Tank Destroyer Lovers Group

Welcome to Tank Destroyer Lover's Group, home to the biggest enemy of the Tank. Enjoy!

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 a 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 full-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.The role of the tank destroyer was to attack enemy tanks from an ambush. A turret was not particularly important for this form of attack, nor particularly desirable since a low silhouette was paramount in order to make the vehicle easier to conceal. 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.Except for the American tank destroyers they 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.^[1] 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 mounting was usually less effective than that which would be found on a true tank.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 a 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 full-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.The role of the tank destroyer was to attack enemy tanks from an ambush. A turret was not particularly important for this form of attack, nor particularly desirable since a low silhouette was paramount in order to make the vehicle easier to conceal. 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.Except for the American tank destroyers they 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.^[1] 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 mounting was usually less effective than that which would be found on a true tank.