That’s the Archer. Achilles is a Wolverine with a 17pdr.
And actually, the Archer proved fairly handy. It was very, very good at ambushing enemy tanks, since it could reverse into position slowly, and then drive “forwards” away from the ambush, without having to turn the tank. Pretty handy for a quick escape. Nevermind the Achilles which carries a 17pdr, a pretty good gun.
Because that was an accepted design choice. The Matilda and Churchill were down the line of Infantry support tanks, so mobility wasn’t a priority (although Gaijin undercooks it massively regarding the hill climbing performance of the Churchill) - in fact most British tanks were primarily designed around infantry support, with tank killing abilities as a handy secondary role. It was only really about 1942/43 when the first properly heavy tank started rocking around, that we bothered with giving ourselves Tank destroyers or 17pdr fitted tanks - see Achilles, Challenger, Archer, etc.
Again, the tank is perceived as a tool to enable infantry to eliminate enemy forces and capture and hold key positions, not as its own strategic weapon. This constant misalignment of thought processes are what leads everyone to go “hurrr durrr British Tank bad” when actually they were pretty good at their design function (mandatory “standfast Ajax” which does not work) - killing tanks wasn’t the primary purpose of most vehicles (and those that were tasked with this are pretty good at it) until probably the Conqueror (which was specifically designed to destroy heavy tanks, specifically the IS-3), and that is a very niche corner of tank design - I’m not the SME on this (I do more boats) but british doctrine meant that this wasn’t the case.
There were some people who definitely did see the tank as its own entity, not a infantry support tool (Liddell Hart?) but the prevailing take was British Armour should be for infantry support.
It has nothing to do with that because chamber sized hasn’t been changed on L/55, only the length, pressure and muzzle velocity has been increased so the whole reason why all leopard 2 models still loads the chamber in 6 seconds its because Gaijin wants to.
Back in the day they nerfed the Leopard2A6’s reloading time to almost 8 seconds due to how it was stomping.
Disclaimer: I’m talking about the real life.
‘Techincal’/‘Practical’ RPM consider not only the loading time but also the aim time. The loader coup and lock the gun during the loading, after it released, gunner must adjust his aim. (This specifically affects T-72A/B series, because of TPD-K1 aiming line is fixed to gun line, if my memory was right.)
So, why isn’t the M1128 Stryker’s reload rate revised if, all of a sudden, realism matters?
It should be 6 seconds, as it was reported @Smin1080p_WT M1128 Stryker MGS Reload Rate
Nope, it’s vertical stabilisation is independent from that.
Even when loading angles got introduced to T-55/62’s in 1970 their sights were modernised to include independent vertical stabilisation together with their stabilisers so gunner’s point of aim was not taken off the target. Before that it was mechanically tied to the gun to achieve it’s stabilisation.
