Conqueror Heavy Tank
With the end of WWII and the bigginong of the Cold War, the British
realized they needed something with heavier firepower and armor to deal
with the the Soviet IS-3 (and later T-10). The Conqueror entered
production in 1955, armed with an American-designed 120mm cannon (based
on an anti-aircraft gun). However, it's size and weight made it
difficult to delpoy effectively in the field and the tank had
reliability problems. By the late 50's, the Centurion was upgraded to
the excellent 105mm L7 gun and the need for the Conqueror vanished. The
last of the 200 Conquerors was removed from service in 1963.
The Conqueror has a crew of four. The commander sits in the turret. Also in the turret is the gunner (who fires the cannon and coaxial LMG) and the loader/radio operator. The driver sits in the body. The gunner and loader manually traverse the turret at 0.5 degrees per second, or electrically at 9 degrees per second. The Conqueror uses 27.2 gallons per hour at routine usage.
Subassemblies: Immense Tank chassis +4 with mild
slope, full rotation Medium TD turret with mild slope [Body:T] +3,
tracks
+4.
Powertrain: 604-kW gasoline engine w/604-kW tracked drive
train and 210 gallons in standard fuel tank [body]; 16,000-kWs
batteries.
Occupancy: 1 CS Body, 3 CS Both Cargo:
None.
| Armor | F | RL | B | T | U |
| Body | 5/700 | 4/425 | 4/425 | 4/75 | 4/75 |
| Tracks | 4/55 | 4/55 | 4/55 | 4/55 | 4/55 |
| Turret | 5/700 | 4/425 | 4/425 | 4/75 | 0/0 |
Weaponry
128mm Medium TG/120mm L1A1 [Tur:F] (35).
Ground LMG/7.62mm BESA [Tur:F] (3,000).
Statistics
| Size: 38’¥13’¥11’ | Payload: 3.44 tons | Lwt: 71 tons |
| Volume: 242 |
Maint.: 21 hours | Price: $89,800 |
HT: 7
HP: 2600 [Body], 360 [Turret], 900 [Each Track]
| gSpeed: 21 |
gAccel: 2 | gDecel: 20 | gMR: 0.25 | gSR: 6 |
Ground pressure is Moderate (1/2).
Design Notes
The design weight
was reduced 15% to match historical weight. Turret armor is Expensive.
Actual ground pressure was just into the High range, but was treated
as Moderate. Also, HT was reduced by two to represent the unreliability
of the design.
As the design was very overweight, the commander's rotating cupola
was subsumed into the turret statistics. Some may have mounted a
Ground LMG adjacent to the cupola.
Variants
The American M-103 was a very similar design. It was roughly the same
in game terms, but weighed 62 tons, had a second loader and a 12.7mm
M-2HB (Very Long Ground HMG) next to the commander's hatch. Some 200
M-103's served from 1952-1973.