British Adder Mk2 Tank Destroyer

[Beowulf Shaeffer]

i posted a teaser in my workbench thread, wasnt going to do a proper thread but someone sort of asked ....thought i had better explain

At the end of the North African campaign the British army re-equipped its Tank Regiments with newly arrived Sherman’s ready for the invasion of Italy in late ’43. This left them with a large number of Crusader cruiser tanks which were perfectly usable yet out gunned and under armoured. The decision was made to try turning some into tank destroyers in the style of German and Soviet designs.
This resulted in the Mk1.....a short production run revealed that it still had limitations which led to the Mk2 with better sloped armour and a larger gun, and would become the design pattern to convert considerable numbers of Crusaders which would go on to provide sterling service in Italy and onwards into Germany







with usual unit of comparison


with the Mk1



i frequent the what-if site a lot......aircraft mostly, armour is something i have wanted to get into for ages but ive always been reluctant cos the idea of weathering scares the bejaisus out of me ...........about 2 years ago i bought a stack of kits off someone on ebay who was local.....while i was there he asked if i wanted, for free, a big box of built tanks that his dad had done cos swmbo was going to bin them soon cos she was tired of tripping over the box ...i figured i could use them to practice weathering on.................anyway, about 8 months ago there was an idea for a GB on what if...what if the British and Americans had made tank destroyers in the style of the Germans and Soviets............didnt get picked for a GB but it got me thinking and pulled out that box of built tanks......ended up building the Mk1 out of a dead Crusader hull and said i had an idea for the Mk2.....the 'improved' version....thought i had better do it
to be honest it was just to try and build something on the cheap.......the hull was from the box of freebies, the casement and everything else was either scratched or from the bit box and 'made' to fit......i didnt even need to buy any plasticard for the casement cos i came up with a free 'alternative' .....i figured that it would give me something to practice washes and muddying techniques on and if it all went wrong it hadnt cost me anything cos i hadnt ruined a new paid for kit

[BWP]

Impressive scratch-builds, well-done.

On the subject of "what-if" designs though ... I think these demonstrate the problems that these designs often demonstrate (and I don't mean this as any sort of slur on you, Beowulf, after all you're clearly a Niven fan). I'm pretty sure neither of those vehicles could possibly be effective in real life because (a) there isn't room for a crew and (b) even if you could squeeze the crew in, there's no room for any ammunition. Now to be fair the Soviets actually built and actually used some designs that had the same flaws (SU-152, for instance) but they were built on bigger hulls than a Crusader and they had a larger upper hull than you have given these vehicles here. I'd also query the ability of the Crusader's engine to carry all that weight reliably.

You only have to compare with what was actually done with the Crusader when it was turned into a Tank Destroyer: the Archer. It lost the upper hull completely (becoming open-topped) just to make sufficient room for the gun and even then they had to mount the gun backwards and even then the vehicle could not fire on the move because the gun breech recoiled over the driver's seat -- i.e., he had to move or he'd lose his head! Nobody at the time could have thought "this is a good idea" but they were desperate to put wheels onto the 17-pdr and it was all they could manage at that time. Remarkably Archers went on to give relatively good service!

Again, none of this is meant to detract from your models above, which do look impressive! It just helps to answer the question "well, why didn't they do something like this?".

[JamesPerrin]

I think they are very imaginative and look convincing.

[MrDyzio]

I agree - impressive build and very convincing!

[Chris]

What a weird looking TD!

You did a wonderful job on it too.

[Marek]

Brilliant models. Oddly but good looking destroyers. I have a feeling they share a lot design features with american experimental vehicles of that time.

[AndrewR]

They look good to me

[SJPONeill]

I imagine that the gun is the 3.7" HA AA that for some reason the Brits never got round to using ion the anti-armour role (it would have been a ripper) like the Germans did with the 88...?

Looks very good and you are guilty of giving me ideas for a similar build in 1/35...

[BWP]

The Archer was based on the Valentine, not the Crusader.

D'oh! Of course you are correct. I am so embarrassed.

The Crusader was used to carry a couple of Bofors, though. I think, possibly, it might have been armed with the 75mm that was developed from the 6pdr, too.

The 75mm would be news to me, but given the magnitude of my earlier mistake I wouldn't believe anything I say. As you say the most typical conversions of the Crusader were the AA vehicles and the gun tractors.

In my defence I can only say that although the Valentine and Crusader don't look much alike, they were comparable in size. (Valentine: 17'9" x 8'8" x 7'6"; Crusader (20'8.5" x 9'1" x 7'4").