The term "gun truck" first appeared during the Vietnam War, when the US Transport Corps faced heavy truck losses from ambushes by guerrillas operating in the jungle. In order to repel attacks on transport convoys, some of the American trucks were armored and armed.
But the very fact of installing various weapons on trucks was recorded much earlier - this happened back in the years of the First World War. However, then low-power gantrucks were quickly transformed into armored vehicles of special construction.
The Guinness armored truck can be considered the first gantruck designed to escort convoys and patrol city streets. It was built in April 1916 to reinforce the British government forces involved in the suppression of the Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland.
Basically, the armored car was an ordinary three-ton rear-wheel drive truck "Daimler". The cockpit and engine of the car were partially protected by hinged sheets of iron, and in place of the cargo platform, a steam boiler, which served as a fighting compartment, was removed from the brewery. There were loopholes on the sides of the cauldron, and some of them were actually cut, and some were drawn to confuse the enemy. The airborne soldiers stationed in the squad were firing through them. The "fighting compartment" was entered through a hatch in the rear of the vehicle.
British armored truck "Guinness"
Following the first gantruck, the British built several more similar machines, two of them with steam boilers and one with flat sides of steel sheets. Of course, the Guinness armored cars were not full-fledged armored vehicles. The boiler iron of the fighting compartment provided only relative protection, although the cylindrical shape to some extent contributed to the ricochet of the bullets. But it is important to keep in mind that the armored cars were used against the rebels, who practically did not have at their disposal heavy weapons, and therefore with their main tasks - protecting convoys and covering the movement of troops in urban battles - the Guinness was quite coping.
By the end of April 1916, the uprising was practically suppressed. The armored vehicles that became unnecessary were sent for storage and were soon "unbooked". After "decommissioning" and "unbooking", all trucks continued to be used for their usual purpose - delivering beer to Dublin pubs.
The next time, due to a shortage of factory-made armored vehicles, handicraft armored trucks and buses were used in the 30s during the Chaco War - between Paraguay and Bolivia and the Spanish Civil War.
In republican Spain, where they received the name "Tiznaos" - these machines were produced in significant quantities. Due to the lack of special armor alloys, as a rule, ordinary rolled sheet, boiler iron, etc. acted as armor.
"Tiznaos", on board the inscription "HERMANOS NO TIRAR" ("Brothers do not shoot")
After the hasty evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, there was a real threat of a German invasion of the islands. Due to the catastrophic shortage of armored vehicles, the production of armored trucks was established at the enterprises of Great Britain.
British "mobile pillbox"
Due to the lack of armored steel on the basis of heavy trucks, so-called "mobile pillboxes" were built, known under the general name "Bizon". The thickness of the concrete armor reached 150 mm and protected against rifle-caliber bullets. The exact number of built "mobile pillboxes" is unknown, according to various estimates, two or three hundred "Bison" were produced.
The Armadillo was built to protect RAF airfields. These vehicles were armed with a 37 mm COW automatic aircraft cannon, capable of firing at both air and ground targets, and were protected by light anti-splinter armor.
British "battleship" armed with a 37-mm automatic cannon COW
If after 1943 the Bison were practically all replaced in the territorial defense units with full-fledged armored vehicles, then the Battleships guarded British airfields throughout the war.
The Allies quite widely used armed trucks and off-road vehicles during the hostilities in North Africa. Initially, these were vehicles with light anti-tank guns of 37-40 mm caliber installed on them.
Willys MB armed with a 37mm M3 anti-tank gun
British anti-tank 40-mm "two-pounder" on the all-wheel drive Morris truck
However, to provide fire support to their units, they turned out to be ineffective, and when used as tank destroyers, they were too vulnerable.
Jeeps and light off-road trucks armed with numerous machine guns, including coaxial aircraft, have become much more successful in combat in the desert.
These machines were actively used by "long-range reconnaissance" units operating in isolation from the main forces.
In the USSR, such machines were created in much smaller quantities than in Great Britain. In the summer of 1941, at the Izhora plant in Leningrad, the GAZ-AA and ZiS-5 trucks were partially armored to protect the city; in total, about 100 trucks were re-equipped. As a rule, only the driver's cabin, engine and body were booked. They were sheathed with armor plates with a thickness of 6 to 10 mm.
Armored ZiS-5, Leningrad Front, 1941
The vehicles were armed in different ways. So, the GAZ-AA armored trucks were armed in front with Degtyarev's tank or infantry machine guns, as well as a DShK, DA machine gun or Maxim's easel machine gun in the back. The armament of armored vehicles on the ZIS-5 chassis was more powerful, it consisted of a DT / DA machine gun, a 45-mm anti-tank or 20-mm automatic aircraft gun ShVAK was located in the body behind the inclined armor plate. Shooting from them could only be carried out forward in the direction of travel.
The ZiS-5 armored vehicle on display at the Museum of Military Equipment in Verkhnyaya Pyshma
However, the low cross-country ability did not allow the use of "armored cars" off paved roads. By the end of 1942, almost all of these vehicles were lost in battles or captured by the enemy.
Soon after the end of World War II, armed clashes broke out in Palestine between Arabs and Jews. Armored vehicles were urgently needed to protect the convoys plying between Israeli-controlled settlements.
It was decided to build armored cars on the basis of two-axle all-wheel drive trucks Ford F-60S, with a carrying capacity of 3 tons. But in practice, homemade armored cars were created on the basis of other trucks. By January 1948, several auto repair enterprises managed to build 23 armored vehicles.
Due to the lack of armor steel, combined protection was used, which consisted of "layered armor": between two sheets of iron 5 mm thick, there was an interlayer of beech boards or rubber with a thickness of about 50 mm. This armor was called "sandwich", which began to be used in relation to the machines themselves. In the first "Sandwiches", only the cab (entirely, including the engine) and the body sides were armored - this scheme was chosen so that the armored vehicle differed as little as possible from an ordinary truck.
Early type "sandwich" on a Ford F-60S truck chassis, March 1948
Armored trucks were used to escort unarmored vehicles when transporting goods to settlements, and in some highly dangerous sections, convoys were entirely made up of armored trucks. The appearance of armored vehicles had a significant impact on the course of hostilities. The armored vehicle, which was at the head of the column, could approach the Arabs up to a distance of effective use of PPs and grenades, or suppress their positions from afar, with light machine gun fire, remaining slightly vulnerable to return fire.
"Sandwiches", as a rule, did not have weapons on the turrets and in the towers, fire was fired from small arms through the loopholes in the sides. Initially, the armored cars did not have a roof, which made them vulnerable to fire from above and from hand grenades thrown into the car through the side. Therefore, soon "sandwiches" began to receive a two- or four-pitched roof, solid, from a metal mesh or fabric; from such a roof, a grenade rolled down and exploded to the side without causing damage. For throwing grenades, the crew of the "sandwich" provided for two hatches, which opened up along the ridge. The folded back hatches gave the car a characteristic look, for which the improvised armored vehicles got their other name - "butterflies".
In addition to the Sandwiches, there were a number of Dodge WC52 light all-wheel drive trucks. These vehicles were modified by installing additional armor, placing a machine gun next to the driver, and a small multi-sided turret with a machine gun on the roof.
Sandwich hull based on a CMP pickup that was knocked out in action, August 1948
The heavy weight of the attached armor caused poor mobility and greatly overloaded the engine and transmission on steep slopes or under heavy loads. Many armored cars were lost along with the crews in ambushes and in armed clashes with the British in 1947-1948. Soon after the start of deliveries of M3 and M9 armored personnel carriers, M3A1 reconnaissance armored vehicles and tanks to the Israelis, they finally abandoned the use of homemade armored cars.
In the 50-60s of the last century, in different countries, with a shortage of standard armored vehicles, they regularly returned to the idea of creating armored vehicles or fire support vehicles based on conventional trucks. Of interest are the cases of the use of captured GAZ-51 trucks by the US armed units. "UN troops", which captured them in Korea, made "gantrucks" and even auto-railcars on the basis of the GAZ-51.
The GAZ-51N truck captured by the Americans and turned into an armed railroad car
The French used steel-lined GMC trucks armed with 40 mm Bofors and an M2 heavy machine gun in Indochina.
However, the Americans began a truly massive conversion of trucks into fire support vehicles to protect and escort transport convoys in the late 60s during a military campaign in Vietnam.
During the Vietnam War, the US Army and its South Vietnamese allies required hundreds of tons of cargo every day from the ports of Quy Nhon and Cam Ranh to bases off the coast. Frequently, truck convoys numbered two hundred or more vehicles. Such huge caravans were an excellent target for guerrillas who set up ambushes in remote areas.
Effectively defending trucks during rapid attacks was nearly impossible. American units simply could not physically control such a vast territory and prevent the impending ambushes and mining of roads. The personnel were only enough to organize a few checkpoints, between which the Viet Cong freely fired at and blew up American trucks.
Attempts to include heavy armored vehicles on an ongoing basis for escorting heavy armored vehicles into the transport convoys turned out to be ineffective. Tracked armored vehicles could not maintain the required pace of movement and, after frequent tropical rains, destroyed dirt roads and made them impassable for trucks.
The jeeps with machine-gun armament also showed low efficiency, their crews were very vulnerable to small arms fire.
After several particularly successful attacks by South Vietnamese guerrillas in 1967, a “reinforced convoy” tactic was introduced to reduce the vulnerability of road convoys, the key element of which was an armed gun truck.
The base for this vehicle was a 2.5-ton M35 truck armed with two 7.62 mm M60 machine guns. Protection of machine gun crews in the back from small arms fire and shrapnel at the first stage was provided with sandbags. The reinforced convoys were small, with no more than 100 vehicles in the convoy. In the event that the convoy was ambushed, the gantrucks had to quickly move to the area under attack and suppress the enemy with fire.
They soon had to abandon the protection of machine-gun crews of gantrucks with the help of sandbags, because during the frequent rains, the sand absorbed a lot of water, which led to overloading of the entire car. The sandbags were replaced with armor plates, which were removed from the broken equipment. In the new cars, not only the body was armored (which was an ordinary iron box with cutouts for machine guns), but also the doors with the cabin floor.
The crew of the gantruck, as a rule, consisted of a driver, two machine gunners and a commander, sometimes the crew also included a grenade launcher with a 40 mm M79 hand grenade launcher. But this armament was soon considered insufficient, in addition to the M60 machine guns, the vehicles received large-caliber M2NV or six-barreled Minigans.
The crews of the gantrucks considered the most successful option to put an armored hull from the decommissioned M113 armored personnel carrier into the back - it was relatively spacious, had a roof, standard turrets for machine guns and more protection than the standard 2.4 mm armor plates. But the M113 hull could no longer be transported by 2, 5-ton trucks, it was installed on a 5-ton M54 cargo platform.
Quadruple anti-aircraft guns M45 Maxson, mounted in the back, were also highly quoted. Gantrucks, as a rule, in addition to weapons, carried with them a supply of medicines and spare parts, thus being their own "ambulances" and repair and recovery vehicles.
The number of gantrucks in the columns was constantly increasing. Ultimately, 1 gantrak per 10 trucks was considered optimal. They were allowed to occupy any place in the column so that the enemy did not knock out the gantraki with the first blow.
As a rule, each machine carried its own name on board, and was "decorated" with various kinds of drawings. In addition to the "aesthetic self-expression" of American soldiers, this also had practical significance - it facilitated radio communication and identification in battle.
Despite the fact that handicraft armored armed trucks were never considered as a standard means of escorting transport convoys, and it was planned to completely replace them with V-100 Commando wheeled armored vehicles, these armored cars began to arrive in significant quantities only by the very end of the war. Therefore, gantrucks were actively exploited until the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in 1973.
With the end of the Vietnam War, the need for gantrucks disappeared. Most of them were either scrapped or converted into regular transport vehicles.
Evaluating the experience of creating combat wheeled vehicles on the basis of initially unarmed and unarmored vehicles, two directions of their development and application can be distinguished.
The first is the creation of "ersatz armored vehicles" in the event of a shortage or absence, due to any reason, of standard armored vehicles. Such "improvised armored cars", for lack of a better one, were usually forced to use on the battlefield as armored personnel carriers or fire support vehicles and, due to their poor protection and low cross-country ability and firepower, often suffered heavy losses.
A striking example of such "armored vehicles" is a series of armored vehicles for the government army of El Salvador, the construction of which began in 1968. On the chassis of 2, 5-ton M35 army trucks, in the central mechanical and auto repair shops of the Salvadorian army, 12 Rayo armored vehicles were originally built, which were used in the summer of 1969 during the 100-hour war with Honduras.
Later, after the start of the civil war in El Salvador, about 150 armored vehicles were built - mainly on truck chassis (MAN 630, 2-ton "Unimog", 5-ton "Ford" and "General Motors", 7-ton Magirus-Deutz 7-ton "Jupiter", etc.).
The second is the re-equipment of trucks, as a rule, with minimal changes, amounting to the installation of light weapons and minimal crew protection. The purpose of these armed trucks was to follow in a transport convoy in order to protect against attacks by insurgents. In the event that the convoy enters an ambush on the route, the gantrucks accompanying the convoy should, if possible, advance to the place of attack and repulse the attack with dense fire.
