Ordnance QF 6-pounder
1940s towed 57 mm anti-tank gun of British origin
The Ordnance quick-firing 6-pounder 7 cwt, or just 6-pounder, was a British 57 mm gun, serving during the Second World War as a primary anti-tank gun of both the British and United States Army (as the 57 mm gun M1). It was also used as the main armament for a number of armoured fighting vehicles.
Although designed before the start of the war, it did not reach service until the North African Campaign in April 1942, where it replaced the 2-pounder as an anti-tank gun, allowing the 25-pounder gun-howitzer to revert to its intended artillery role.
Development and production
Development
Limitations of the existing 2-pounders were apparent even as the gun entered service in 1938. An effort was made to replace it with a much more capable weapon starting that year.
The Woolwich Arsenal was entrusted with the development of a new gun with a calibre of 57 mm. Guns of this calibre had been employed by the Royal Navy from the late 19th century and manufacturing equipment was available. The gun design was complete by 1940 but the carriage design took until 1941. The production was further delayed by the defeat in the Battle of France. The loss of equipment – most of the heavy equipment of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was left behind in France during Operation Dynamo – and the prospect of a German invasion made re-equipping the army with anti-tank weapons an urgent task.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ordnance QF 6-pounder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.