Armor on all Crusader tanks still wrong

[Bring_TheBigGun]

i’m really hoping that they’ll fix the armor on the Crusader tanks the next update, the tank really needs a model and protection model update, as i’ve said before, the armor on all Crusader tanks is incomplete and thinner than it should be in some places, all the Crusader’s are affected by this are:

• The Crusader Mk. II
• Crusader Mk. II “The Saint”
• Crusader Mk. III
• Crusader AA Mk. I
• Crusader AA Mk. II
• Crusader AA Mk. II (Overlord)

this issue with their armor has been in the game for years and all the Crusader tanks are having their performance terribly affected by this, which is bad, because it makes them vulnerable to guns that they shouldn’t be.

For some reason, some people still skeptical about this, even though, if you make a quick search on the internet, you’ll immediately find out that it is true, the armor of the Crusader tanks is considerably weaker than it should. And even if they’re not “official” sources, i doubt that the tank history websites or museum pages about WW2 tanks would lie about the Crusader tanks armor protection just to get them a buff in War Thunder.

Starting with The Crusader II, the armor on the mantlet is way thinner than it should be, and the internal mantlet is incomplete, right now it consists of only 2 completely disconected pieces of armor. When it comes to these WW2 tanks the mantlet is usually the strongest part of their turret armor, and it’s usualy the same thickness or thicker than the turret front itself, just like it is on the Stuarts, Shermans, Italian medium tanks and even on the LVT(A)(1), yeah a tank with paper armor. for reference, Just look at these protection analysis, The gun used is the one on the T-28E the 76mm L-10 cannon

Now imagine if the sherman didn’t have it’s mantlet completely modeled, if it was incomplete, like on the Crusader II, and your whole crew could be obliterated by a 1.7 gun, clear through your mantlet, that is supposed to be the strongest part of your armor, that wouldn’t be fun right? Because that’s the situation of the Crusader to this day.

maybe you’d say “oh but none of these are british vehicles, maybe the british don’t follow the same thinking” but that would be wrong too, if you look at any british vehicle at 1.0 to 4.7, you’ll notice that all of them have their mantlet at the same amount of armor as the rest of the turret front or stronger, none of them, have a mantlet weaker than the turret frontal armor, including the Crusader III, the Crusader III has the Correct amount of turret armor, 50.8mm turret front and 88.9mm mantlet. But the Crusader III still has the wrong hull armor, it being weaker than it should.

while the turret protection on the turret front of the Crusader Mk. III was at least corrected a little, the armor on the Crusader II still very much incomplete.

The armor on the mantlet of the Crusader II is not only incomplete, it’s also way thinner than it should be, at only 30mm while the turret front itself is 50.8mm, not a single source claims the Crusader II having less than 40mm of armor protection in the mantlet, so it being only 30mm thick, just doesn’t make any sence. i know someone still might not believe me, so here’s a ton of different sources!

Here’s the sources of all of the above:

and here’s how the internal mantlet on the Crusader II should be:

So not only is the armor on all variants of the Crusader tanks a lot weaker than it should be, they’re also all incomplete, the Crusader tanks feel like a dev server vehicle that got implemented unfinished if you want a more in-depht explanation of all the armor pieces that are missing on the Crusaders, you can go look at the original issue reports, but i found this diagram that also might give you an idea of how much it’s missing, and it’s a lot.

All i hope is for Gaijin to fix the armor of the Crusader tanks this update, because they have been forgotten and left aside for so many years, this is really affecting the tanks in very negative ways and i just hope it gets fixed this time.

[KindaSoft_Fish]

@Bring_TheBigGun

the Crusader III has the Correct amount of turret armor, 50.8mm turret front and 88.9mm mantlet

This change btw in the Crusader III is recent, they fixed it’s mantlet thickness together with the cromwells because before they were all wrong too, for some reason they decided not to fix the rest of it’s armor