It was the main anti-tank weapon of the artillery units in the Battle of France and, due to the need to rearm quickly after the Dunkirk evacuation, remained in service during the North African campaign.

As the armour protection of Axis tanks improved, the 2-pounder lost effectiveness and it was gradually replaced by the 57 mm QF 6-pounder starting in 1942.

[8] The unusual construction gave the gun good stability and a traverse of 360 degrees, allowing it to quickly engage moving vehicles from any approach.

[7] The gunner also had a notch and bead sight above the telescopic[9] With the Vickers carriage, the gun could also be fired from its wheels, at the expense of limited traverse.

The Light Tank Mk VII designed in 1937 also had the gun, as did the Daimler armoured car developed in the following years.

The Littlejohn adaptor which screwed onto the end of the gun's barrel was used with Armour-piercing, composite non-rigid (APCNR) ammunition.

The gun first saw combat with the British Expeditionary Force (World War II) during the German invasion of the Low Countries and the subsequent rear-guard actions at Dunkirk.

Although Woolwich Arsenal had already designed a successor to the 2-pdr, the 6 pounder gun, it was decided in the face of a possible German invasion to re-equip the army with the 2-pdr, avoiding the period of adaptation to production, and also of re-training and acclimatization with the new weapon.

As German tank design evolved, anti-armour performance of the 2-pdr gradually became insufficient; however, the gun owes a large part of the bad reputation it gained during the campaign to the open terrain, which made the high-silhouette piece hard to conceal, and to poor tactics.

[citation needed] In North Africa, it was found that the 2-pdr was damaged by being towed long distances across rough, stony deserts.

Though only intended for transport, with the gun carried unloaded, crews tended to fire from their vehicles for more mobility, with consequent casualties.

Hence the vehicles tended to reverse into action so that the gunshield of the 2-pdr would provide a measure of protection against enemy fire.

An infantry battalion anti-tank platoon would have eight guns on 3-ton lorries[14] On 21 November 1941 during battle of Sidi Rezegh Second lieutenant George Ward Gunn J Battery Royal Horse Artillery was earned the Victoria Cross for his action with a 2-pdr.

From mid-1942, the 2-pdr was increasingly displaced to infantry anti-tank platoons, to Home Guard units in Great Britain, and to the Far East, where it was still effective against the smaller and more lightly armoured Japanese tanks.

Its performance as an anti-armour weapon was improved later in the war with the development of more sophisticated ammunition and got an additional boost with the introduction of the Littlejohn adaptor, which converted it to a squeeze-bore design firing specially-designed shells at much higher velocities.