Did the British Archer self-propelled 17pdr anti-tank gun have any recorded successes against German armour?

[Sid Guttridge]

Did the British Archer self-propelled 17pdr anti-tank gun on the Valentine chassis have any recorded successes against German armour? It was first issued in October1944 in NW Europe and later in Italy, so its opportunities were presumably limited.

Many thanks,

Sid.

[Kingfish]

I wonder why they even bothered.
The Achilles saw action from D-day on, and of course there was also the Firefly and Challenger available.

[Ironmachine]

Some examples of Archer successes (or at least claims) against German tanks can be found in this old thread:
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=222525&hilit=archer&start=30
though the reliability of the sources is less than perfect.

[Sheldrake]

I wonder why they even bothered.
The Achilles saw action from D-day on, and of course there was also the Firefly and Challenger available.

The "Achillies" and Firefly were British designs based on US Lease Lend equipment that was to be returned at the end of the war. The Challenger was a tank and effectively a "Cromwell Firefly."

The Archer was an SP Anti tank gun and intended to replace many of the towed 17 pounder guns in infantry and corps anti tank units.

[EwenS]

Development of Archer and Challenger pre-date Firefly and Achilles by some time. The problem was getting them into production in wartime Britain. The extremely shortened history is set out below.

Plans to put the 17pdr into both a tank and an SPG go back as far as 1941, probably due to the anticipated weight of the AT gun itself (it weighed 3 tons in service). But the real development effort got underway in Sept 1942. At that point the plans were for the 17pdr A30 Challenger tank and an SPG with a 17pdr in a turret on the same chassis. But development of the tank took priority and the SPG eventually appeared as the A30 Avenger SP2 in 1945. Only 80 of the latter were produced at the end of the day. In 1943 it was decided to limit Challenger production to 200, as thoughts were already turning to the A34 Comet, but it took until March 1944 for Challenger production to start and late July for them to appear on the front line.

So in typical British fashion there had to be a stop-gap for the SPG. Long story short, that became the Archer based on the readily available Valentine chassis (as the tank was about to cease production) accepted for service in June 1943 but production of which ended up delayed until April 1944. 800 ordered, 655 built through to 1945. They replaced some towed 17pdr guns in AT regiments in infantry divisions from Oct 1944. They were intended to serve alongside Lend-Lease supplied 3” M10 when ordered.

But by late 1943 Britain appreciated it would need more 17pdr tanks and SPGs for the NWE campaign in 1944 so the experiments began that led to Firefly and Achilles.

The Achilles was deployed in AT regts attached to Armoured divisions and as Corps troops in NWE. The name was rarely used. In most documentation it is referred to as the 17pdr M10 or 17pdr SP M10.

Both Archer and Achilles served the Royal Artillery post-war, continuing in service in small numbers into the 1950s.

Edit:- another point about “why bother” is that US Lend -Lease could not always be guaranteed, for various reasons, to supply all the quantities Britain required for its armed forces.

Edit 2:- And why continue with the project when M10s are available?

M10 production ceased by the end of 1943 as planned, with the last of 1648 delivered to Britain in early 1944. From May 1944-April 1945 1017 were converted to the 17pdr. So the pool is limited once losses and unsuitable vehicles are taken into account.

For the US Army the successor tank destroyer was to be the 76mm armed M18 Hellcat. When it was realised that it’s gun wouldn’t be powerful enough the US moved to the 90mm M36. But that didn’t enter production until March 1944 and didn’t reach the front line until Oct and the US needed them all for itself.

So it is just as well Britain had the Archer in production in 1944.

[Sheldrake]

The development of SP anti tank guns in Britain was complicated by service politics and doctrinal differences between the RA and RAC. Anything that looked like a "tank" was at risk of being claimed by the RAC. The plans to mount the 3" 20 cwt into a Churchill bogged down in late 1941. (The combination of the Churchill's armour and a decent gun for might have been a useful addition to the allied armoury in 1942). The Archer looked much less like a tank than the M10 - even though the 17 pounder M10 was very popular with its users.

[Juha]

Did the British Archer self-propelled 17pdr anti-tank gun on the Valentine chassis have any recorded successes against German armour? It was first issued in October1944 in NW Europe and later in Italy, so its opportunities were presumably limited.

Many thanks,

Sid.

Hello, better late than never
7 Panthers on 20 Feb 1945 see: http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/ve ... 307/page-3 message #42 by Stolpi
One SP and another badly damaged which Germans recovered during the following night. see: http://www.ww2talk.com/index.php?thread ... 742/page-8, message #155 by Stolpi