Even by 1938, the British General Staff recognised that the A13 Mk.II Cruiser Mk.IV was not enough, and requested that designs for a “heavy cruiser” be drawn up to replace it, however these were deemed to be too expensive. Looking for lighter and cheaper tanks to build, the A13 Mk.III Cruiser Mk.V or better known as “Covenanter”, designed by LMS (London, Midland and Scottish Railway), was selected to enter service. That being said, it had almost nothing in common with its predecessors aside from armament and the suspension, but it was an improvement. It featured a low-profile, angular welded hull, with a Meadows Flat-12 engine producing 340 hp, and a turret designed by Nuffield. It came with issues though, most notoriously being the sub-optimal engine cooling and bizarre placement of the radiators, which was found to be a problem only after production of this tank was well under-way. Over 1700 were produced, but only a handful of Bridge-Layer and Observation-Post variants saw frontline service in the Siege of Dunkirk (1944) and in the Pacific under the Australians, the rest were doomed to serve as training tanks for the rest of the war.

Parallel to LMS’s Covenanter, Nuffield, despite working with LMS to create a turret for their tank, were also working on their own interpretation of an improved Cruiser tank. They opted to go for a slightly larger tank built around the readily available Nuffield-Liberty V-12. Though Nuffield had a later start than LMS, it had managed to get a pilot model ready six weeks earlier. This new tank, the A15 Cruiser Mk VI “Crusader”, weighed in at nearly 20t and featured a strikingly similar turret to the Covenanter’s. It had 5 road wheels instead of the previous 4 and, bizarrely, a machine-gun turret positioned left on its bow. Supplied by 110 Imperial Gallons of petrol split between 3 tanks, plus an extra 30 in external gravity-fed tanks, it had a reach of 141 miles (227 km) on road and 65 cross-country (105 km). Combined with its good speed, this made it, on paper at least, a good match for the huge distances required of desert operations. The turret was designed to maximise internal space as much as possible, but did not have a cupola, instead mounting a periscope on a flat hatch on the roof. Its gun, the venerable but aging 2-Pdr was well-balanced, allowing it to be shoulder stabilised, meaning that it could be fired on the move with some proficiency, which was surely appreciated in the Libyan deserts. These advantages, made it and by extension British armoured forces practically untouchable by Italian armour.

That being said, the Crusader was not without issues, far from it in fact. Its armour, while being an improvement from the previous generation of Cruisers, was still quite thin, especially the double-walled sides (which were necessary to house the Christie suspension). The bow machine-gun turret was unwieldy and often left unmanned, if not removed altogether, as space was already at a premium inside the Crusader, with significant space being dedicated to ammunition stowage. Later variants removed this questionable design decision from the assembly line starting with late-production Mk.IIs, saving weight, sparing an extra crew-member, and allowing maximum armour to be increased from 40 to 49mm. To cope with the additional weight though, the engine was upgraded to a slightly more powerful version of Nuffield Liberty V12. While it remained effective against Italian Armour, the Armoured Divisions of the “Desert Fox” were a different story. Although it was more than a match for Panzer Is and IIs, and could rival early Panzer IIIs and IVs, German forces were now being equipped with the long-barrelled 50 and 75mm guns. Combined with their tactic of feint retreats to lure the British tanks into range of the 88mm flak guns, these proved deadly, meaning British armour had to either retreat or out-run the guns of the Afrika Korps. By this stage it was already clear that the Crusader was not the tank the Army or Nuffield hoped it would be, and with American M3 Lee/Grants, and later M4 Shermans appearing in numbers, Crusader began to be removed from regular frontline service.

Though the Crusader was now relegated to screening and scouting forces, its story was not over yet. Despite its many mechanical issues aside from armour, the British Army still desired a heavy cruiser, something it had already expressed as early as 1940. When this dream seemed compromised, in 1941 a stopgap measure was taken; mounting the highly effective 6-Pdr Anti-Tank Gun into the Crusader. This required a complete redesign of the interior and justified another increase in armour, now a dubious 2 inches (51mm). Additionally, a new Nuffield Liberty Mk.IV engine was also installed, fixing many of the previous iteration’s reliability issues. Production would start in early 1942, and though it was a marked step-up from the Crusader Mk.II, the reputation of the Crusader’s reliability was likely ruined. Furthermore, it was increasingly seen as obsolete as the Cavalier, Centaur and Cromwell heavy cruisers began to replace the Crusader on the production line. Even then though, it was used until the end of the war and beyond as a testbed or in auxiliary roles. Many Mk.IIIs were converted into SPAAs or used as gun-tractors. One was even used as a testbed for the Rolls-Royce Meteor, propelling the 20t tank to truly exhilarating, and frankly terrifying speeds “in excess of 50mph (80kmh)”, as those recording were so surprised that proper timings couldn’t be taken.

Sources & Further Reading:
Tank Archives - Covenanter: Reservist Tank
Tank-Afv.com - Cruiser Mk.V Covenanter
Tank-Afv.com - Cruiser Mk.VI Crusader
Wikipedia - Covenanter Tank
Wikipedia - Crusader Tank
Wikipedia - Rolls-Royce Meteor
Tank Museum - Crusader’s First Action