I think going very quickly to something like the Cent is a bit too much to ask. The UK's tanks were always a year too late for when they'd have been truly effective, and the UK would have bumbled onto the right thing eventually. With the Churchill assumging the Mk-1's in service and is being tested, sit down and actually look at the damn thing. Listen to the reports coming out of Russia too.
If the UK hears about the Tiger and shits a collective brick and decides it needs an 'answer' quickly they could use the Churchill as a baseline to make a heavy tank. Not something armed with a shitty little 2lber in the turret and a low velocity HE lobber in the hull, but a heavy tank. Yes the 57mm is perfectly fine for the Cruisers, and so's the American 75, but we need something more for our heavy tank.
So whilst its far from ideal, perhaps a larger, stretched Churchill instead of the VII to fit the 17lber could be developed so that by 1944 its ambling into service, and if there's not enough 17lbers to go around put another gun.
I would have to disagree a bit. Good enough is better now, than perfect never. In terms of what Churchill is, as an infantry tank, the idea is to make it a better infantry tank, not a specialist Tiger killer. The Germans made that mistake to fight KVs and later Joseph Stalin tanks, why imitate their errors? The Churchill serves a clear role inside the British system of combined arms, so what is it about the Churchill, as it exists, inside that combined arms system of systems, that it does well? I read close assault in company with British infantry against fortified enemy positions.
A dual purpose gun. Ammunition that can shatter pillboxes as well as deal with enemy medium armor (the most likely kind to be encountered.) good communications set up so Joe Infantry and Arty can talk to Rupert Flyguy and to Terry Tanker and all of them can then give Gunther and Hans in their hidey holes a really bad haircut by combined arms. I have a lot of heartburn about the ergonomics of the beast as it is a horrible tank to try to look out, move inside, shoot and especially communicate, compared to the Sherman: and I harp on that, but systems of systems use, suggests that the RADIO setup and giving the TC much better situational awareness in the Mark I or even the Mark VII is far more important to improve in the Churchill, than what kind of can opener to install or what engine for that matter.
The most dangerous tank on the battlefield is the one with a trained Terry Tanker in his Churchill that climbed an impossible to tank climb hill that overlooks blissfully unaware Hans and Gunther happy in the valley floor below, for he, Terry Tanker, is radio tied-back to Arty and Rupert Flyguy as his on call barbers.
en.wikipedia.org
