Talking of these buffers....... I often used to wonder just how effective those fibre buffers were at anything - especially buffering! I mean....., they were pretty damn solid and the notion that they would absorb the/any energy from that flying heavyweight breech block always baffled me. I can see that some of the steam will have been taken out of it by the belt feeding and cocking lever action but even so, when those 3x mechanical advantage accelerators had worked their stuff, that breech block was in orbit!

Does anyone remember the buffer assembly used on the early Cents and Conquerers(?) - where turret space was short - where the buffer tube was angled top to bottom across the rear