With a top speed of 40 miles per hour, the A13 Cruiser was much faster than the German Panzers, and it had one of the best guns of its time. Despite this, many were lost in the battle for France in 1940. They fared better in the desert when their speed enabled them to cut off and defeat a huge Italian Army at Beda Fomm in Libya.
The A13 was the first British tank to have Christie Suspension. J Walter Christie was an American motor racing driver who used his engineering skills to make very fast tanks, characterised by big wheels and powerful springs.
Cruiser tanks used their speed to get around the enemy, rather than confront them head-on. Fast moving tanks were harder to hit, so they did not need such thick armour.
The Tank Museum’s vehicle
Ours is one of the 65 Cruiser IIIs delivered between December 1938 and November 1939. It was apparently retained to prove the attachment of armour plates on the turret in fulfilment of the Cruiser IV’s armour specification (30mm), which is the configuration in which it survives.
It was held by the School of Tank Technology until 1949, when it transferred to the Tank Museum. It is painted to represent a vehicle commanded by Ron Huggins (who later volunteered at the Tank Museum) of 10th Royal Hussars – a part of 1st Armoured Division, which served in western France in June 1940.
