetrate a little less than 50mm of armor at 500 yards. But in practice, one of four things would happen. Either it would work, the shell would detonate immediately on contact and not penetrate, the fuse would fail, and the shell would act as shot, or the fuse would comically fall out of the back of the shell as the cannon fired and the shell would go whistling off to god knows where because of the imbalance caused. Because of this, the shell was not preferred, and did not make it to wartime production. There is no evidence that it was ever used in combat, although a half million were made prewar with stocks being altered by removing the filling and filling the void with a inert material, similarly to what would be done with 75mm rounds later in the war. Some of these were used in the Fall of France.

The second round that potentially predates the Churchill is the HE round. This round, however, is a source of great mystery and controversy with conflicting and fragmented sources and little in the way of hard and fast documentation. The most often stated thought is that there was no high explosive round issued, and this is completely incorrect. What high explosive round was issued, when it was issued, and to who it was issued is where the answers start getting murky. As best as I can tell, there are two schools of thought. The first is that the round was produced prewar, but had fallen victim to infighting between the Royal Artillery and the Tank Corps. The royal artillery oversaw not just the standard artillery pieces, but also all anti-tank guns. Allegedly they argued that high explosive fired from an anti-tank gun counted as artillery, and that high explosive fired from a tank cannon would be infringing on their area. Thus, only the towed anti-tank guns got HE shells. This seems incredibly stupid… but we are dealing with the same country that created the Rota trailer, so I guess that it is possible. This is the view expounded by Nicholas Moran, AKA ‘The Chieftain.’ As a note, this is partially disputed by a fellow from the tank museum named A Reid (his first name seems lost to time). He contends that the round was used in France with all stocks lost and was available in North Africa but not liked by the tankers.

The second school of thought is that the 2-pounder does not start to get a HE round until 1943, as it is being phased out of the Tank Corps and being replaced as a anti-tank gun by the 6 pounder. At this point the only users would be reconnaissance groups and armored car regiments, and with the 2-pounder becoming a less effective anti-tank gun by the day A HE round was needed to give it back some degree of relevance. There is a bit of evidence to support this, the first being actual verifiable production numbers of the rounds, starting production in 1942 and finishing in 1944, with over 800,000 rounds produced. The second piece of evidence can only be explained by the final iteration of the 2-pounder cannon.

With the APCBC shot nearly totally ineffective against the front hull of a Panzer IV, not to mention Tigers or Panthers or any of the other vehicles mentioned, the Royal Ordinance set to seeing if there was a way to modify the existing 2 pounder cannons to be able to defeat more than 100 mm of armor thickness. If this could be accomplished, then the relatively small and compact 2 pounder could remain a viable anti-tank weapon for the Royal Artillery, Armored Car and Reconnaissance Regiments, and even the gliderborne tanks. It was decided that the only feasible way to modify the cannon as opposed to building new ones was to convert it to a squeeze bore by a screw on adaptor. This would be known as the LittleJohn adaptor.

_{littlejohn adaptor on a Daimler armored car}

A squeeze bore gun increases penetration by taking a larger diameter round of soft steel around a ultra-dense penetrator and firing it though a barrel that progressively gets narrower, this means that none of the pressure is able to escape past the round, and the soft steel is ‘squeezed’ from its original diameter on down until the round escapes from the gun. The lack of lost pressure means the round has more velocity, and therefore more penetration. There are, however, drawbacks to this system. The first is that this dramatically reduces barrel life due to the ablative nature of firing the cannon, the second is that is it not possible to fire any ammunition from the cannon apart from the special squeezebore ammo.

Bringing it back to the 2 pounder HE, the lack of use of LittleJohn in armored car and recon regiments is one of the main supporting arguments for a 2 pounder HE round. If a HE round did not exist, then there would be no reason not to use the LittleJohn adaptor on the armored cars, being a straight upgrade over the armor penetration of the APCBC. Because many units did not use the LittleJohn, the implication is that there was a round with different capabilities that discouraged them from using it, and that would be the HE.

The rounds for the LittleJohn were incredibly potent for their size, with two developed for the gun. The first was the APSV (Armor Piercing Super Velocity) MK 1. With a muzzle velocity of 4200 f/s and a weight of 1 pound with 178 grams of that being the tungsten carbide core, it could penetrate over 140mm of flat homogenous armor point blank and 100mm at 750 yards and 80mm at 1200. Even angled at 30 degrees it could defeat a 100mm plate at 300 yards, and 80mm at 600. The second round was the MK 2, with a lower muzzle velocity of 3750 f/s but a heavier core of 248 grams, it traded off close range penetration for better performance at long range. Point blank it limited at 120mm on flat homogenous armor, dropping to 100mm at 750 yards and 80mm at just less than 1600 yards. Angled at 30 degrees, it could penetrate 100 mm at 100 yards, and 80mm at 800 yards. With their soft steel shell, they acted basically as very high velocity APCBC rounds, and worked even a little better against Face Hardened armor. What this meant was that even something as diminutive as a Daimler Armored Car (the secret best British armored fighting vehicle of the war) could pose a credible threat against Panzer IV’s and Stug III’s, as well as the larger vehicles from the sides. Again though, with the LittleJohn they gave up any pretense of ability to fight infantry.

What these last rounds mean for the Churchill is precisely zilch. In practice, the Churchill I and II would operate using APCBC almost exclusively in combat.

Whew, that was one of the guns of the Churchill covered, halfway there for this article! Only 2 more for all the other variants!

The other main gun of the Churchill I was the Quick firing 3-inch howitzer (replaced by the BESA machine gun on Churchill II due to supply issues). This was the other side of the coin of cannon specialization. If the QF 2 pounder was to be a weapon with only anti-tank capability, then this was to be a weapon with only anti-infantry and emplacement capability. However, the two pounder would affect this cannon in very tangible ways, despite their capabilities being diametrically opposed. While they were different guns with different goals, they still needed to be used on the same tanks, and therefore fit on the same mounts with the same travel of recoil and same exerted forces. Thus, the 3 inch was hobbled. Because it could not weigh much, and because it could not recoil much, the power of the charge had to be limited. And with this limited charge, the designers had to choose between two options. either they could fire a small round a far distance, and risk having it be ineffectual, or they could fire a larger round a short distance, limiting the capabilities of the cannon and requiring any tank using it to close the range. The latter is the option that they went with.

Thus, even with a rather long barrel, the shell fired from the 3 inch howitzer was lobbed at a paltry 600 ft/second, or less than one third of the velocity of the Sherman’s HE. The maximum rated range was still 2500 yards, but that was if it was fired at the optimal angle. On the Churchill, this angle of elevation could not be reached without parking the Churchill on a incline. The maximum angle that could be reached on flat ground was a miserable 9 degrees. Which meant, that after re-remembering some engineering, the maximum range of the 3 inch in the Churchill fired on flat ground was only 1150 yards. It was worse for the smoke round, which only could range out to 750 yards. This limited the utility of the cannon from that of a howitzer to that of a direct fire weapon. Adding in the fact that its traverse was limited to a 30-degree arc (13.5 degrees to the right and 16.5 degrees left) and this was truly only a weapon for direct assault against a dug in enemy.

_{this is a Churchill I CS, with the howitzer in turret and 2 pounder in hull. a advantage of the guns sharing the same mounts was that these could be mixed, and tanks could be modified to have howitzers only or vice versa}

Luckily, the HE round was relatively punchy. After all, this is what they gave up range for. But, at a 13.9-pound round with 610 grams of explosives, this is somewhat comparable to the 75mm round of the Sherman (my gold standard, a 14.7 pound round with 670 grams of explosive). In 1940, this is actually one of the 3 best tank mounted HE slingers in the world, after the soviet L-11 76.2mm (621 grams of explosive) and the German 7.5 cm l/24 Kwk 37 tank howitzer (with a whopping 850 grams of explosive filler!)

Finally, a note needs to be made about the smoke shell. It is a ‘bursting’ smoke shell. This means that it is our favorite legally dubious and morally objectional chemical cocktail, white phosphorus. So the smoke shell does have more capability than just screening, if you are feeling like a borderline war criminal. Hey, at least you’re shooting at Nazi’s with this thing.

And one thing about the smoke round, and this pertains to how it was issued. For the overwhelming majority of tanks that had the QF 3 inch howitzer, the smoke round is their main round. In fact, the smoke round is 90-95% of their loadout. Doctrinally, the close support tanks would support their infantry not by destroying the enemy, but by screening the infantry’s advance to the enemy. So, to quote David Fletcher of The Tank Museum on the matter

And you think, well, it’s a proper tank. It’s a real tank with an engine and a crew and a turret and a gun and all it can do is make smoke!

However, in the Churchill, due to its role as an emplacement fighting tank, it has a loadout of 2/3 HE. Hooray.
So, ok, a relatively punchy HE round, multiuse smoke, but abysmal range and limited traverse. In all, in 1940, this isn’t great, but it at least is not terrible.

In late 1942 and 1943, when it starts to be used in the Churchill, it’s terrible.

By this time the M2 and M3 75mm guns of the Lee had ben in use for over half a year and had proven themselves as being superior to the Churchills howitzer in every way. And at the Churchill’s (second, but we’ll get to that shit later) combat introduction at the second battle of El Alamain, the Sherman has arrived. And this is just on the allied side, at this point the L43 and L48 75mm are beginning to show up on the panzer IV, and that has a better HE round than the Churchill as well (653 grams of HE, maybe, its complicated) as well as dual purpose ability. In 1943, the howitzer is mediocre at best. And 1943 is when it starts to be used on the Churchill.

So, in terms of armament, when introduced the Churchill I is not a poorly armed tank. In fact, it is quite well armed. When finally used in combat, it is very poorly armed. In fact, this is probably the worst armed tank that I have covered yet and I don’t know what would beat it apart from maybe the stubby 37mm on French light tanks in terms of worthless armament.

Mobility:

Again, in this section I will just describe the layout and on paper mobility of the Churchill, as these numbers essentially do not change much over the whole lifespan of the tank and all of its variants. I will discuss it’s in combat mobility when I get to the Churchill Mk III.

So, on a technical level, the Churchill tank was powered by a totally new drive system that had essentially never been used before in a tank. The engine was a flat 12 design, based upon a pair of Bedford truck engines (heavily modified, mind you) feeding into a central driveshaft and producing 350 horsepower and 960 pound/ft of torque for 9 hp/ ton. Off the top of my head, this is the worst HP/ton discussed to date. This was the Bedford Twin 6, and at the time of its introduction was actually one of the most powerful tank engines in the world, being beaten out only by the soviet V-2 diesel.

The engine is however not too important compared to the truly revolutionary merrit brown transmission and steering system that it was attached to. I have already gone over the transmission in the article I wrote on Cromwell. but to reiterate, the merrit brown transmission was probably the most modern transmission and steering system to be used during the war, offering the greatest mobility with the least wasted power of any of the transmission and steering system. While not the first tank to offer the ability to neutral steer, it is at the time that it was made the most efficient transmission that allowed this as an option by a considerable margin.

Put together, they allow the tank to move at a paltry 16 miles per hour if the throttle was wide open. For the task at hand of attacking fortifications and assisting infantry who could barely sprint at that speed this is fine, but it does limit the Churchill’s abilities against armored opponents, the majority of which are faster. All in all, for the time the Churchill has the most advanced automotive layout of any tank in the world, and unlike with the armament the automotive elements of the tank age well.

The final notes about the Churchill’s theoretical mobility are to do with the tracks. Being designed with a sort of second WWI in mind, the main goals as far as the tracks go were to have low ground pressure, good performance in mud, and the ability to climb over obstacles such as trenches and walls. Therefore, the tracks were quite wide, and were manufactured with very deep and noticeable grousers. Most importantly, the tracks had the distinctive feature of going overtop the sides of the hull as opposed to below the hull side panniers as on most other tanks. This meant that it could climb over obstacles far in excess of its contemporaries. Compared to the Sherman or panzer IV which could only climb a 2 ft wall, or a Cromwell or panther which could climb a 3 ft wall, the Churchill could climb over a 5 foot high obstacle. Ground pressure was 13 psi, better than any German heavy tank as well as the early Sherman’s, but not as good as most soviet tanks of the era or German mediums and lights. Its ground pressure is defined best as average.

With those factors out of the way we will discuss how mobile the Churchill’s were in combat next time.

Reliability.

Oh boy. This section, it’s going to be rough.

Similarly to the Cromwell, when it actually enters into combat it was not the least reliable tank ever made. In fact, it sat in a nice middle of the road ‘3.6 roentgen, not great but not horrifying’ and we'll discuss this level of reliability when we cover Churchill’s III-VI. When it was first handed over to the army for use… holy shit. Note that this is the third time that I have said holy shit in this series. Let’s see what warrants it.

We're going to start at the bottom of the tank and work our way on up to the top. Anytime something doesn’t work, I’ll let you know.

Starting with the tracks, initially the pattern was based very much on the WWI tracks, with the deep grousers and flat steel between with little texturing. The also had a decently long pitch. Their main issue was they were designed for the wrong war. On mud they may have been quite good, but in sand, on roads, and other places they simply did not cut it. Worse still, they wore out at a increased rate due to their track pitch and extra weight they imposed in the vehicle So, they were changed. The new tracks were made of high hardness manganese steel, shorter in pitch, and weighing 11 pounds less to improve the track life, as well as performance on surfaces other than mud. As a note, because of the pitch change the amount of links per side went from 140 to 144, and as a part of the track changes both the drive wheels and the frontmost idler had to be replaced as well. Once this was done though, 3000 pounds were shaved off the weight of the tank, and that’s not bad. However, a issue with these manganese tracks that will be covered next section necessitated their replacement with a pressed steel design nearly identical in nature.

Moving on to the suspension, it was horribly flawed. The design was not too terrible. The suspension consists of 11 roadwheels per side. The roadwheel is attached to a pivoting arm on the end of a bracket, which runs parallel to a set of 4 telescoping springs that connect to the roadwheels axel. For the time, this is pretty alright. The problem as far as reliability goes is with everything about it. Initially I thought that it was only one or two things. I was wrong. The springs would break, the roadwheels would break, bogies would just fall off, and the ride quality was bad. Several modifications were tried for the roadwheels to keep them from breaking, but when tested on a rig designed to simulate driving over hard ground all broke within 2 hours of operation. Lubricating the wheels did help, but in order to keep the roadwheels lubricated enough one trial showed that the tank required 11 gallons of lubricant to be applied over the course of 11 miles. A tank without lubricant had its bearings heated up to such a point that it blistered the paint on the suspension. We will discuss changes made later, but rest assured there were a lot of them.

Moving up the hull a little more and we can have our pick of 3 more points of near abject failure. We will start with the air intakes. So far the only time a air intake has come up was when discussing the M18, stating that it drew from the crew compartment and made the crew colder in winter. It seems like something that is hard to screw up too badly. The Churchill however had found a way to do it. The initial intakes were on the side, with the opening at the bottom. The thought was that if the intakes were facing up then mud could fall off the tracks and into the air intakes. Putting them on the bottom would get past this issue. Why they were not put on the top of the hull as in t-34, Sherman, and countless others must have been an issue of space. At any rate, putting the air intakes on the sides with the opening at the bottom ran into two immediate issues. The first was that on dusty roads and fields the exhaust (facing down at the back of the tank) would blow dust under the hull with force where it would be sucked up into the intakes, severely increasing the amount of crap to filter. The second was that in mud, these intakes would have mud fall on top of them, and as the mud accumulated and fell off this, it would be sucked into the air intakes. There are very few engines, radiators, and filters that enjoy having mud blown onto them, and the Churchill’s was not one of them. So, the air intakes were redesigned, extending up from the sides to just above track level and feeding air from the top. This reduced the issue, but it was still a problem, as now dust and mud would be sucked off the tracks.

Once we have gotten through the air intake and past the filters, we arrive at the engine, which has its own set of issues. These could be divided into 3 camps. One was to do with the engine valves and valve timing. The second was more significant, with failing cylinder head gaskets. This is not as bad as the cylinders, cylinder blocks, and driveshaft fracturing, which also was a recurring problem. As icing on the cake, the tank is British, so the radiator leaks, oil leaks, and fuel leaks.

The transmission was similarly plagued with issues, gears and rollers would break, and there is at least one occasion of the tank engaging 2 gears simultaneously with terrible results. The clutch axles would also break on occasion, and the cover for the clutch socket was made of cast iron, so not only could it break, but in doing so it could injure the driver. The first 100 tanks used a 5 speed transmission, but it was quickly learned that it had a habit of popping out of gear when placed in 5th, so it was replaced with a 4 speed, where the same thing happened but less often. And again, its British, so the transmission fluid would leak.

In summary, every single automotive component of the tank had severe flaws.

The very worst thing that can be said about the state of early war British tanks is the result from the initial trials of the Churchill, where the testers say the following.

although the vehicle has never completed a run, however short or however long, without the need of at least half a day of maintenance, it has always gotten home under it’s own power. This cannot be said of any other make of tank.

That is the dictionary definition of damning with faint praise.

Clearly this situation was untenable, so in a bid to save the Churchill tank a massive rework scheme was proposed. During this time despite all the flaws production was steaming ahead just as quick as it could, and modifications to the design were coming rapidly. So, starting in march of 1942, Churchill tanks were returned to the factory at Vauxhall for the rebuilding. A month later a second contractor, broom and Wade, was added, as production at Vauxhall of new Churchill’s was still ongoing. This rework scheme covered 71 different modifications to the tank. The most notable was the addition of the mudguards over the top of the tracks, but there was a whole multitude under the surface. The suspension was altered, with some bogies strengthened, some given better rebound pads to improve the poor ride quality of the original tanks, and all axles strengthened so the roadwheels would not fall off. In the engine a new fuel pump was fitted (because I forgot to mention that the fuel pump did not work) the starter was improved, a new carburetor was added, and a new radiator, and the engine mountings were changed to facilitate maintenance. The gearbox was improved, then improved a second time.

At this point the Churchill had yet to see any combat, so new trials were done with reworked tanks. 25 tanks were parceled out for 1000-mile endurance trials. 8 given to 12th royal tank regiment passed with flying colors. 4 of the 9 given to 48th royal tank regiment met this goal. And 4 of the 8 given to 145 royal armored corps met the goal. In all, 16/25, or about 2/3 made it to their goal. In all, while miles better than before, this was still not a fantastic result.

So there was a second rework scheme, launched in December of 1942, that included 98 more distinct modifications. So far 1,200 Churchills had already gone through the scheme, the first 300 being declared hopeless. However, the scope of this rework scheme falls outside of the bounds of this installment as this pertains far more to the 6 pounder Churchill III and IV’s. indeed, a bit of this second scheme was bringing Churchill II’s to the standards of the Churchill III and IV’s, by which point they are essentially a different Tank.

Repairability:

It's occurred to me that so far in the whole series of Paper Tigers we haven't really run into the instance where there is a tank that is not reliable but easy to repair. Generally it seems that both these things run together. The Sherman is very reliable but just in case something goes wrong you can fix it in only a few hours. On the other end of the spectrum something like Panther breaks down all the damn time and is also a huge pain to fix. The Churchill does not break this Trend.

Not to say Churchill does not have some clever ideas that do help with Repair, but for the most part this tank is not an easy tank to fix whenever something goes wrong. on a tank where something goes wrong very often this is not a good thing. Again, we’ll start at the bottom and work our way up.

Let’s start with the tracks. I had hoped that we'd get a little farther than the first thing that we can run into before we get repairability issues, but alas, that is not the case. The issue with the tracks repairability does not crop up in the heavy cast steels tracks, or even the light cast steel tracks. The issue appears in the manganese tracks that replaced the heavy cast steel. The issue is with how the pins were retained. on Sherman the pins are completely dealt away with and tracks are connected with end connector pieces. Or T-34, where the pins are only restricted on one end, and allowed to work their way out toward the hull before being pushed back into place by a striking plate (Panther did this too). So how did the manganese tracks on Churchill retain their pins?

By welding plates over them.

I need a minute.

I shouldn’t need to describe how stupid this is, but I will. To install these tracks on the Churchill 576 individual plates need to be welded to the tracks to retain the pins. If the tracks need to be taken off you need a blowtorch to get the plates off to get the pins out. When you put the tracks on you need a welder to finish the process. Every time you put a pin in or take a pin out you are heat treating the track and likely making it more likely to break. This is incredibly retarded. The issue was so bad that the light cast track was made, being the same except for having a strengthening rib (manganese steel is stronger than cast steel, so make a note of that because it will become relevant one article from now) and a different pin retention.

Off to a horrid start. Is the suspension any better?

Not really.

The suspension has two basic issues as pertains to repairability. The first is simply the amount of suspension units that would need repair and replacement. A Sherman, our gold standard for repairability, has a total of 6 bolt-on units that can be replaced fairly easily. On the Churchill, this number is 22 individual suspension units. That is a lot more to juggle. Like on Sherman they are easy enough to remove and replace (no Christie suspension issues here) but when the suspension has failures there is more work to be done to resolve it. This is not helped by the second issue, which is that several of these bogies are unique, and there is no universal design. On Sherman, any VVSS bogie or HVSS bogie can be used in any position. They are all interchangeable. On Churchill, bogies 1,2,3,9,10,11 were unique and had to be replaced with a like bogie. If you had run out of bogies for a certain position, you were out of luck. Is this a huge problem? not really, but it is a annoyance.

When we get to the engine for a moment all actually looks pretty good. Most of the items that need to be accessed for maintenance have been moved to the top of the engine so that one could check oil, replace filters, and other such things my just popping open the engine deck. There is only one real issue but it is a dozy. Remember when I said that this engine has issues with blowing cylinder head gaskets? The only way to replace them on this tank is to take the engine out. The only other tank with this issue is the M4A4, and that’s only if the bottom cylinders developed issues. That’s enough to sink this engines repairability.

The gearbox, in fact, seems to be the only component of this tank that is easy to access for repair, and remove for replace. The armor at the back can be bolted off or it can be accessed though roof hatches. More importantly, the Churchill, unlike American and German tanks of the period, utilizes a combined engine and transmission powerpack, the whole of which can be replaced much easier than replacing bot engine and transmission on those sorts of tanks. It is really the only saving grace of the
Churchill’s repairability.

Apart from all of this, the hydraulic steering assist mechanism, while absolutely needed to make the tank able to drive, is like on Cromwell a source of near constant repair and maintenance heartache.

In all, repairability of this tank is at a minimum not good, and closer to outright bad.

Ergonomics.

Starting as usual with the driver, we are given a mixed bag. Similarly to the Cromwell, the position is well laid out. The steering is done through a tiller bar coming down from the hull roof, the gearbox is to his right and does not require too much effort to throw, and breaking is done with a pair of pedals. Instruments are to his right, next to the gearbox and in front of a one-cylinder starter motor. To his direct front is a direct vision slit in a door that can be opened for more visibility when out of combat, and he also has a rotating periscope. In all this is a well-appointed, comfortable, ergonomic position that has only one real drawback. Visibility is horrid. And it makes sense, with the tracks going over the hull sides and extending beyond the very front of the tank the driver situated in the hull cannot see to his sides because they are in the way. Even with the periscope that he is given, while he can see over the tracks he has a giant visibility dead zone where terrain features or enemies are completely hidden to him. When the mudguards are added he can barely see over the sides at all. In all, this is probably the drivers position that is most reliant on their commander of all the tanks yet covered.

The hull gunner on Churchill I (we will discuss the position on Churchill II when we talk about III-VI because they are the same) is horrid. Apart from the fact that the howitzer, with all its drawbacks, severely cuts into his free room the main issue is that this hull gunner is a one-man band. he has to grab the ammunition (which is much larger and bulkier than the 40mm) located directly behind him, spin back around and throw it in, wrestle the gun into position, traverse the tank so the howitzer is facing the correct way (he has a lever that steers the tank) aim and fire it. He has 3 jobs instead of just the one. This is the main failing of the bow gunners’ position

So now we get to the turret, and we need to discuss the elephant in the room as far as the turret is concerned. In order to accommodate wide tracks on a hull narrow enough to fit the British railroads loading gauge (for those not into railroads, loading gauge is how tall or wide a train can be to fit through the tunnels and bridges on a line) the turret ring is constrained. On Churchill I and II, its 53.25” in diameter. For comparison, the Sherman has a 69” turret ring. Panther 65”. T-34/85 and panzer IV 63”. Cromwell 57.25”. And the ergonomically maligned T-34/76, with a two-man crew, had 56”. Man oh man this turret is tight. However, getting past that there are things to like. The loader is responsible for the two-pounder, the besa (on his side of the turret) and the 2-inch smoke launcher. His area is narrow, but surprisingly tall, allowing him to stand fully when the seat is folded and helping a little with the narrowness. There is plenty of ammo under his seat for the 2 pounder, and he has his own split hatch and rotating periscope to aid in observation.

The gunner has a periscope too, but to keep it from interfering with the commander’s forward vision it is positioned up against the left wall of the turret, restricting his ability to see to the right. It is also quite far from the gunner’s seat, meaning he must stand and lean to use it. Inconvenient yes, but still nice to have and better than nothing. Of main interest is the gun. It uses a two-speed independent electrical traverse for coarse adjustment, with the high speed rotating the turret at 360 degrees in 15 seconds (90 degrees in less than 4!), and the slow traversing in 24. Of more interest is the elevation. The two pounder tanks were supposed to fire on the move, and so the gun has a free elevation that is controlled by the gunner via a shoulder pad and standing and crouching to elevate and depress the gun. With the gunner being a whole control system for the gun there was some ability to fire on the move with accuracy, but at the cost of stability while stationary. The skill of the gunner mattered more on Churchill than most other tanks because of this. The sight is very rudimentary, a 1.9 power with a 21 degree field of view. It has marks for 500, 1000, and 1500 yards, and the unique feature that the point blank hash is actually above the crosshair. Apart from that, there are hashes for lead, and that’s it.

The commander has a rotating cupola with a pair of periscope in it. While nowhere near as good as the German cupolas of the day, it is not totally hopeless as it offers good vision at any angle, provided you have rotated the periscope to observe there. Vision is good but situational awareness is impaired. Apart from this, the commander has a no 19 wireless radio behind him, which allowed for intercoms, tank to tank communication, and regimental communication on every tank.
In all, apart from the drivers visibility and the hull cannon clustercuss, the ergonomics are only dragged down by the space limitations. Most everything is laid out smartly and in sensible ways, anything that isn’t is compromised for an easily discernable reason. The main problem is simply space, and that seems to be the running theme with British vehicles so far.

Production.

The short answer is that 303 Churchill I and 1,128 Churchill II tanks were made between June of 1941 and February of 1942. These tanks were not created sequentially, but a Churchill I or II was made based solely on if there was a 3 inch howitzer. As said before, the first 300 tanks do not get reworked, so while that is not all of the Churchill I's it is a significant amount.

Conclusion:

This tank is the worst tank that I have reviewed so far, by a decent margin. You get two choices with this tank and both are horrid. Either you can have a traditional paper tiger in 1941 with a very potent AT weapon, a decent anti-infantry weapon, world beating armor, at the cost of embarrassing reliability. Or, you get all somewhat reliable but not really tank with a obsolete anti tank cannon, Ok armor, and nothing else. When it has effective armor and armament, its reliability is probably the worst I have seen out of anything. It is first gen Panther at the battle of Kursk bad. If you wait for the rework program to make the reliability tolerable (not good, not average, but tolerable) then the tank now has a single purpose anti-tank gun that struggles to defeat most of its opponents from the front and a obsolete HE thrower with numerous drawbacks. And that’s assuming that you have a Churchill I, if you have a Churchill II, against infantry all you have is a machine gun. If you run into a AT gun, you are stuck trying to snipe the damn thing. The point is that no matter what point in time the Churchill I or II is at it has such major issues as to make it near worthless.

And you know, looking this tank, this shitty shitty shitty tank, I find myself looking at the Panther and King Tiger with a bit of a better appreciation. Not just because they aren’t as bad as this piece of shit tank, but because I can now recontextualize them. I suspect that when the Germans tested the Panther, they were horrified. But what were they going to do? Wait a year, perhaps up to two, for the tank to be fixed before putting it into the field? In the case of Panther two years after the tank starts production that would mean it would be introduced after the Battle of the Bulge. In the case of King Tiger it would miss the whole war. Yes, the tank is horrid, but if they did not introduce it they would be stuck with a mid 30’s tank as being the main tank of their force for the whole war (which sorta happened anyway because building a whole new tank in a war is hard). So yes, the Churchill I and II are horrid, horrid tanks. But with the threat of imminent invasion, you’d take a horrid tank. With the threat of the allies sweeping into berlin, you’d take a horrid tank. I’d go so far as to say that the main factor that leads to the Churchill having a decent reputation is the English channel. It allowed the tank to be fixed and modernized before it had to be committed. If we remembered the Churchill based purely on the Churchill I and II, we would not think fondly of this tank.

At least we do not remember the Churchill based on this.

At least they aint the Valiant

7112922
Well, you could fix the churchills issues.

7112889
Also the Mks that no one photographed. Not pleased with the fact that 90 percent of all pictures of a mk 1 or 2 are of it on excercise in the salisbury plains. Next one, whenever that may be, will at least have more pictures.

7112598
Mmm yes. I remember this tank in War thunder.

It is amazingly garbage. Introduced into a battle tier very late into the game, against a whole bunch of tanks with an outdated gun and a mostly useless 75mm HE/Smoke pooper. Armor is kinda neat though if you can reach the front lines, or if you fight weaker tanks.

Valentine gets a better gun at the same tier, so like, why bother.