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A Sherman Firefly with the 17-pounder, South African National Museum of Military History, 2014. The 17-pounder outperformed all other Allied armour-piercing guns, and was quickly adapted for use on various tank chassis. However, few tanks were capable of carrying such a large gun due to the size limitations of their turret rings.
The first thing Kilbourn had to fix was the lack of a workable recoil system for the 17-pounder. The 17-pounder traveled 40 in (1.0 m) back as it absorbed the recoil of the blast. This was too long for the Sherman's turret. [8] Kilbourn solved this problem by redesigning the recoil system completely rather than modifying it.
The 17 pdr SP Achilles was basically a modified M10, the principal difference being the gun. The main armament of the Achilles was the Ordnance QF 17-pounder, a substantially more powerful gun than the 3 inch (76.2 mm) M7 mounted on the standard M10. The single top-mounted .50 inch (12.7 mm) M2 Browning heavy machine gun was retained.
The turret mounted the Ordnance QF 17-pounder gun required in the Tank Board specification and the hull machine gun was removed to provide stowage space for the long 17-pounder cartridges. The War Office expected that this larger ammunition, together with its stowage forward, would require two loaders alongside the commander and gunner in the ...
That was why the 77mm HV was designed, to allow a gun with most of the 17 pdr's characteristics to be fitted to cruiser tanks, as opposed to the Sherman only - the Sherman had a larger diameter turret ring than the Cromwell or Comet which is why a conversion like the Firefly was possible.
The tank blew up shortly afterwards. Hans Hoflinger in a following Tiger was also attacked by enfilading fire from Sherman Fireflies with powerful 17-pound guns, and had to abandon his tank. He saw the fire and explosion in Wittmann's tank, and that the turret was displaced to the right and tilted down to the front somewhat.
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The 17-pounder was also much larger and had a longer recoil than the 76 mm, which required a redesign of the turret and despite this, made the turret very cramped. The 17-pounder also had a less effective HE round. The 76 mm gunned Shermans supplied to the British were only used in Italy or by the Polish 1st Armoured Division in north-west Europe.