Sexton (artillery)

The Sexton, formally the twenty-five pounder self-propelled tracked Sexton, was a Canadian-designed self-propelled artillery vehicle of the Second World War. It was based on Canadian-built derivatives of the American M3 Lee and M4 Sherman tank chassis; Canada had set up production of the Ram tank using the M3 chassis and the Grizzly, a copy of the M4, to complement American medium tank production, and when Sherman production in the United States expanded and supply was assured, it was decided in 1943 to switch the Canadian production lines to produce the Sexton, giving the British Army a mobile gun using their 87.6 millimeter Ordnance QF twenty-five pounder gun-howitzer for commonality with towed guns. The Sexton could fire either a high-explosive shell or an armour-piercing shell, and it saw use in the Canadian, British, and other British Commonwealth armies as well as other countries; after the war, a number of Sextons and Grizzlies were sold to Portugal, which used them into the 1980s.