The Poetics of Conversion

Work in progress from ongoing collab w/ who created the models in sketchup.

A brief history of the (real) Priest: self propelled 105mm Howitzer made by US in WII based on the chassis, first, of the M3 Lee tank, and then later the Sherman. It was given the name Priest by the British, due to its distinctive pulpit-shaped machine gun ring, following the ecclesiastical theme of their earlier SPGs the Bishop and Deacon.

With the (fictional) advent of mechs in WWII... well you know... it needed legs. And a great effort was made to convert tracked Priests into hexapod versions...

The Hexapod Priest concept made it's debut here: [link]
Tesla goodies here: [link]

In reality, the United States did not actually build any casemate style TDs because the armored doctrine was very different to that of Germany. Germany's TDs were the result of an overextended armor industry attempting to cope w/ huge losses on the Eastern front, and were thus built on the chassis of panzers whose guns were obsolescent -adding bigger badder guns while forgoing a turret. And they cranked them out in huge numbers. US TDs were designed from the outset to counter fast-moving German armored formations, and thus had traversing turrets, like tanks, but with open tops and much thinner armor. The theory was that they would deploy en masse in reaction to enemy panzer movement, delivering superior firepower quickly to the frontlines as needed. In actual practice, this strategic situation was almost never the case, since most Axis movement was already defensive at the time of their arrival.

These are WIPs and will be updated soon. Most notably, the Priest destroyer concept here was revised, splitting into 2 new designs: One armed with the 76.2mm gun of an M10 Wolverine, and one w/ the 90mm from an M36 Jackson.