Always thought it was brilliant. I’m surprised that Israelis and other countries didn’t pick this up yet. (Merkava IV and IIID below)
Tanks are as large as a hut, or a small house. In nature, something that large would not have a big square hole. It’d be filled with bushes and weeds.
When you see a large square under the hull, it screams out “watch out! Man-made stuff!” But if you cover that up, it just becomes a large hunk without a hole looking right at you.
To me, the tank on the left is easier to spot; black shadow clearly contrasted with bright sand behind the tank. That’s what Germans are trying to prevent by hanging a ragged cloth in front of the hull. Very clever. The tank below also has the same kind of stuff under the turret to reduce the sharp shadow.
Tanks are designed to fight every threat while Tank Destroyers are designed solely for the purpose of destroying enemy thank.
This is a Tank Destroyer
A Stug 3. It’s technically an AFV but it was most known for destroying enemy tanks and I consider it as sucj
They were designed purely for the purpose of destroying enemy tanks. This is why you’ll see the majority of them lacking turrets and carrying much larger and more powerful guns.
To destroy enemy tanks more effectively, the TDs would carry larger and heavier armament and this would often result in the omission of a turret.
The omission of a turret would allow for the TD to carry a much larger gun as well as reducing the cost of construction and reducing the profile of the vehicle increasing concealment.
Obviously there were Tank Destroyers with turrets, most notably the American M10, M36 and M18 gun motor carriages, but the majority lacked a turret. The American Tank destroyers had a turret but this came at the cost of being able to mount smaller weaponry with the largest being a 90mm on the M36
It should also be noted that the concept of the Tank Destroyer pretty much died out by the end of the Second World War. This is primarily due to the rise of a universal tank or the Main Battle Tank concept.
Tanks on the other hand are designed to combat everything. In WW2 this wasn’t always the case but from the Cold War onward the Main Battle Tank(which meant a tank capable of dealing with all threats) concept became standard. This concept was able to be utilised due to the rapid technological advancement particularly in the engine department which would allow for larger and more well armed tanks while maintaining good cross country mobility.
It was primarily the Main Battle Tank concept that killed the Tank Destroyers. MBTs were now able to do everything Tank Destroyers could while being more versatile and better able to support infantry.
Other factors that killed the concept of the Tank Destroyer included the fielding of ATGM(Anti-Tank Ground Missiles) which could do the same job while being much more reliable and cheaper as well.
There was one exception to this rule during the Cold War which was the Swedish STRV-103 tank.
This thing was classified as an MBT but i personally consider it to be a Tank Destroyer of sorts as this vehicle was completely unsuited to destroying anything else other than enemy AFVs.
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