Interesting beast. Curious as to why the project was shelved. Probably another leap-forward in tank design elsewhere.

Three reasons:- 1. it was unwieldy to handle the 183mm shells...probably has a slow rate of fire. 2. L7 105mm armed centurions were more than adequate at that time and were coming online, thats why there were only 100+ conquerors built. the centurions were sufficient (and cheaper) until.... 3. they were developing the 120mm armed chieftian

Anyone else notice the similarity to the Abbott SPG turret? Mal

Actually, they used 3D model from a well-known online game, which, at that time, was pretty innacurate - see LINK . Text in Russian only, but everything is clear from the pictures

Bob Griffin's Crowood book tells the tale very well... at the time that the Conqueror was ordered the 105mm L7 did not exist. The FV214 story is very complicated and so much so that the army seems to have been very unprepared for its introduction in 1955. There was no doctrine for its use. There was a plan to implement Heavy Gun Tank regiments in the 1953-54 period and documents to that effect exist in the U.K. National Archives... but when the small order was placed for FV214 the quantity did not permit deployment in dedicated units. As a result they tried to use it like 17-pdr armed tanks in the armoured regiments of 1944-45. They did make it work once they operated the Conqueror in separate heavy troops. The L7 was driven by the threat represented by the T54 and got its big push from the events in Hungary in 1956. As for the FV215b... it was not seriously considered for production and was built as a wooden model. The 183mm gun would have been very hard to load quickly. Wonder if it would have had a better range finder than the Conq?

Too slow to load for anti-tank duties even with 2 men doing the job. Even HE firing artiellary doesn't use calibers much larger then 155mm anymore.

Just wanted to give my quick impression of the model... I'm in the process of building it right now and honestly I'm not impressed. In this day and age where the quality is getting better all the time, this kit is a throwback to earlier days...it reminds me of an old trumpter kit. Overall fit, is rather poor and you'll need a lot of patience, together with an assortment of files and sandpaper. The details are, such as they are, rather crude and weld lines are poorly done. The parts suffer from nasty sink marks and holes, so putty will come in handy. The sink holes in the suspension, I chose not to do anything about, they are thankfully hard to see. Location holes are not holes, rather indentations in the plastic, sometimes they are shallow, sometimes not, this is especially noticeable where the smoke launches are located...four big dents that doesn't fit the delicate photo etch bracket. I could go on, but I'd rather not... Overall, unless you really want to build one, I'd recommend skipping this one.

I hope someone does an aftermarket barrel for this, I think it could be used on a FV4005 conversion as well, if I'm not mistaken.

An outfit called TBS already do an FV4005 conversion with a resin barrel. But they've copied the current Bovington configuration with the bore evacuator sleeve removed: and the barrel just doesn't look right. For such a limited kit and a large chunk of aluminium I can't see anyone doing it. The 183 was essentially the 7.2" howitzer converted into a long-barrelled gun rather than a completely new weapon. The Stage 1 FV4005 was an open mount with an autoloader and rotary magazine. That would have solved the ammunition handling, but the magazine wouldn't have held many rounds and loaders would still need to refill it to keep up with the rate of fire. Did the Stage 2 as at Bovington simply add the enclosure ("turret") to that open mount? It had big doors at the back for reloading in either case. The whole 183mm idea, whether FV4005 or 215B, was in effect the realisation that heavy artillery could kill tanks very effectively in direct fire - and in indirect for that matter too. Even a 150/152/155mm direct hit would kill any tank around. That was essentially the Russian concept with their 122 and 152mm tank destroyers, which doubled as effective assault guns. Smash the target: the proverbial unstoppable force. So both 4005 and 215B were probably really SPG rather than TDs. I imagine the Centurion chassis might have been overloaded for 4005, so considering using the Conqueror chassis made some sense - except that it was already very underpowered. It is perhaps worthy of note that Rheinmetall have experimented with a 140mm upgrade to their ubiquitous 120mm, thinking that the 120mm might be reaching the point of being overmatched by layered protection systems as happened with the 105mm.