Crusader Gun Tractor A Technical History

The Crusader Gun Tractor was conceived as a means of pulling the heavy 17 pounder anti-tank gun while at the same time utilising any excess production of the obsolescent Crusader tank. In practice it would prove to be a superlative towing vehicle but its origin as an armoured fighting vehicle would necessitate a high level of proficiency on the part of its crews. An inadvertent consequence of this would be to highlight the crucial influence that superior training had on vehicle reliability as any inexperience on the part of the users tended to quickly manifest in compromised performance. This in turn meant that the experiences of the various units that were equipped with the Crusader Gun Tractor would be extremely divergent in a manner that gave revealing clues as to tank reliability in general.