The Crusader Mk.II has a few inconsistencies in it’s model, for some reason the gun mantlet is thinner than the actual turret front.
Now in-game, the mantlet is only 30mm thick, while the turret front is 31.75mm + 19.05mm behind it, for a total of 50.8mm of armor
Now what doesn’t connect is, why would the mantlet have so little armor when the turret front is almost double the thickness? Real photos of crusader tanks shows that the turret mantlet is actually quite thick.
Acording to:
- Crusader-Cruiser Mark IV - By Major james Bingham - Page 8
The Crusader II was a improvement over the A15 Crusader I, and had a increase for the armor protection for the front from 40mm to 50mm, so the mantlet only having 30mm just doesn’t make sense.
This information is also mentioned in another source:
- Crusader Cruiser tank 1939-1945 - by Devid Fletcher
In the book, page 7 mentions that the A15 (Crusader I) had a standard 40mm of armor at the front.
And Page 13 of the same book mentions that the Crusader II was introduced as an up-armoured version of the original model, the same page also mentions that the turret front armor thickness was increased by 10mm (40 + 10 = 50mm)
None of these, and many other sources, mentions the turret frontal protection being anything less than 45mm, so the mantlet only having 30mm of armor simply doesn’t fit.
Another source is:
- Crusader vs M13/40 North Africa 1941-42 - by David Greentree
Page 34 says that the Crusader II had 49mm of armor on the frontal glacis and mantlet
So the 30mm of armor that the mantlet has in-game is very much insufficient.
The requied fixes is to increase the mantlet thickness from 30mm to 50 or 49mm, so it has around the same armor thickness as the rest of the turret front.
The internal mantlet of the tank is also completely wrong, right now it wouldn’t even exist, because it’s just 2 floating pieces of armor inside the turret, the mantlet should be completely enclosed in the turret, and cover the entire space behind the external mantlet:
Right now the tank just feels incomplete, it feels like a dev server vehicle, and needs to be fixed.
The first image is the real internal mantlet of the crusader II, as you can see, there are no gaps, there’s no holes, and there’s no gaping cavity that leads directly to the external mantlet, the Crusader Mk. II in game is very much incomplete. and this is impacting the vehicle in extreme negative ways.