Tank Thing: The British Comet

The British Comet: Also known as The Cruiser Tank A34
Armament: 1x 17pdr. (aka 77mm HV), 2x 7.92mm machien guns.
Armor: 102mm (4.02in)
Weight: 32.7 tons
Speed: 32mph
Range: 125 miles.

This tank was the first British tank that came near to matching the mobility and firepower of the German Panther tank. It's arrival so late in 1945 resulted in the Comet playing little or no significant role in the war. At first the idea was that the Brits would up gun the Cromwell but those plans never actually happened as they wished to address several known flaws with the Cromwell.
This basically an reworked Cruiser A30 tank. So I will include the stats of the A30 Cruiser Tank (Challenger) here as well.


Looking at the Challenger we see the same 17pdr gun but it is housed in a tall vertical walled turret which was easily destroyed by German gunnery. Also noted is the lack of an off center mounted chasis machine gun on the front vertical plate, this MG was removed to facilitate storage of the longer ammo for the 17pdr.

Challenger (A30)
Armamament: 1x 17pdr (76mm), 1x 7.92 Machine gun.
Weight: 36 tons
speed: 32mph
Range: 119.86 miles

The A30 was a real loser in many respects, it's lack of speed in turret traverse, inability to ford rivers, and it's top heavy design. Only about 200 or so were produced as the M4 Sherman based Firefly equipped with the same 17pdr gun, was a better buy.
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The idea for the British tank forces were that there would be two types, fast moving lightly armored Cruiser tanks (and usually lightly gunned too) to act as modern Cavalry while the second type was the Heavily armored slow moving infantry support tanks, essentially moving pill boxes.

It wasn't until the round of tanks after the A34 that the British started to see well balanced Main Battle Tanks.