12 1/2 tons heavier, 4 1/2 feet longer, 1/2 foot wider, more than half a foot higher and almost 5 mph slower. The Black Prince bears as much resemblance to the Churchill as does the M26 to the Sherman.
Forgive my asking, but how does open ground work to keep the enemy in front of you? Wouldn't it allow them more freedom to come up on your flank than the close terrain of western Europe?
This faced similar problems of weaker-than-average side armour and an unreliable drive-train, which again, meant that they were better used in Europe where this lack of reliability wasn't so noticable due to having to move much shorter distances to engage the enemy.
Seems I misread then.
Matt:
1. The Black Prince was a Churchill. Even if it wasn't, the 75mm rules out your claim that it never packed anything bigger than the 6pdr. There are variants with 95mm Howitzers, and AVRE varaints with even larger demolition mortars, but you were probably talking about gun tanks.
2. In open terrain, and when large units are involved, being caught by surprise with an expose flank is more dificult. Imagine ou are on one side of a football field and you oponent on the other. It takes more time to go aroumd and knife him in the ribs than inside a phoone booth. Of course you can take a position on a ridge covering a road that runs paralel to your lines and hope the enemy will drive along that road exposing their flanks. Most likely they'll be facing you. Unless you've actually been in field trying to get a shooting position on somebody its hard to explain, but as a basic rule, the further away they are, and the wider the fields of fire, the harder it is to sneak around their flanks...
3. Again, driving on flat open spaces is the easiest going for a tank, stop and go driving in closed terrain is the hardest. The problem with the Panther was the transmission, more than the engine. Recovering tanks in Normandy was nearly impossible because of the presence of allied fighter bombers. There are very few targets easier to spot than a ARV towing a tank...
4. The IS2 did very poorly on tests conducted in the US, who regarded it as being poorly made, very cramped, tiring to operate, etc. But the germans respected it, and hasso von manteuffel flat out called it the best tank of WW2. Interestingly, when the French in Indochina got intel that the Cinese had IS2 across the border they initially called for wartime Panthers to be deployed as a counter mesure. M36 were deployed instead, and used only as fire support vehicles with their 90mm guns.