Combat experience in Tunisia had shown that while the Churchill was certainly well armored in comparison to all other British tanks, it was clearly not well armored enough to provide protection against flak 88s, and the growing numbers of Pak 40’s. The general consensus was that armor was the priority, even if speed suffered.

However, the turret of the Churchill III, while flawed, had shown quite a amount of promise. This, along with soviet examples of the T-34, the new Sherman’s, and the German armor that opposed them had shown that welding was sufficiently robust to be used to assemble an armored fighting vehicle. This would allow the .5 inch thick mild steel frame to be gotten rid of, as well as the rivets and brackets that held the hull together and attached the armor. These weight savings could all be transferred into increasing the armor of the tank. Because this would necessitate a entire new hull and turret, it was agreed that the whole design would undergo improvement, creating a tank that was both undeniably a Churchill, but also in essence a brand new vehicle design.

This would be the heavy Churchill.

As far as how this tank has been rated by culture, there is plenty of love for it, and plenty of respect for the capabilities of one main variant. Well will see if the tank improved on the strengths of the previous model, or if the design overhaul had some critical flaw.

Armor:

The armor, being the whole point of the new tank, is the most substantially changed area. And with welding of plates, it is pretty clean and easy to describe.

At the front, the lower plate was 140 mm thick, angled slightly to meet a armor basis of 6 inches. The upper glacis plate was 57mm thick and sloped at 66 degrees, and terminated at the flat 152mm plate for the driver and Besa. the drivers front plate door was made smaller and circular, and with a chamfer so that it would act like a plug against the armor plate if hit.

The side hull armor was a single large casting of 95.25 inches. This plate was rated at IT 90, as opposed to the IT 80 plates of the front armor, meaning that it was slightly stouter than them. Rear armor was 51mm.

The turret removed the main issue that plagued Churchill IV-IV. In general a casting cannot have too big of a difference in thickness across it, because this will make heat treatment much harder to do. As a result, the Churchill’s with cast turret had rather thick roofs, almost 35mm. This is weight that really doesn’t protect against anything and requires that the armor at the front and sides be correspondingly reduced. On Churchill VII the turret was cast without the turret roof, which was welded on later as a separate casting. This allowed the roof to be thinner at 20mm and the cast armor to be thicker, at 152mm of IT90 at the front and 95.25mm at the sides and rear.

Alright, let’s shoot at it.

First let’s have a Pak 40 take a whack at it. It cannot penetrate the front at any range, and only when the tank angles at 50 degrees can it start penetrating the hull. The same applies for the Kwk 40 and Stuk 40 of the Panzer IV and Stug III.
It is technically impossible for a flak 88 to penetrate the front of the Churchill VII, but perhaps at 100 yards or less flat on it could get lucky. Again, the tank needs to angle at 50 degrees before a penetration becomes possible.

So how about a tiger?

Tiger actually has a chance of penetrating the Churchill VII flat on within 500 meters, but any angling and the Churchill becomes invincible until it is at a angle greater than 40 degrees.

Panther does a bit better, able to penetrate at nearly a kilometer flat on, but with a zone of immunity from 30-40 degrees.
And just to prove what a gun it is, the Kwk 43 88mm L/71 penetrates the Churchill’s front from 3km and only has a chance of bouncing at optimal angling at 1.5km.

Against the vast majority of German cannons Churchill VII has immunity, and even the Tiger and Panther must work for a penetration. But, there are still tanks that it is vulnerable to frontally.

If only something could be done about that…

Yes. The blessed tracks have returned!

Again, keep in mind that the manganese tracks are the ones that will help most.

With tracks applied, the tiger no longer can penetrate the tank from the front, and the sides only at a 60 degree angle! The panther can maybe pen at 300 yards, but the zone of immunity is from 10-50 degrees now. The 88 mm l71 still can pen from the front at 2 km, but now there is a zone of immunity at 40 degrees angling.

I believe the best example of how well armored the Churchill VII is comes from is the following. It was determined during fighting in Normandy that if a 152mm HE shell hit the tank at the front, it was possible to break the welds holding the 57mm sloped plate and have it fall on the driver and codriver. So they added 38mm strengthening plates for the welds, so the tank could be invulnerable to 6 in HE.

In all, the Churchill VII is an incredibly well armored tank by any standard.

Armament:

Oh hooray, this one will be easy, because it's already been covered. The Churchill VII used the QF 75mm cannon, covered in depth in the Cromwell review. At this point a token mention should be made of the Churchill VIII, a Churchill VII with modified turret and the QF 95mm howitzer, but it seems that tank never saw any service, so we'll ignore it.

And that’s it, the only other thing worth talking about is that while designing the tank, these folks from the petroleum warfare department insisted that the bow besa gun port be modified to accept something called a projector instead.

Yes, we should probably talk about the Crocodile.

As the Churchill VII was basing drawn up, there was a lot of interest in Britain for putting a powerful flamethrower on a tank. There were some initial forays into this field, with such things as the 3 Churchill Oke flamethrower tanks at the Dieppe raid, some prototypes on everyone’s favorite test bed tank the Valentine, and the ‘Wasp' universal carrier.

Of course, the OKE flamethrower had no way to aim it apart from the driver pointing the tank at a target and hoping that was enough. The Valentine was an obsolete vehicle to support a flamethrower, and the Wasp would not do well against most fortifications, being a Universal Carrier loaded with flammables. A heavily armored tank was required to mount a flamethrower that could aimed and had usable range in excess of 100 yards (i.e. out of Panzerfaust range) and still had access to its turret weapons. To accomplish this, it was begrudgingly determined that a trailer was needed if the turret gun and bow gunner were to remain ( as a note, the Soviets had a comparable flamethrower in the OT 34, at the loss of the bow gunner and ability to aim, The Americans had a comparable flamethrower on the Sherman by replacing the main gun, just a question of what compromises you are willing to accept). The Churchill seemed to fit the bill quite nicely, and with the Churchill VII being drawn up, it was very easy to request modifications to the design to allow rapid installation of the flame thrower. In fact, every Churchill VII made could be converted to a Crocodile in a matter of hours at the workshop.

And so, the weapon itself. Fully charged it could shoot a stream of fuel research aluminum stearate (thickened gas with the results of dissolving aluminum in stearic acid) 120 yards, for about 80 seconds. Fuel could be shot either lit or unlit, so for maximum physiological impact the offending bunker or structure and its inhabitants could be soaked in fuel, giving them an opportunity to surrender before being burned to a crisp or suffocated. This was all things considered the best tank mounted flame thrower of the war.

Mobility:

For Churchill VII, mobility was mildly impacted by the additional armor and weight. The gearing of the final drives was changed to provide more pulling power at the cost of speed, dropping from 26 km/h flat out to a miserable 20. That’s about 12 mph. Ground pressure rose as well, from about 13 psi to 13.5 psi.

The question though is if this really affected anything, and I cant find any evidence that it did. The Churchill that climbed at 42 degrees in the Australian trials was a Churchill VII, so it didn’t affect climbing ability. This means that it likely wouldn’t affect its ability to climb obstacles, and again the Australians had no issues with its mud performance.

The only thing holding back the Churchill VII in comparison to the others is the trailer.

Yes, this only affects the Churchill Crocodiles, but it does affect it. With the trailer attached, you cant reverse the tank, you cant neutral steer, and you cannot turn the tank at too sharp a angle. This sucks for mobility.

^{note the angle that the trailer is at in this picturer}

On the plus side though, the trailer doesn’t really affect it’s off road or hill climbing ability. Also, if at any point the driver decides that the trailer isn’t worth it, he can detach it with the press of a button. Neat.

In all, the Churchill VII is less noble than its predecessors, but not by a meaningful amount. The Crocodile, however, is compromised.

Reliability:

Nothing really changed between the post rework Churchills and the Churchill VII. The transmission and engine did undergo a number change, but this was simply an design that incorporated all previous reworks as standard in both cases, and thus was exactly identical in terms of performance. In all, at a minimum it was good reliability, at a max it was top tier, but a lack of trials makes it impossible to make a ruling.

Repairability:

Similarly unchanged. The no 2 and no 3 bogies have been welded together, but does that really matter? No.

Ergonomics:

If the main goal of Churchill VII was to increase the armor, and the secondary goal was to add the ability to be used as a flame tank, then tertiary would be improving the ergonomic conditions of the tank.

For the driver, the main change is in his vision equipment. The periscope on previous Churchill’s was always offset to the right, making it inconvenient to look left through it. Churchill VII solves this issue by adding a second periscope offset to the left. Want to look left, use the left one, want to look right, use the right periscope. Want to look forward, use the direct vision plug. All well and good, but in combat none in their right mind would keep that plug open so the driver to lean one way or another in order to see out. Awkward.

On crocodiles, there is a clever system to ensure that the driver does not mangle the trailer. There are limit switches built into the trailer link, that if the tank is turning too sharply activate a red or green light in the drivers compartment and lets him know to straighten the tank.

Apart from that though, it’s good enough. The periscopes are the taller ones used on Churchill VI so there is some side visibility.
It’s still an easy enough tank to drive, and all the controls and gauges are well laid out.

The bow gunners’ position is only changed by the removal of the auxiliary steering lever when compared to the gun tanks. Even when mounting the flame gun, nothing changes. He has the same sights, same periscope, same room and same way of even holding and firing the gun. In all, a good position.

Nothing has changed for the loader either. He has the armored bins like the Churchill VI, but all the same advantages and disadvantages. The hatch is good, the periscope is good, the smoke launcher is a good utility to have but damn inconvenient, and the best placement and lack of space are bad. It is middling at best.

The gunner’s seat is essentially equivalent to how it was laid out on Churchill III, except that the gun is going to be geared elevation only. Apart from that, nothing new. Same cramped space, same sights, same better than nothing periscope at the top left of the turret, and same besa on his side of the tank. Its workable, all the basics are covered, but the space and that besa really don’t help.

So now we get to the commander, and a item that I had missed last time. The No. 19 wireless set was only able to communicate to other armored elements, and the was no good way to communicate with infantry. So, in late 1943 a tank version of the No. 38 infantry wireless set was made, being fitted in Churchill’s as priority so that infantry communications could be established for the infantry tank. This radio was mounted in one of the storage bins that the no 19 sat on, and had it’s own radio mast. As a rule, a Churchill with 3 antennae would mount the number 38, and with 2 only had the number 19. These were very common on Churchill VI and VII, and still found on Churchill’s III And IV in 1944.

^{the middle radio mast is for the number 38}

But the main change with Churchill VII is with the commander’s cupola. Gone is the vision cupola of old, replaced with the new all round vision cupola. This cupola was obviously designed to allow the commander all around vision without needing to open the hatches, but had a few extra requirements as well. It had to be low profile, unlike cupolas on T-34, panzer IV and early Tigers and Panthers that were conspicuous weak spots. It had to provide the commander a greater amount of visibility to the front than other nations cupolas, ideally 180 degrees of uninterrupted viewing. And it had to have a provision for a extending periscope so that obstacles could be looked over without needing to open the hatch and expose the commander.

^{Carl, you cheater! that's a Sherman V, not a Churchill. yep, but this is the best in period picture of the cupola. note that it is missing the rear periscope that is height adjustable.}

And all of these requirements were met.

It is no exaggeration to say that the resulting cupola was the best in the world at the time. The front of the cupola had 3 prisms mounted close together, providing a calculated 113 degrees field of view from a regular position, and up to 150 when viewing up close to the periscope. In the normal position the fields of view on the 3 up front and the periscope to the left and the right would overlap, allowing with a simple turn of the head 180 degrees of vision. This was unable to be replicated by any other cupola. Rearward visibility was worse (meaning inline with other nations cupolas) with only 3 periscopes for the rear half, each offering 90 degrees FOV if pressed to the prism, but without overlapping fields of view. The center rear periscope was adjustable in height, able to be raised to allow the commander to see targets 10 degrees below the periscopes level height (i.e., this allows the commander to be buttoned up and see targets the gunner can see at max gun depression). The cupola could be rotated, unlike all other nations vision cupolas, and had a fold flat split hatch with spring loading. This cupola, I maintain, was the best of the war.

In all, the Churchill VII is the most ergonomic of the Churchill’s, but the question of if it was ergonomically good remains elusive. I would contend that if the besa was switched, it would be. But as is, the drivers seat is pretty good, the bow gunners is pretty good, the commanders is great, but the gunner and loader… they are at best adequate. In all, I think this tanks ergonomics are fine, but nothing exceptional.

Production:

From December 1943 until mid-1945, about 1400 of the Churchill VII were produced. 69 were available for D-Day (45 of which were crocodiles) with 44 in reserve, just over 1/10th of the Churchill’s available. In December, the strength had grown to 132 tanks available (90 of which were crocodiles) just over 1/5 of the Churchill’s available. There were 800 crocodile kits produced, with 250 earmarked for the invasion of Japan.

Conclusions:

With the Churchill VII, the Churchill design had finally realized the design requirements laid out way back in 1940 and fulfilled the promise of the Churchill tank family. It was a tank that was sufficiently armored to attack fortifications head on, armed enough (with the crocodile) to subdue them, and able to traverse any terrain required to do so. And it could do all of this with a great degree of reliability. And its timing was perfect, arriving for the invasion of Europe and the defeat of the Siegfried line.
Whereas the Churchill I and II were undeniably bad tanks, and the Churchill III-IV having to bitterly claw their way to a good rating, there is in my mind no question here. The Churchill VII is a great tank.

nice