WHATEVER NEXT?

Not long ago a gentleman walked into the library and dumped a pile of old photographs and photo albums on the table. He had rescued them from a bonfire at a house clearance and, seeing that they were mostly of military vehicles he thought we might like them.

A quick inspection confirmed that; it is quite amazing what turns up, completely unexpected and without any warning at all.

You may not recognise this vehicle, very few people would, but in case you are interested it is an armoured, self-propelled 17 pounder anti-tank gun mounted on the six-wheeled chassis of a Thornycroft Amazon truck.

Thornycroft seem to have built it themselves, at their factory in Basingstoke, but we don’t know who designed it, or even why come to that. Also, as far as we know, they only ever built one, which is probably just as well by the look of it, but until now photographs of it have been scarce – now, thanks to this gentleman, we have over twenty different views, even the interior, as shown below.

Here we are looking rearwards, over the breech of the gun. The workmanship is basic, to say the least. B. T White in British Tanks and Fighting Vehicles 1914-1945 (Ian Allan 1970) says it was built in 1942, that it carried 50mm of armour but at 13.5 tons proved too heavy to operate off the road and was therefore abandoned at the prototype stage.

The Seventeen Pounder was an excellent weapon in 1942, more than capable of dealing with a Tiger, but 50mm of armour would be pathetic and a vehicle of this size would be difficult to hide.

Even so it is quite amazing that these pictures have survived and we are delighted to be able to add them to our archive.