The Churchill A22 was a British heavy infantry tank of World War II. The first prototypes were built in 1940, and serial production was carried out in the period 1941-1945. In total, about 7,400 copies of this tank of all versions were produced, making it one of the most produced British tanks of World War II. The Churchill was equipped with a Bedford engine with a capacity of 350 hp. The armament of the machine — depending on the version — consists of one 40 mm, 57 mm or 75 mm gun or 95 mm howitzer and two 7.92 mm Besa machine guns.
The Churchill tank was built on the basis of a modified design of the A20 tank, which was built before 1939. Due to the huge losses in equipment suffered by the British army in the French campaign of 1940, the new machine was quickly launched into mass production. This turned out to be a big mistake, since the first versions of the Churchill tank were underdeveloped, prone to breakdowns and not very comfortable for their crews. However, by 1942, most of the tank's defects discovered during its operation had been eliminated, and it turned out that the Churchill was a fairly successful design. It had strong armor, good ability to overcome terrain obstacles and a low silhouette, which contributed to the camouflage of the machine. The disadvantages were weak armament and a low maximum speed - only 13 km/h in field conditions! About a dozen variants of this tank were produced during mass production. Chronologically, the first was the Churchill I, armed with a 2-pounder 40 mm gun in the turret and a 76.2 mm howitzer in the hull, but it was very underdeveloped and had a high failure rate. Soon after, the Churchill III followed - it had only a new 57 mm 6-pounder ROQF gun in the turret and better armor. Version IV was very similar to version III - the most common version, differing only in the method of manufacturing the turret. Another important change was the Churchill VII version, which received a 75 mm main gun and noticeably reinforced frontal armor. There was also a version VIII with the main armament - a 95 mm howitzer in the turret. Specialized versions of the Churchill also appeared. One of the most interesting is the Churchill AVRE, armed with a powerful 290 mm Petard mortar and designed to destroy enemy fortifications, or the Churchill Crocodile with a flamethrower in the front of the hull. Churchill tanks were sent to the USSR under the Lend-Lease program, and were also used by the Canadian Army and the Polish Armed Forces in the West (PAW).
