Gun Trucks

[Matt Wiser]

There was a Challenge magazine article that dealt with gun trucks; they were M-113 chassis mounted on trucks mostly, but some were custom-built. Lots of machine guns and Mark-19 AGLs installed. One variant had an M-901 TOW vehicle mounted, so instant anti-armor vehicle.

One author called the Vietnam gun truckers "Mad Max" types, and one does wonder if the creators of that character had the gun truckers (the Aussies had them too in SVN) in mind. Incidentally, one of the gun truckers won a MOH, so be warned: those vehicles can be dangerous (along with their drivers).

Our group has one gun truck: a captured Ural 375 truck with a ZU-23 mounted in the back. The gun's on its second truck: it was previously mounted on another 375 before some marauders got lucky and RPG'd the truck's engine. That was their last bit of good luck, as they didn't survive the resulting fire-fight.

[O'Borg]

Probably some of the earliest Technicals were used by the LRDG :



This is a posed photo, but note the passenger side MG has no trigger - that's because its a Vickers K model salvaged from an aircraft and the firing mechanism is worked by pushing the home-made shoulder stock forwards.
The LRDG & later SAS liked the Lewis MG because its high rate of fire worked well when firing on the move. Plus the pan magazines fitted nicely into an army issue biscuit tin for easy storage

Not that the LRDG were the first people to modify their vehicles...

[Graebarde]

Was in a game where we (Chalkie and I) built the original BEAST. It was based on a Russian TEL (launcher vehicle for mid sized missiles) though don't recall the name designation. It had (IRRC) quaq 23, 82 Valsik (what we called the Pickel, from Valasic pickles) some PKs and at least on AGL. Heck the crew was numbered at least ten, with additional ride-a-longs. Campaign died before the vehicle did.

I went on to construct the list of gun trucks for my defunct OpFred campaign, though they were not directly avail to the PCs.

Grae