When Soviet IS-3 heavy tanks belonging to the 71st. Guards Heavy Tank Regiment appeared before Western eyes on September 7, 1945, rolling down the Charlottenburger Straße in Berlin to celebrate the Allied victory over Germany, it would send a ripple of panic through the U.S. and Britain. With its pointed and well sloped front hull boasting 200mm thick armor and its low, rounded turret fitted with the heavy hitting 122mm D-25 gun, the “Shchuka” (“Pike” as the Soviets nicknamed the IS-3) became the boogieman that haunted the dreams of tank designers and tank crews. The IS-3 was the catalyst for two heavy tanks designed to beat it. The first was the U.S. M103 heavy tank which entered service in 1957 and the second was the British FV214 Conqueror which saw service starting in 1955. For the British, the delays in getting the FV214 into operational service saw the experimentation with heavy guns on existing tank chassis in order to put something into the field that both had the range and the hitting power to defeat the IS-3. One of these designs was the FV4004 Conway.
The chassis to be used was that of the Centurion Mk.3 main battle tank and outside of the turret, the remainder of the Conway was exactly the same as the Centurion. The weapon to be used was the L1 120mm rifled gun and because the breech of the L1 was so massive, a completely new turret had to be built as the standard Centurion turret could not mount it. The turret itself was tall, a necessity to fit both the breech and allow the gun crew to operate, and was not thickly armored. By consequence, the turret, while larger and with a heavy gun, did not impose much of weight increase and so the mobility of the Conway remained good with a top speed of 21.5mph as provided by its Rolls-Royce Meteor engine. The ammunition for the L1 usually consisted of Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot (APDS) and High-Explosive Squash-Head (HESH). The ammunition was in two parts, the projectile and the brass propellant case. For the APDS round, the projectile was 21.4lbs. while the case was 60.9lbs. The HESH ammunition was 35.3lbs. and 41.5lbs. respectively. Because of the size of the complete rounds, the ammunition the Conway could carry was very limited. The APDS round could penetrate 390mm of flat steel armor at 1,000 yards or up to 120mm of armor at a 55 degree slope. The HESH round, on the other hand, could cause spalling on armor up to 120mm thick at a 60 degree slope at any range and this made it effective in long range tank duels in which the HESH round would not be as vulnerable to the sloping of the IS-3's armor.
A single prototype of the Conway was completed in either 1949 or 1950 and was tested. However, by 1951, it was decided to discontinue work on the Conway. It isn't known the exact reasons as to why but it could be speculated that the limited ammunition capacity and the high profile of the Conway were not conductive to a tank destroyer. Another concern was that the APDS round could not reliably knock out the IS-3 at range leaving only the HESH ammunition which, while more capable at longer ranges, also did not guaranty target destruction. This is evidenced by the FV4005 “Centaur” project which essentially took up where the Conway left off, the new design meant to utilize the even larger L4 183mm gun which was thought to be the “one shot, one kill” weapon the British needed.
Today, the Conway survives and is on display at the Tank Museum at Bovington in Dorset, England. Following the cancellation of the Conway in 1951, only the turret remained so the Conway at the museum is the original turret and gun but on a different Centurion Mk.3 chassis.
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