Origins
In the wake of Germany's successful 1939–41 campaigns, US armour doctrine had incorporated the idea of fast, lightly armoured vehicles carrying high velocity anti-tank guns as the best way to deal with the fast moving armour spearheads of the German Blitzkrieg. The M10 was based on the chassis of the M4 Sherman but carried thinner although more sloped armour in order to comply with the high speed requirement for the tank. At the same time, the British had been examining the possibility of designing a low-silhouette self-propelled tank destroyer, preferably with a 360-degree traversing turret, with armour that would be able to resist the German 50 mm at 800 yards and mounting the 17 pounder. However with the arrival of the M10 on the battlefield in late 1942, British plans for a turreted self-propelled gun were cancelled.
The M10 was first made available to the British in 1943. These vehicles were open-topped and mounted a 3-inch American gun, which was significantly more powerful than the Ordnance QF 6 pounder that was mounted on British tanks of the period and was of equal power to the 7.5 cm KwK 40 used by the Panzer IV and Sturmgeschütz III. When introduced into service in late 1942, the thin but sloped armour of the M10 provided good protection against the standard 50 mm gun mounted on most German tanks and anti-tank guns, and the 3-inch (76 mm) gun was able to easily defeat all German armour except for the handful of Tigers deployed against the Western Allies.
Read more about this topic: 17pdr SP Achilles
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