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Fairly simple WI: what if the Brits are able to deploy the vaunted 20-Pounder antitank gun during WWII--say, right when it comes off the drawing board in late 1944?

There are three PoDs where I can see this happening:

--the Brits or Allies in general are performing significantly worse in late 1944 than they did IOTL (not likely without a big PoD earlier on)

--the Nazis have fielded larger numbers of King Tigers, perhaps due to Allied air raids on the Henschel plant having less accuracy (more likely)

--the Nazis have fielded the KT earlier on due to a decision to cancel Tiger 1 building sooner (most likely)

So, what happens? The Allies now have the best tank/antitank gun produced by any side during WWII (with the exception of the 12,8 cm Pak/KwK 44 Jagdtiger gun, of which only a handful were produced, and besides I am pretty sure that the 20pdr with APDS beats the KwK44 with standard APCBC ammo). Does this now lead to significant changes and butterflies? I am going to say yes and no at the same time.

--The million-dollar question will be what vehicle to fit it to. Sure, it will be very useful as a towed AT gun, but the heat will be on for the Allies to put it in something. I think it might overload a Sherman Firefly and I'm not sure if the Pershing is quite ready at this time. The Centurion is nowhere near ready. My guess is that it goes into the M36 tank destroyer.

--How many will be actually ready? Since it will be literally coming right off the drawing board, my guess is that it won't be really numerous until the war is nearly over in Europe. Let's say that 200 of them or so are available by Wacht am Rhein.

--What will the physical impact be? Probably not that much. It is an overkill gun against anything the Germans are fielding except the Tiger 2. It will cause more KT losses of course but if the Germans are a lot stronger in this timeline than ours, I don't see one new tank gun, by itself, singlehandedly changing the course of battle. If the Germans have more KTs but aren't really doing any better, it will still pretty much end up a wash since large numbers of those were getting abandoned due to breakdowns, lack of fuel, etc. anyway (or destroyed in air raids).

The one way I can see it having a lot of impact is if the British do a good propaganda job of selling the Germans the fact that they now have a shiny new toy that can destroy the biggest, baddest armored vehicle in their inventory. This might be enough to discourage Hitler from doing WaR and it might ruin German morale enough to end the war in the West quite a bit sooner.

--What butterflies come from this? If the Germans either have enough of a morale defeat that they collapse sooner or surrender to the West entirely, that could bring the Allies into Berlin long before the Soviets were ready. That's a whole new can of worms.

What do you think?

ArmchairPhilosopher
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