The M7 Priest:
Desert Guns, Beach Landings
How self-propelled artillery kept pace with the armour, from El Alamein to Normandy
A tank chassis, a 105 mm howitzer, and a machine-gun mount that British troops thought looked like a church pulpit. The M7 Priest was never glamorous, but wherever the Allies needed guns that could keep up with their armour, this was the answer.
01 · The ProblemGuns That Couldn't Keep Up
In the desert, armoured columns could cover enormous distances in a single day. Towed field guns could not. They had to halt, unhitch, deploy and only then start firing, and by the time they did, the battle had often moved on. The fix came from America. In early 1942 the US Army bolted a 105 mm howitzer onto the chassis of the M3 Lee tank, added an open-topped fighting compartment, and accepted the result as the M7. Production began that April.
Why "Priest"? The raised ring mount for the .50 cal machine gun looked like a pulpit to British troops. The name also fitted a habit already in place: the 25-pounder-armed Bishop and the Deacon had come first.
Alamein and the Pursuit
Ninety M7s reached the British Eighth Army in September 1942, just in time to make their combat debut at the Second Battle of El Alamein, alongside the older Bishops. The Priest soon replaced the Bishop altogether and stayed with the army through the pursuit of Rommel, the fighting in Tunisia, Sicily and the long climb up Italy. American crews took theirs into action a few weeks later, during Operation Torch.
Armour could race. The guns just had to learn to race with it.
03 · NormandyFiring From the Sea
By June 1944 the Priest equipped the artillery of three assault divisions: the 3rd British on Sword, the 3rd Canadian on Juno and the 50th on Gold. What the Canadians did with theirs was unusual. Four Priests were lashed to the deck of each landing craft, and on the run-in towards Juno some ninety guns fired over the bows at the German defences while the infantry went in ahead. Then, waterproofed for the occasion, the vehicles drove off the ramp and straight into action.
The noise was tremendous and the morale value real, but the gunners themselves were frank about the result. A pitching landing craft makes a poor gun platform, and one Canadian veteran remembered the shoot as a questionable success.
04 · The CommandosBehind the Barrage
Behind that noise came the infantry and the commandos. At 08:45 No. 48 (Royal Marine) Commando landed on Nan Red beach at Juno, one of the sectors the Priests had been firing at on the way in. Over on Sword, the commandos of No. 1 Special Service Brigade came ashore on Queen Red, then headed for the Orne bridges, bagpipes and all, to link up with 6th Airborne Division.
05 · AfterwardsPriests Into Sextons
British and Canadian regiments later gave up their Priests for the 25-pounder, towed or mounted on the Sexton, mainly to simplify ammunition supply. American armoured field artillery kept the M7 through to 1945, and it served with many other armies long after. Not bad for a design that began as a test mount on a Lee chassis.
Italeri 1/35 M7 Priest Self-Propelled Howitzer
A 1/35 plastic kit of the 105 mm howitzer motor carriage, with tracks, detailed suspension and an open fighting compartment. Four marking options cover US, British and French service plus a Korean War version. Clean up the mould lines on the tracks and add some stowage and spare rounds for extra detail.
- Scale 1/35, Italeri kit #6580
- Built length approx. 172 mm
- Intermediate level, glue and paint required