Although the Union successfully used a fleet of casemate ironclad riverboats in their Mississippi Campaign, the casemate ironclad is mostly associated with the Confederacy.
As one of the casemate-style turretless Jagdpanzer (tank destroyer, literally "hunting tank") designs, it was developed against the wishes of Heinz Guderian, the inspector general of the Panzertruppen, as a replacement for the Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III).
By 1943 the series of Samokhodnaya ustanovka casemate-armored vehicles had started to appear at the front, starting with the SU-85, and by late 1944 the SU-100, which mounted powerful guns on modern chassis adopting the full-casemate enclosure of the crew compartment as the Germans had done with the StuG III.
On the seaward side the tower has been extended to form a low battery, with three large casemates facing out across Marsaxlokk bay towards Fort Delimara.