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Out of Stock
$48.58 USD
$71.45 USD
Temporarily out of stock. Place an order now to enter the purchase queue when stock becomes available. Future arrival date is currently unknown.
This is a resin-cast military vehicle model kit.
The Black Prince infantry tank is an infantry tank with a larger Churchill infantry tank body and a 76mm caliber Ordnance QF 17-pounder gun.
The vehicle was given the development number A43 in honor of Edward the Black Prince, the eldest son of the 14th century King Edward III of England and a hero of the Hundred Years War.
Like the Churchill infantry tank, the Black Prince was designed by Vauxhall Motors.
The overall length of the Black Prince was 8.81m compared to the Churchill's 7.44m, and its overall width was 3.44m compared to 2.74m, making it one size larger.
The overall height was kept low at 2.7 m, but the weight was increased by 10 tons to approximately 50 tons, and the crawler tracks were widened to reduce ground pressure.
The undercarriage was also modified, with one rolling wheel added on each side.
The Black Prince was prototyped in parallel with the Centurion, which later became Britain's first "main battle tank," but the Centurion, equipped with the same 17-pounder gun but with greater mobility, was considered more promising.
When the Centurion was shipped to Germany for field trials in May 1945, six prototype Black Prince tanks had been completed, but on May 30, 1945, after the German surrender, it was officially decided that the Black Prince would not go into mass production, and at the same time it was decided to focus on the production of the Centurion. The decision was made to focus on the production of the Centurion at the same time.
With the discontinuation of the Black Prince, the concept of the infantry tank came to an end, and postwar tank development shifted to main battle tanks with both mobility and defensive capabilities.
However, the mainstay tanks developed in the United Kingdom after the war, such as the Centurion, Chieftain, and Challenger, can be said to have inherited the tradition of infantry tanks, emphasizing defense and survivability rather than mobility.