The Conqueror Gun Carriage is a British tier 10 self-propelled gun.
A proposal to mount a 234-mm howitzer on the chassis of the Conqueror. The power unit was placed in the front. Existed only in blueprints.
The Conqueror Gun Carriage Or "CGC", nicknamed as the "Conqueror Orbital Laser Carriage," is the final advancement of the British SPG line. Unlike other SPGs, it is wise to position it closer to the front lines, for several reasons. First of all, it has short range, and takes a long time to lob its shells to their target location. However, it is possible to get away with being close to the action due to the Gun Carriage having the best frontal hull armor of any SPG in the game. Its gun also has monstrous alpha damage and splash radius, giving its shells quite the punch.
The Conqueror Gun Carriage marks the end of its British self-propelled gun line.
Player Opinion[]
Pros and Cons[]
Pros:[]
- Upper front plate can deflect rounds capable of penetrating 250+ mm of armor.
- Large splash radius and high damage.
- Very wide gun traverse arc and high mobility make getting shots easy.
- Extremely high shell arc, making it easy to hit enemies behind cover.
- Accuracy is pretty good for it's caliber.
Cons:[]
- Painful reload speed.
- The armor is only on the UFP, the superstructure that houses the gun is only 50 mm.
- No gun depression combined with bad view range make self-defense difficult
- Gun range can be a problem on larger maps.
- Despite its mediocre reload time, it has somewhat low damage per shot compared to the T92.
Performance[]
The Conqueror GC is much like a buffed, (armour wise), T92 in some ways. Unfortunately, the gun is worse in all hard statistics except ammunition capacity. This includes the better armor, as well as H.P. pool. However, the gun has shorter range as well as slower shell travel time than other tier X SPG's. This forces you to get slightly closer to the front lines on larger maps, but this shorter range allows you to reach the maximum range much more easily on most maps, which causes your rounds to fall at steeper angles than other tier X SPG's. This allows you to land shells behind cover that other artillery pieces would be unable to. However, the Conqueror Gun Carriage pays for this by having the slowest reloading single-shot gun in the game, requiring you to pick your shots carefully, as you do not have many. The mobility is acceptable, allowing you to re-position around the battlefield and quickly switch your aim to the other side of the map, but the low top speed of 35 km/h means you can't outrun scouts or mediums that break through. If forced into T.D. mode, it is a good idea to set up an ambush. Scouts and some mediums can also bounce off your upper front plate if they do not aim properly. Use your H.P. pool to absorb a shot or two from whatever is shooting you to give your gun more aim time and increase your chance of a hit, because if you miss, you won't get a second shot.
Historical Info[]
The chassis for the new tank was taken from the A45 Infantry Support Tank, started in 1944 shortly after that of the A41 Centurion. After the war the project was relocated to that of the "Universal Tank" design of the FV 200 series. The 200 series was to have used a common hull for all uses (self-propelled artillery, armoured personnel carrier, different varieties of tank, etc.). One tank type was to be the heavy FV 201 of 55 tonnes, armed with an 83.4 mm gun also known as 20 pounder.
In 1949 it was decided to bring the armament up to 120 mm. As this delayed the project, in 1952 the FV 201 hull was combined with a 17 pounder-armed Centurion Mk 2 turret to give the FV 221 Caernarvon Mark I. Twenty-one were built with the Mk III 20 pounder turret as the Caernavon Mk II. The FV 221 may originally have been intended to be the "Main Battle Tank" member of the FV 201 series, but with the success of the A41 Centurion such a vehicle was no longer required. In either event, the Caernarvon was only used for chassis development work serving in troop trials. In 1955 the first Conqueror was produced. Twenty Mark 1 and 165 Mark 2 Conquerors were built including conversions of Caernavon MkIIs. Production continued until 1959. It had lost much enthusiasm once the Centurion was upgraded to an L7 105 mm gun.
The gun design was American, the same as used on the US M103 heavy tank; with separate charge and projectile, as would also be the case in the Chieftain that followed. The charge was not bagged but in a brass cartridge, which offered some safety advantages, but reduced shell capacity to 35 rounds.
The armour was very heavy for the time, especially in the front, where it was seven inches (178 mm) in the horizontal plane. Unfortunately, this, along with the weight of the huge turret required to house the large gun and the very large hull volume, made the vehicle very heavy, giving it a relatively low top speed and making it mechanically unreliable. Also, few bridges could support its weight. However, rather like the Second World War Churchill tank, the Conqueror had exceptional terrain handling characteristics and proved to be as capable cross country as the lighter (and on paper slightly faster) Centurion tank.
One feature of particular note was the rotating commander's cupola, which was at the heart of the Conqueror's fire control system, advanced for its time. The commander could align the cupola on a target independently of the turret, measure the range with a Coincidence rangefinder, and then direct the gunner on to the new lay mechanically indicated to him by the cupola. In theory, when the gunner traversed to the new lay he would find the target already under his sights, ready to be engaged. Meanwhile, the commander was free to search for the next target. (The Soviet bloc also used similar devices, such as the TPKU-2 and TKN-3, on all of their post–World War II tanks though theirs did not use a rangefinder.) The system may have been inspired by a similar device, without range finder, installed in WII German Panzers which was apparently highly successful, but was not repeated in subsequent tanks until an updated electronic version of the same idea appeared in the American M60A2 variant of the Patton series.