Exactly how successful and effective were British tanks compared to those of Germans, Americans, or Soviets? Was the whole "infantry tank", "cruiser tank" doctrine successful, or did it only work in theory? How did tank destroyers work their way into this system? And why did Britain stick to that doctrine to the end of the war when the medium tank had been widely adopted by other powers?
The efficacy of British tank design and doctrine is a question that is complicated by several factors.
Most immediately, after the catastrophe in France, the British needed tanks. Any tanks. And they needed them now, simply because 500 obsolete tanks are better than no tanks at all when you’re face with an imminent existential crisis.
This meant that, for example, the A11 ‘Matilda 1’ continued in production long after it was known that the design was seriously flawed and the tank was essentially ineffective. Around 700 of these quite useless vehicles were built after Dunkirk.
The Covenator was another example of a bad tank that was rushed into production due to the immediate requirement for tanks of any kind. In peace-time, pre-production testing would have revealed that the Covenator had congenital flaws and the design would simply have been binned. As it was, around 1,700 Covenators were built. None of them ever saw a shot fired in anger.
The A22 Churchill is an extreme example of a type that was rushed into production – in this case the tank was ordered for full production without a single prototype being built. Of course, this meant that the early examples were plagued by faults. Vauxhall, the manufacturers, supplied each tank with a handbook detailing the faults and explaining that these were faults that ordinarily would have been ironed out in testing, but that the tank was essentially a good vehicle. They were right. The Churchill would go on to be arguably one of the most effective armoured vehicles of the war.
The same principle applied to armament. The 2-dpr was a very good gun by 1940 standards but was quickly becoming obsolete. The 6-pdr was much better but production was delayed because it was viewed as unacceptable to re-tool the 2-pdr production lines because the gap in gun production was unacceptable given the circumstances.
The Axis in North Africa has the luxury of a short supply line, being only a short hop over the Med, while the British had to ship their tanks around the Cape. The long sea journey meant that corrosion would often set in, particularly in the early part of the war when tanks were stored on deck with little thought given to adequately protecting them from rust. This meant that British tanks developed a notorious reputation for a lack of reliability. The Crusader was not a bad tank but the sea journey had such an impact on its reliability that it earned a bit of an evil reputation for itself.
There were several factors peculiar to the UK that affected tank design. Mainly, the UK was heavily dependent on rail transport. This had several effects
There were very few heavy road-going vehicles from which tank engine designs could be drawn. The A12 Matilda II’s engine was in fact two bus engines bolted together.
There were no tank transporters meaning there was no battlefield tank recovery infrastructure
The British loading gauge was smaller than on the continent. This meant narrower tanks, with narrower turret rings, meaning smaller turrets and therefore smaller main armament.
In fact, the Churchill was built to the limit of the loading gauge to the extent that the radiator louvers had to be unbolted and stowed on top of the hull before the tanks would be moved by rail.
Another factor was that Britain had to undergo a fairly comprehensive re-armament programme and that the army was the lowest in priority of the three services for funding and resources. Neverthless, some very good new equipment was brought in, such as the 25-pdr gun and the Bren squad automatic weapon, and the entire army was motorised (which is more than you can say of the Germans). In addition, these scarce resources had to be shared amongst the need for new everything from uniforms to field kitchens.
So out of the total UK defence spedning 'pie', only a very fine sliver indeed could be devoted to new tank designs (Fletcher gives a figure for this, which IIRC is in the region of 1% or less of UK defence spending going on tanks)
Neither Germany nor Russia were effected by spending constraints to the same extent as the UK - Firstly because neither country gave very high priorty to their navy, secondly because both countries could put "guns before butter", and certainly in the case of Germany, because their level of defence spending was economically suicidal - Germany depended on conquest after 1938 to keep herself fed, solvent, and armed.
The major limiting factor was less the dichotomy between infantry and cruiser tanks but with doctrine of arming tanks with anti-tank guns, rather than a dual-purpose weapon. As mentioned above both the 2-pdr and 6-pdr were excellent guns for their respective times, but only for knocking out other tanks. But because they only fired solid shot, they were almost useless against enemy anti-tank guns, artillery, and infantry.
Thus Rommel’s standard tactic of throwing an anti-tank screen in front of advancing British armour – the British tanks had no choice but to charge pell-mell against a screen of guns which outranged their own armament, hoping to get within machine-gun range before they were knocked out. All of this charging about was jolly dashing and certainly courageous but it was tactically near suicide.
The British would have to wait for the first M3 and M4 tanks to arrive before their tactics could be adjusted to deal with anti-tank screens.
By later in the war, British tank design was rapidly evolving. Both the Cromwell and Comet were effective battle-worthy designs while the Centurion, which arrived too late to see action, would prove the definitive tank design of the early to mid cold war era. In effect, the cruiser concept merged with the medium and heavy concepts to produce the universal tank.
Against all of this, you have to consider that many of the British designs were actually fairly good
The Matilda II was a good tank for its day but was impossible to upgrade and too slow in production
The Crusader was a decent tank and the earlier marks of cruisers were probably at least on a par with the Pz 1, Pz II, Italian, and Czech designs that made up the bulk of the Axis’ early war armour
The Valentine was a reasonably good design and was used by the Soviets until at least the end of Op Bagration.
The Churchill was an exceptionally good armoured vehicle, despite its low speed and anachronistic appearance.
Sources:
The Great Tank Scandal – David Fletcher
Death by Design – Peter Beale
The Desert War – Alan Moorehead
Edit - some words