I am interested to know when "the Archer's driver had to exit the vehicle before firing" first appeared in books or what books state it. I had a look at a few books at the library today and didn't find much. Some random encyclopedia of tanks from 2002 had it. Chamberlain and Ellis don't mention it. At home, I discovered that Bryan Perrett's The Valentine In North Africa 1942-1943 does have it. (Published 1972) So if anyone has books which list tanks published before '72, which mention the Archer, do they say the driver had to exit?
My older tank books are stashed away in my library which is in a different part of the house from the study but I'll have a look later. However the statement that the driver had to exit the vehicle is incorrect - he had to vacate his seat "The vehicle was small, but cramped (the driver had to vacate his seat when the gun was in operation lest he be seriously injured by the gun's recoil)" but stayed in the vehicle in case it needed to shoot and scoot.
IMHO that is not true, there was the recoil guard and still room front of it for driver's head. Our Don Juan had found a docu where a driver complained that he felt insecure when sitting on his seat when the 17-pdr was fired but officers reassured him saying, don't worry, if the breech hit your head there has been something very badly wrong in the gun anyway that the breech would hit your head even if you were several feet further forward. Or something like that. The docu is in one of the Archer/17-pdr threads on this site.
Yes, I know it's incorrect (I should have said "exit his seat" rather than the vehicle) - I have the document that Don Juan found, as well as one or two other pieces of evidence. What I am interested in here is tracing where it entered the history books. It is mentioned in the history of the 93 (A&SH) Anti-Tank Regiment and Perrett might have gotten it from that. He may have had some unofficial RA contacts because he also tells a possibly/probably spurious story in Allied Tank Destroyers about an Archer taking out a Tiger by firing through a building, with the help of an air OP plane. Another one of those pieces of evidence - David Fletcher looked at drill manuals in the Tank Museum archives and found that they included orders to the driver to rotate the vehicle if the target exited the area within which the gun could traverse. I have copies of those now and one of them is from Jan or Feb (hard to make out) 1945. He wrote that in an article in Classic Military Vehicles magazine in 2006 I think.
Perhaps drivers were not reassured - it certainly appears in a number of books for example Shelldrake: Canadian Artillery Museums and Gun Monuments Harold A. Skaarup. Page 206. I've corresponded with Skaarup on other matters and he appears to be fairly sound
I would also call Dick Taylor pretty sound too, but he repeats it in his book on the Valentine which just has a chapter on the Archer. He doesn't give a specific citations, but he does list Perrett's book in his sources. The Archer has not generally been high on anyone's list of topics to research all the way back to the primary sources.
I think it might be entirely possible that the driver did not have to vacate his seat, but that some units thought that he did, or some units preferred that he did. I think it is assumed that the reason for the driver vacating his seat was due to the recoil length of the breech, but it could have been due to the hot gases coming out of the breech, or the noise of the spent cartridge hitting the deflector guard being particularly loud and startling. It could be the case that while strictly speaking the driver didn't have to move from his seat (he wasn't in mortal danger there), he did *have to* move because it was an unpleasant position to be in when the gun was firing.
Isnt there a whole other thread on this particular subject - I seem to recall reading all these points before even to the point of members producing diagrams/pictures/drawings etc - cant be that far away TD
The only way (other than pure serendipity) you'll get an answer to that specific question is by following references backwards, and even that's sketchy given so many authors, editions, no references to follow, bad indexes/referencing etc. Google Books might be a decent place to at least start. Though the possible combinations of words is extensive. Lots of "" required... archer "self propelled" "leave the vehicle" - Google Search.. Nothing wrong with people discussing the general subject. Hardly surprising when it's one of those little nuggets that crop up quite often, which is presumably what inspires the question. (Purely for info: The 'Main' Archer thread with much on this is here.)
FYI the Valentine III booklet from the old AFV series written by BT White mentions the Archer but makes no mention of the "driver having to leave the vehicle/seat". Its publication date is ~ 1969.
Thank you! I at least have two data points - the regimental history of 93 (A&SH) Anti-Tank Regiment, and Perrett's book. I can't help but be suspicious that Perrett is to blame here. I don't know if anyone remembers a story from his Allied Tank Destroyers I brought up about an Archer killing a Tiger? It doesn't seem possible to substantiate it. I don't know whether Perrett looked at the regimental history, but he seems to have had some contacts in the RA - maybe veterans? - willing to tell some stories. I agree with Don Juan that some personnel may have looked at where the gun recoiled and said "no way am I sitting in my seat while the gun fires!" That may particularly have been the case for 93 A/T Reg't, since they got their Archers in advance - so far as I know - of any drill booklet, and really appreciated their M10s.
