"Combat buses". Currently, in almost all armies of the world, armored personnel carriers are the most common type of armored vehicles. This is not surprising, modern armored personnel carriers are distinguished by their relative simplicity of design and low cost, in comparison with infantry fighting vehicles and even more so with main battle tanks. Thanks to this, even small and poor states can afford the construction of armored personnel carriers.
The first Mark IX armored personnel carrier
The simplicity of the design and the availability of such equipment is explained by the fact that, unlike their closest relatives - infantry fighting vehicles - armored personnel carriers are not intended for direct participation in combat. Their main task is the relatively safe and fast transportation of soldiers to the battlefield. Most often, armored personnel carriers of all countries are designed to transport small infantry units - one squad. At the same time, armored personnel carriers, of course, have weapons, but in the overwhelming majority of cases these are machine guns that are designed for self-defense, which does not exclude the possibility of using armored personnel carriers in battle, especially against a weakly armed and ill-prepared enemy, as well as performing police functions. For the tasks solved in the army, armored personnel carriers even received a separate nickname in English "battle buses", while it was Great Britain that became the country that gave the armored personnel carrier a start in life.
The first armored personnel carriers appeared long before the appearance of infantry fighting vehicles. New combat vehicles designed to transport troops appeared at the same time when the first tanks entered the battlefields. Back during the First World War, the British created the Mark IX tracked transport tank, which they began to produce in 1917. It is this combat vehicle that can rightfully be called the first real armored personnel carrier.
How the first armored personnel carrier appeared
The appearance of the first armored personnel carriers is inextricably linked with the appearance of the first tanks on the battlefield, especially considering that they were practically the same vehicles. Both were the first English diamond-shaped tanks, which cannot be confused with other armored vehicles due to the characteristic shape of the tracked bypass enclosing the armored hull. The debut of the tanks took place on September 15, 1916, when the British tanks Mk. 1 went into battle during the famous Battle of the Somme. There was still a year left before the construction of the first armored personnel carriers began.
Already during the first battles with the participation of tanks, it became clear that the infantry did not keep up with the armored giants. At the same time, it was not even a matter of speed, until the moment when the armored personnel carriers begin to move at the speed of automobiles, it will take tens of years. The first tanks on the battlefield moved at the speed of a pedestrian, but the soldiers did not keep up with the armored vehicles for this reason, they were stopped by dense enemy fire. For an infantryman, not only bullets, but also fragments of mines and shells posed a mortal danger. In turn, many positions that could be recaptured or broken through by a tank attack turned out to be lost due to the lack of infantry filling and consolidation of actions between infantrymen and tanks. The fact that the infantry during the attack was very vulnerable to machine-gun fire made the British think about creating special vehicles for the safe transport of soldiers.
Mark IX armored personnel carrier at Bovington Tank Museum
An option was also considered with several infantrymen landing in each tank, but there was not much space inside, in addition to the tightness, exhaust gases created a great inconvenience, since the soldiers were in a gas-polluted compartment. The release of carbon dioxide and cordite vapors led to the fact that the crew members of the first combat vehicles often lost consciousness. Often they became victims of intoxication, so they had to be taken out into the open air in an unconscious state, what kind of amphibious potential is there.
That is why the idea was formulated to create a specialized combat vehicle that would provide fighters not only with protection, but also with mobility. The soldiers needed to be given the opportunity to get to the enemy positions as close as possible, while avoiding unnecessary losses from small arms and artillery shells. The second important advantage was that the infantrymen were freed from the waste of energy to move through difficult, rugged terrain. Thanks to this, before the attack, they had to maintain great freshness and combat effectiveness. All these considerations led the British military and designers to the idea of creating the first armored personnel carrier. This concept will reach its true heyday only by the Second World War, when in Hitler's Germany a whole family of half-track armored personnel carriers will be created that perfectly cope with the listed tasks. But the first were still the British, who initiated work on the creation of a vehicle for transporting infantry based on a tank in the summer of 1917. Work on the creation of the first armored personnel carrier was headed by Lieutenant G. R. Rackham.
Mark IX armored personnel carrier and its features
The construction of the first two prototypes of armored personnel carriers began in England in September 1917 by the largest British industrial company of the early 20th century - Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd, which specialized mainly in the production of various weapons and ships. For example, it was this company that produced for Russia the world's first arctic-class icebreaker "Ermak", which was commissioned in 1899, and decommissioned only in 1963.
Tank Mark V with cannon armament
The already developed Mark V tank was taken as the basis for the infantry transporter, the hull of which was specially extended to 9, 73 m (for the Mark V - 8 m). At the same time, the very layout of the hull of the new combat vehicle differed little from the related tank. The main differences were the 150 hp Ricardo engine displaced to the front of the hull. and the placement of the troop compartment between the power plant and the gearbox, which is located aft. At the same time, a small superstructure and a cylindrical commander's cupola were located on the roof of the wheelhouse of the first armored personnel carrier in history. The length of the troop compartment formed inside the hull, from which all unnecessary was removed, was 4 meters, width - 2.45 meters. This made it possible to place up to 30 soldiers in full gear in the body of a combat vehicle.
To facilitate the finding of the troops inside the combat vehicle, a water tank was installed inside. But the most important innovation, making life easier for ordinary soldiers, were two exhaust fans, which the designers placed in the roof of the armored personnel carrier. In addition to 30 soldiers, the first armored personnel carrier in history also carried a crew, which consisted of four people - the commander of a combat vehicle, a driver, a mechanic and a machine gunner. The armament of the combat vehicle consisted of two 8-mm Hotchkiss machine guns. In addition, the sides of the corps had 8 loopholes through which the paratroopers could fire from personal small arms. Four of these loopholes were located in four large oval doors, which were located along the sides of the hull (two on each side), it was through these doors that the landing and disembarkation took place.
Reservation of the first armored personnel carrier was left at the level of the Mark V. It was not possible to increase the level of armor protection, as this would automatically lead to a deterioration in the already low driving performance of the armored personnel carrier. Not surprising when you consider that a combat vehicle weighing 27 tons was driven by a 150-horsepower engine. Ultimately, the thickness of the armor in the frontal part, sides of the hull and stern did not exceed 10 mm, the roof of the hull and the bottom were armored even weaker - only 6 mm. On tests, the newly minted armored personnel carrier demonstrated a maximum speed of 6, 9 km / h, which was good performance for the first samples of armored vehicles. At the same time, the armored personnel carrier without problems overcame trenches up to 3, 8 meters wide, but the cruising range was quite small - only 32 km.
Diagram of the Mark IX armored personnel carrier
The undercarriage of the first armored personnel carrier in history consisted of 24 road wheels with a locked suspension, front guides and rear driving wheels. The shape of the hull, the course of the track and the structure of the chassis itself were characteristic of all "diamond" tanks, and the Mark IX was no exception. The lower part of the track was supported by 24 blocked rollers, the upper part was supported by a guide chute (metal plate) and two tension rollers on each side, shifted to the stern. The track itself was metal with toothed gearing. For the characteristic appearance of the front of the body and the silhouette of the tracks, which resembled a muzzle, the created armored personnel carrier received the nickname "Pig".
The first British armored personnel carrier was ready for combat use quite late. Only one vehicle reached the battlefields in France, which was used as an armored ambulance. In total, 34 specialized Mark IX armored personnel carriers were assembled in the UK, they were ready after the war in 1919 and in fact turned out to be unclaimed and late to the battlefields. Only one such armored personnel carrier has survived to this day, which is now in the collection of the British Tank Museum in Bovington.
