Self-propelled 17-Pounder, Valentine, Mark I

Looks alright, doesn't it?

Self-Propelled 17-Pounder, Valentine, Mark I, casually nicknamed Archer by people too sober to scream, was Britain’s idea of a mobile anti-tank gun — or more accurately, a barely-mobile, opium-fueled fever dream of an empire on the verge of collapse. It's what happens when you mix leftover tank parts, unresolved colonial trauma, and a sprinkle of poppy-farm madness from India and China.

Officially classified as a self-propelled gun. Unofficially? A flaming metal turd with wheels and a cannon. The kind of thing you'd expect to see in a scrapyard fistfight or a war museum’s hall of shame.

Its construction was less “designed” and more “hastily vomited into existence.” But hey — it had a big gun and sort-of moved, so some poor bastard had to drive it straight into hell, while choking on fumes, fear, and possibly heroin dreams of Empire glory.

Development

British so-called "infantry tanks" were inpenetrable, however useless

Development began sometime around 1942, maybe 1943 — no one really remembers, because by that point the British Army was up to its neck in denial and desert sand. It was around then that they realized most of their tanks were absolute shit. The Valentine and Matilda — both mostly armed with limp little 2-pounders — and the Churchill with its barely better 6-pounder were, by some cosmic joke, the only British tanks that actually worked. Everything else — most notably the Crusader — rarely even made it to combat, thanks to the spontaneous failure of their stupid fucking riveted armor and the fact that their Liberty aero engines had a charming habit of randomly exploding or boiling themselves alive for fun.

Meow

Even when the 6-pounder did work, and could rip through a Panzer IV like paper, things quickly went to hell once the Germans brought out a cute little feline called the Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung E, better known as the Tiger. With 102 mm of unapologetically flat frontal armor, it shrugged off British shells like rain off a tin roof. Or with APCR and APDS nonexistent post penetration damage due to lack of something called explosive filling. The 6-pounder was officially declared out of its league, and unofficially declared completely fucking useless.

So the boffins went back to the drawing board — again — and pulled a monster out of their collective ass: the 17-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun, affectionately known as the seventeen-pounder. It could penetrate a Tiger’s armor, which was great. Problem was, no one had a clue what to mount the damn thing on.

Enter Sergeant James May. Yes — that James May. The one the modern world knows from Top Gear, and the one Reddit knows as that slow bastard from Bottom Gear. Before he became a television relic and internet meme, May worked during the interwar period as an engineer for Vickers and Armstrong Whitworth, where he helped design inbreeds and abortions like the Medium Mark III and the A1E1 Independent — both now remembered in military history books as unmitigated disasters. He was promptly fired (twice), then found himself building aircraft like the Hampden and Blenheim for Handley Page and Bristol, both of which were obsolete before they even took off. He also had a hand in designing the Supermarine Walrus, Gloster Gladiator, and yes — he worked on the Spitfire, but no one liked to mention that after what happened with the Bishop.

May was fired from every single one of these companies.

Ooops! Too much raped children!

He eventually landed — by accident, alcoholism, or blackmail — in the Army’s vehicle development branch, where he designed the Bishop self-propelled gun, and was swiftly fired again. He was then re-hired because everyone else was either dead or in Africa.

His new task: mount the 17-pounder on a tank. Any tank.

He was given the Valentine chassis — quite literally the worst possible option, but also the only one not actively disintegrating in North Africa.

And so May began to “design.” Fueled by opium, heroin, crystal meth, and a cocktail of trauma and tea, he welded and drew and screamed until something vaguely tank-like emerged. The result was a small, moderately armored vehicle with a gun powerful enough to fuck that little Tiger kitty right up.

Unfortunately, the moment the prototype was completed, the recoil and sheer mass of the gun caused the vehicle to tip forward and rest on its own barrel like a drunk collapsing onto a lamppost. May, no longer bound by reason, reality, or Newtonian physics, simply turned the gun around.

Problem solved.

He named his creation:

The Male Fritz-Fucker, Female Fritz-Raper, Almighty Wanker of British Dicks, and Terrifying Destroyer and Conqueror of Nürburgring Mk MMM

Army brass, shockingly, rejected this name. Likely because they couldn’t read it without choking on their tea. The vehicle was officially christened Archer — a name chosen, presumably, because it sounded just poetic enough to distract from the fact that the gun fired backwards.

And that, tragically, is how the Archer came to be:

A backward-firing anti-tank gun designed by a chronically-fired engineer, mounted on a corpse of a chassis, and born of drugs, madness, and military-grade apathy.

Combat use

Archer was quite of a success somehow....

James May presented his backwards-firing bastard child sometime in early 1943. By mid-year, production had begun — mostly because nobody had any better ideas and the gun technically worked. Unfortunately, actual deployment was delayed by nearly a year, largely due to widespread mutinies and strikes among British tank crews, who took one look at the Archer, said “absolutely not,” and collectively walked the fuck out.

Archer didn’t see combat until 1944. And as stupid as James May’s original design appeared — and let’s be clear, it looked like someone had reverse-engineered a tank from a fever dream and a hangover — it actually worked disturbingly well.

Crew reports soon confirmed what only heroin-addled James May could’ve predicted: mounting the gun backwards was, somehow, genius. Drive into position, swing the hull around, aim, fire, and getta the hell out of there. Sure, the Valentine chassis wasn’t fast — it accelerated like a depressed slug in a tar pit — but at least it gave crews a chance to fire and then slowly flee before some SS panzer commander decided to end their day.

Incredibly, Vickers-Armstrong — the same company that had fired James May twice — was tasked with producing the Archer until the very end of the war. Because irony, apparently, is a strategic asset.

But it didn’t end there.

Archer was also quite sucessful in Cold War. Not this one though...

After 1945, the Archer stuck around like a cold sore the Army couldn’t get rid of. It remained in British service until the early 1950s, largely because it was too weird to kill, and nobody knew what else to do with it. Instead of scrapping them, the British sold Archers to various Middle Eastern countries, presumably after writing “best of luck, lads” on the export forms.

And shockingly — or not — they worked again. Archers proved more than capable of dealing with outdated French and American armor used by the Israelis, including Hotchkiss H-39s, Renault R35s, and even the ubiquitous Sherman. In an especially poetic twist of fate, Archers eventually fought against the British themselves during the utter geopolitical shitshow known as the Suez Crisis.

There, Archers — now operated by angry, sunburned, probably unpaid conscripts — successfully destroyed not only Israeli Shermans but also British Centurions, proving once and for all that May’s backwards murderbox could still kick the ass of tanks two generations newer.

So.

Archer was built by accident, deployed late, fired in the wrong direction, and ended up shooting back at the very people who made it.

God Save the Queer.

Specs (Archer Mk.I)

Armament

Yum Yum

Main Gun: 77 mm Royal Ordnance QF 17-Pounder Mark II

(QF does not stand for QnlyFans, you horny bastards — it means Quick Firing, because British guns fired fast and didn’t ask questions.)

The vehicle carried 39 rounds — not because it was optimal, but because the Valentine chassis was the size of a biscuit tin and any more would cause it to tip over like a drunk. The gun was mounted backwards due to the weapon being too heavy for the front suspension — because James May couldn’t be arsed to reinforce the leaf springs. Also, in order to operate the gun, one crew member had to physically get out of the fucking vehicle. Efficiency at its finest.

Ammunition Types:

Ammo for 17-Pdr

Type	Muzzle velocity	Penetration by distance (100 m - 3000 m)	Image
AP (Armor-Piercing)	884 m/s (2,900 ft/s)	200-74 mm
APCBC (Armor-Piercing, Capped, Ballistic Cap)		174-107 mm (better actually)
APDS (Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot)	1,204 m/s (3,950 ft/s)	275-162 mm

Sounds cool. However, British tank doctrine at the time was built around one guiding principle:

High muzzle velocity = armor go bye-bye.

That was it. There was no Plan B.

Unfortunately, the 17-pounder shells often went clean through enemy tanks without doing a single fucking thing — because they lacked any meaningful explosive filler. Yes, they penetrated Tigers. No, they didn’t kill them.

Secondary armament:

One lonely Bren gun (.303 British).

Yes, that Bren gun — often hailed as the most British light machine gun, except it fucking wasn’t. “Bren” is literally short for BRNO-ENFIELD, as in Czechoslovakia + Britain.

So next time you celebrate British firepower, kindly thank the Moravians. Anyway, the Bren on the Archer was basically useless.

Mobility

Da basis

Engine:

A stolen American GMC diesel engine pumping out a whopping 150 horsepower. Yes, you read that right. One hundred and fifty. 10 hp/t.

Chassis:

Built on the infantry tank Valentine, which was designed with the speed and agility of an iceberg.

Max speed on road: 32 km/h (20 mph)

Max speed off-road: 13 km/h (8 mph)

Basically, if you were reversing from danger, pray your enemy was French and on a cigarette break.

Crew

Four miserable souls: Commander/Radio Operator, Gunner, Loader, Driver

Survivability

Armor:

Between 14 mm and 60 mm, which sounds nice until you remember that THE VEHICLE HAD NO FUCKING ROOF.

One mortar shell or well-aimed hand grenade and your crew went from “combat ready” to “meat jam” in 0.6 seconds.

Optional trim

Onboard Gramophone:

Because every good British war machine needs its sad boy tunes echoing off the hills of Europe. Plays scratchy jazz, Glenn Miller, and that one depressing song about leaving your girl back home who’s now shagging the butcher.

Personal “Entertainment” Kit:

Includes either:

• Photos of the gunner’s half-naked girlfriend (unless she ran off with a Yank),
• A rubber inflatable companion (name optional),
• Or in field-upgraded models — a live prostitute, paid in cigarettes, rations, etc.

Why? Because Archer has no roof, meaning your intimate moments come with a full panoramic view of the European countryside. Romantic as fuck — until someone forgets where the breech is. BOOM — there goes your Sunday afternoon and half her wig.

Tea Kit & British Rations Bundle:

Comes with:

• A well-used steel kettle,
• Half a tin of dry-ass biscuits,
• And, naturally, the crown jewel of British cuisine: Junkfood.

That’s right. Even on the battlefield, the lads must feed — and nothing says elite anti-tank warfare like fighting the Wehrmacht with a sausage roll in one hand and a lukewarm cuppa in the other.