Tank Destroyer - World War II

World War II

Dedicated anti-tank vehicles made their first major appearance in the Second World War as combatants developed effective armored vehicles and tactics. Some were little more than stopgap solutions, mounting an anti-tank gun on a tracked vehicle to give mobility, while others were more sophisticated designs. An example of the development of tank destroyer technology throughout the war are the Marder III and Hetzer vehicle, that were very different in spite of being based on the same chassis: Marder was straightforwardly an anti-tank gun on tracks whereas Hetzer traded some firepower (its Pak 39, designed to operate within the confines of a fully armored fighting compartment, fires the same projectiles from a reduced propellant charge compared to Marder's Pak 40) for better armor protection and ease of battlefield concealment.

When a tank destroyer was used against enemy tanks from a defensive position, e.g. by ambush, a rotating turret was not particularly critical and a low silhouette was highly desirable. The weight saved from the lack of a turret could allow more armour to be fitted, and the lower profile allowed this armour to be concentrated in the hull. The absence of a turret also meant that tank destroyers could be manufactured significantly cheaper, faster and more easily than the tanks on which they were based and found particular favor when production resources were lacking.

Except for the American designs, tank destroyers were all turretless and had fixed or casemate superstructures. The latter allowed accommodation of a bigger cannon than could be mounted in a turreted tank on the same chassis, and increased the vehicle's internal volume, allowing for increased ammunition stowage and crew comfort. Eliminating the turret also allowed the vehicle to carry thicker armor than would otherwise be the case, although sometimes there was no roof (or merely a strip of canvas) to keep the overall weight down to the limit that the chassis could bear. After hard lessons early in the war, machine guns were mounted for use against infantry but the limited traverse of the mounting meant that they were still less effective than those used on turreted tanks.