Commonwealth Vehicles

[gerrykan]

I don't remember the details of this photo.

[gerrykan]

This looks British, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Armored Ambulance? Because not everyone plays fair.


Edit: More information on this vehicle can be found in a post by Simon King on page 8 of this thread.

[gerrykan]

This is an American Dodge truck, but I beleive it was built for British Forces.
Gordon M adds some info on this vehicle a few posts down.

[gerrykan]

Tobruk.

[gerrykan]

[jeepfinger]

Hi Gerrykan,
The armoured ambulance is a Canadian built Chev CMP. As far as I can tell it is a Chev C15TA ARMD1. They were also used as an armoured personnel carrier or just G.S. If you need more info go on oldcmp.net or Mapleleaf up sites.
Cheers
Dave

[gerrykan]

Thanks Dave. Forgot about http://www.oldcmp.net lots of great pictures there.

[gerrykan]

Scammell Pioneer?

[gerrykan]

This is the Churchill AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers). It was a Churchill III or IV equipped with the Petard, a 290 mm Spigot mortar, throwing the 40 pound (18 kg) "Flying dustbin" with its 28 pound high explosive warhead. A weapon designed for the quick leveling of fortifications. It was designed after the Canadian failures at Dieppe and could also be equipped with numerous other attachments, such as mine flails, fascine rollers, explosive placers etc.

There are two of these fairly scarce variants in this photo. Note the British censor removed the unit identification.

[gerrykan]

British bridging tank used in Normandy invasion.

[gerrykan]

British Military Police direct 18-Pounder gun traffic past camel jockeys near pyramids in Egypt.

[gerrykan]

[Gordon_M]

This is an American Dodge truck, but I beleive it was built for British Forces.

The British had a standard workshop truck, the Austin 6 x 4, 3 ton, and needed some extra numbers, so they bought these chassis / cabs from Canada.

I think they were US built chassis-cabs, with Canadian-supplied Welles-Thornton double rear bogies. Since they were finished in Canada they could be supplied to the UK without bending those war material export regulations. The Ashby clan in the south of the UK have a surviving example, but the cab was pretty far gone so I believe they got a replacement cab from Dave Butler at Vintage Power Wagons.

They all got wooden workshop truck bodies with an overheard gantry beam that could be run out the back to work as a crane, but as trucks with no front wheel drive and low-capacity cranes they weren't a lot of use tactically. Got a small image of one stuck in mud while testing but no way to post it here, and I think one or more got captured by the Germans (in north Africa?) and re-marked when under new ownership too.

Gordon_M

[gerrykan]

Thanks for filling in the missing information Gordon.

[Gordon_M]

Read the full story of the production and one of two known survivors here on one of Rick Jones' pages, and note how the overhead gantry beam is forward over the cab when travelling but can be deployed to the rear for use as an engine hoist. Typically you could pull an engine and crane it inside the workshop truck to be worked on if required.;


http://www.old-dodge-trucks.co.uk/dodge_wk60.htm



Gordon_M