David Fletcher, curator of the Tank Museum at Bovington, outlines the history of the M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the tank destroyer, virtually every nation had them. The British classed them as self-propelled anti-tank guns and formed them into batteries of anti-tank regiments of the Royal Artillery. To the Germans they were tank hunters and served with tank hunter detachments attached to infantry and armoured divisions.
Some American generals believed that tanks were too expensive to be squandered fighting other tanks and thought that dedicated tank destroyers would be cheaper and more effective. They even proposed that towed anti-tank guns would be cheaper still, forgetting that, as guns got bigger, so did their carriages, until they were hard work to move around at all.
The M10 Tank Destroyer (CMV August 2013) which next appeared on the scene, was much more suitable, with an excellent gun for its time but not all the tank destroyer men liked it, it was too big and much more like a tank. Tank destroyer development continued through the T49 and T67, culminating in the T70 which was standardised as the M18 Hellcat.
Inevitably a number of unsuccessful prototypes …
