Cruiser tank - Citizendia

The cruiser tank (also called cavalry tank or fast tank) was a British tank design concept of the inter-war period. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located A tank is a tracked, Armoured fighting vehicle designed for Front-line combat which combines Operational mobility and tactical This concept was the driving force behind several tank designs which saw action during the Second World War. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including

Like the ships of the same name, cruiser tanks were fast and mobile, and were designed to operate independently of the slow-moving infantry and their heavier Infantry tanks. A cruiser is a large type of Warship, which had its prime period from the late 19th century to the end of the Cold War. The Infantry is the oldest and most numerous of the Combat Arms in the Armed forces, and consists The infantry tank was a concept developed by the British in the years leading up to World War II.

Once gaps had been punched in the enemy front by the infantry tanks, the cruisers were intended to penetrate to the rear, attacking lines of supply and communication in accordance with the theories of Hobart and Liddell-Hart. Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart ( 31 October 1895 &ndash 29 January 1970) usually known before his knighthood as Speed was therefore a critical factor, and to achieve this the early cruiser designs were lightly armoured and armed. This emphasis on speed unbalanced the British designs; insufficient attention was paid to armour protection. At the time it was not well understood that lightly-armoured vehicles would not survive on the modern battlefield. An even bigger problem for most cruiser tanks was the small calibre of their main gun. Most cruisers were armed with the QF two-pounder (40 mm) gun. The Ordnance QF 2-pounder (or simply "2 pounder gun" was a 40 mm British anti-tank and vehicle-mounted This gun had good armour penetration (the best at the time), but was never issued high explosive ammunition. This made the cruisers vulnerable to towed Anti-tank guns. Anti-tank refers to any method of combating military Armored fighting vehicles notably Tanks The most common anti-tank systems However, as fighting enemy tanks was part of the projected role of the Cruiser tanks they were the first to be upgraded to the heavier 6 pounder (57 mm) gun when it became available, and a great deal of effort was put into developing (admittedly unsuccessful) Cruiser tanks armed with the 17 pounder QF (76 mm) gun. The Ordnance QF 6-pounder 7 cwt, or just 6 pdr, was a British 57 mm gun their primary Anti-tank gun during the middle of World War II, The Ordnance QF 17-pounder (or just 17-pdr) was a 762 mm (3 inch Gun developed by the United Kingdom during World War II. Ironically, given the emphasis on high mobility, most cruisers were plagued by mechanical unreliability. This problem was usually caused by insufficient development as most of the early Cruiser tank designs were ordered "off the drawing board" and was not fully solved until the debut of the Cromwell in 1944, with its powerful, reliable Rolls-Royce Meteor engine. The Rolls-Royce Meteor (also sometimes known as the Rover Meteor) was a British Tank engine developed from the Rolls-Royce Merlin

Inter-war cruisers included the A-9, A-10, A-13 Mk I and A-13 Mk II, which were used in the French, Greek, and North African Desert campaigns. The Tank Cruiser Mk I (A9 was a British Tank of the interwar period The Tank Cruiser Mk II (A10, was developed alongside the A9, and was intended to be a heavier Infantry tank version of that type The Tank Cruiser Mk III (A13 was a British Cruiser tank of World War II. The Tank Cruiser Mk IV (A13 Mk II was a British Cruiser tank of World War II. During World War II, the North African Campaign, also known as the Desert War, took place in the North African desert from June 10, 1940 The A-13 (Mk I and Mk II) was the first British cruiser to be fitted with Christie suspension, after British officers observed Soviet high-speed BT tanks on manoeuvres. The Tank Cruiser Mk III (A13 was a British Cruiser tank of World War II. The Tank Cruiser Mk IV (A13 Mk II was a British Cruiser tank of World War II. The Christie suspension is a suspension system developed by Walter Christie for his Tank designs The Fast Tank (Быстроходный танк Bystrokhodny tank, abbr During early WW2, the Crusader was probably the best-known cruiser, being used in large numbers in the Western Desert Campaign. One of the primary Cruiser tanks of the United Kingdom during World War II, the Tank Cruiser Mk VI Crusader (A15 was perhaps the most important British The Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War was the initial stage of the North African Campaign of The Second World War. Other WW2 cruisers include the Covenanter, Centaur, Cromwell, and Comet. The Tank Cruiser Mk V Covenanter (A13 Mk III was a British Cruiser tank of the Second World War. The Tank Cruiser Mk VIII Cromwell (A27M, named after the English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell, was one of the The Tank Cruiser Mk VIII Cromwell (A27M, named after the English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell, was one of the The Tank Cruiser Comet I (A34 was a British Tank that first saw use near the end of World War II. The Centaur and Cromwell saw action from Normandy onwards, while the Comet was fielded in the beginning of 1945. By this point in the war, the firepower and armour protection of the cruisers made them indistinguishable from medium tanks.

In the course of the war, technological improvements enabled heavier tanks to approximate the speed of the cruisers, and the concept became obsolete. The last of their line was the Centurion. The Centurion was the primary British Main Battle Tank of the immediate post-war era and has proven itself be a successful tank design mainly due to its thick The Centurion was designed to satisfy the "Heavy Cruiser" criteria by combining the mobility of a Cruiser tank and armour of an Infantry tank into one chassis. This idea - and the Centurion along with it - then evolved into the "Universal tank" concept, a single design that could "do it all. " Ultimately the Centurion tank transcended its cruiser tank origins and become Britain's first modern main battle tank. Tank classification is a Taxonomy of identifying either the intended role or weight class of Tanks The classification by role was used primarily during

The cruiser-tank concept was also employed by the Soviet Union in the 1930s, as exemplified by the BT tank series (Russian: bystrokhodniy tank, "fast tank"). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 The Fast Tank (Быстроходный танк Bystrokhodny tank, abbr Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages

See also