Thread: Gun Trucks
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Old 11-26-2008, 03:34 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mohoender
The main advantage that you get from armored truck is that they are often cheap and easy to make if not always that efficient. Nevertheless, when that is the best you have, you do with it, just look at the Haganah before and at the time of Israel's creation.

They were using sandwich armored truck that were made from two thin metal sheets with plywood in between. I'm not sure if that would still be efficient today but that might deserve some thought. Any idea?

Here is a picture of sandwich truck, the only one I found.

In my village, during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), an existing tractor factory, specialized in the production of tracked tractors, was converted to an armored vehicle factory by the Republican government under the name of "FÃÂ*brica Z" ( Z Factory). My great-grandfather, an appreciated blacksmith at that time, worked there. As usually in time of war, child must help to the war effort, and my grandmother (who had transmitted me the whole history) was not an exception, working at the side of her father until the very last moment, when they escaped to France through the Pyrenees (she was about 14 years old then). She explained me that in the most desperate moments of lack of supplies, a kind of sandwich armor was produced in the factory. In a recent documentation published by a local historian, I've found the confirmation (explained in more technical terms) about the sandwich armour described by my grandmother.

In this case, between the two metal plates, the workers of the FÃÂ*brica Z used compressed sheep wool extracted from mattresses (I hope it would be correct in English...). The bullet penetrated the outer plate and, hopefully, lost enough velocity in the wool to do not pierce the inner plate. Of course, always talking about small arms fire. I have no idea about the effectiveness of this type of armour, but I suppose that, in a very rudimentary way, uses the capacity to absorb kinetic energy of a dense and flexible material (compressed wool in this case) like a modern personal armour. This type of sandwich armour was used in light tanks.

And returning specifically to the thread, one of the main works in the FÃÂ*brica Z was to add armor plates to the Chevrolet trucks bought by the Republican government to the United States. Sadly, I have no photos of these trucks.
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