Don't sue us...

[kato13]

ReHerakhte 01-24-2004, 08:44 AM Well, offhand I don't have a good source of material dealing with the Mexican military of the 1950s-60s and only a little more than that for Canada of the same timeline. I will deal with Canada first as I know somewhat more about it but if anyone has better info please jump in as I never did much study on the 1950s to 1960s period.


Like many British Commonwealth nations of the time, Canada was still making use of a good number of WW2 vehicles (like the 25pdr Sexton SPG mentioned below) and was still heavily influenced by the British military. WW2 surplus was plentiful for the Allied nations and as can be seen on my initial listing, many of the newer designs didn't start to come into being until the very late 1950s or early 1960s.

Something I did miss from the Canadian listing was the locally designed, although based of the US M3, Ram cruiser tank. I don't think enough of them were left to carry on service into the 1950s so I didn't list it, but a development known as the Kangaroo was still being used. Essentially a gun tank with the turret removed so it could carry a Section/Squad of troops, it was used in the final stages of WW2 in its intended APC role but the Canadians continued to use them well after as a towing vehicle for anti-tank guns and also as ammo resupply vehicles. These things are converted tanks so they are heavily armoured and had enought room to carry 11 troops and a crew of 2 (the precursor to the heavy APCs the Russians are developing at the moment, although the Kangaroo had no weapons from what I remember). The Kangaroos also served as radio vehicles and Rams were also built as Armoured Recovery Vehicles.


The Canadians also developed a local variant of the Sherman known as the Grizzly I cruiser tank. Built for the US Army as the US didn't have the facilities yet established for mass production of tanks, only a small number were built before the US got into high gear. This is not a tank likely to be encountered in any numbers but the majority of the 188 built were retained for amoured warfare training by the Canadians so I suppose it's possible that a few may have survived in storage during the 1950s.

A variant model was built as an anti-aircraft system. Known as the Skink, only a few were built before the Luftwaffe was defeated but one did serve with the Canucks and was put to good use in the ground role scaring the crap out of the German infantry it was used against. Check out Tank AA, 20mm Quad, Skink (http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/bu...eps/skink.html) for some pics and a description. It wouldn't be too difficult to imagine this vehicle being put back into production as it would probably be the only mobile & armoured AA system available to the Canadians at that time.


The Canucks made good use of the Universal Carrier having built over 29 000 of them for their own use and for other Commonwealth nations and a good number survived into the 1950s with many being sold to civilians when they were retired from service.

The Canadians also used a good number of M5A1 Stuart light tanks. Fast & reliable, they were often used in the recce role in Commonwealth armies, something they continued to do for some countries after the war. A number of them had their turrets removed to make them lighter (hence, faster) and lower in profile for the recce role. It's possible the Canadians still had some placed into storage when they adopted the Ferret scout car.

The Canadians also made use of the Saladin armoured car from what I recall and I'm pretty sure they also used the Saracen APC. Apparently they also made use of the M8 Greyhound in the Korean War so it's possible they have a few of them still around by 1964. They also made use of the M3 White Scout Car.

I believe the MBT at the time was the Centurion probably with a 17pdr main gun. The Centurion was probably the best tank of the 1940s-1950s and continued in service with the UK into the 1960s (it was also bought by Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Israel, South Africa and Australia amongst others)


Something else to consider is that the Canadians did a lot of work in the late 1950s to bring helicopters into land warfare and are considered the pioneers of close intergration of helicopters with tactical units, they also created the technique of 'Nap of the earth' flying. If they had enough helos, you could probably expect them to use heliborne assaults like the US Airmobile units did in the 1970s.


Mexico.

Not surprisingly, there is not a lot of readily available info about Mexico around but I understand that they did not have a lot of armoured vehicles considering the size of their army. Besides the 40 HWK-11's they got in 1964, they had very little in the way of APCs, they got some US Half-tracks in the 1960s although I think they didn't recieve the AMX-VCI until the late 1960s. It could be argued that with the war beginning in 1964, the Germans kept the HWK-11's for their own use rather than ship them to Mexico.

From what little I can find, the Mexican army was for all intents and purposes, limited to light infantry work with limited transport from military trucks and whatever civvy trucks they could get a hold of. However, they were making the Volkswagen Beetle under licence in the 1950s so they could possibly have produced field car versions for military use if they got desperate.


As for tanks, they had been given a number of surplus WW2 US models such as the M3A1 Stuart & M5A1 Stuart light tanks (which incidently still made up their tank force as of the 1990s). They also had M4 Shermans at one point although I don't know when they disposed of them.

Other Mexican armour included 50 or so M2A1 Half-tracks but these were received in the 1960s, M5 Half-tracks probably received at the same time, M8 Greyhounds, M3A1 White scout cars.


That's all I got sorry but it's something to work from. I couldn't imagine the Mexicans using their light tanks against US armour but they'd probably use it against softer targets. No matter how good they might be they wouldn't be able to stand up to a reasonably well equipped US unit of similar size which would probably see them acting as bandits or raiding forces (hoping to steal resources).


The Canadians would be an altogether different story, being equiped with modern vehicles of British origin (not war weary surplus models) and developing many aggressive tactical doctrines for combined arms, they would probably do very well in a 1960s WW3. But as pointed out, their best would have gone to Europe where at least they could still be resupplied by the UK. The units in Canada would be reliant upon sea convoys to deliver spares and replacements to North America, assuming the Brits had any to send. Given that Canada designed and produced some very good designs at short notice during WW2, they would probably pull off the same thing although it would likely be directed towards making copies of the British vehicles they already use rather than design something entirely new.

The Canadians could probably reintroduce production of the Canadian Military Pattern (CMP) vehicles, although a 1930s or 40s design, this series of vehicles served with nearly every major Commonwealth country and continued in service until the mid or late 1950s.


Its also worth keeping in mind that I pillaged plenty of this info from two spots on the one website, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/ with some of it based on best guesses.


Cheers,

Kevin.

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graebarde 01-24-2004, 10:06 AM I couldn't imagine the Mexicans using their light tanks against US armour but they'd probably use it against softer targets. No matter how good they might be they wouldn't be able to stand up to a reasonably well equipped US unit of similar size which would probably see them acting as bandits or raiding forces (hoping to steal resources).


That's about what I would invision even in the '98 TL as well. I still wonder what they were thinking that the Mexican army won overwhelming victories against US forces that had armor, but then it's not my writing.

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nmdecke 01-24-2004, 01:28 PM >>>>That's about what I would invision even in the '98 TL as well. I still wonder what they were thinking that the Mexican army won overwhelming victories against US forces that had armor, but then it's not my writing.<<<


I think the blinding hatred everyone has for City of Angels is the idea that Mexico is rolling out T-72s and BMPs instead of VW busses and donkeys. I could never see a way in GDW's timeline that America would allow Mexico (sharing a lengthy border and all) to become so socialist and stocked with Soviet weaponry. You'd think that we would be able to "exert some influence" on the Mexican leadership to turn down those shipments. Does it say anywhere in the canon that we nuked Mexico in responce for their invasion of us? Surely we did.


Oh, and I've been updating the Twilight 1964 pages like mad, probably added 5,000 words just this week. It has really grown Hydra heads...

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AzSteven 01-24-2004, 02:57 PM Originally posted by nmdecke

[BI think the blinding hatred everyone has for City of Angels is the idea that Mexico is rolling out T-72s and BMPs instead of VW busses and donkeys. [/B]


Actually, the Mexican government was in the process of purchasing about a brigade-set worth of armor and APCs from Germany in 1992 when the Peso's crash screwed up their foreign exchange values. Germany was selling off old East German gear at the time, but a couple of years later they opted to instead scrap most of their surplus WarPac gear. I beleive some of the Gulf States made some bulk vehicle prchases from Germany as well in the wake of the Gulf War and Desert Storm.

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antimedic 02-09-2004, 03:49 PM Where can I find information on National Guard units in the early to mid 60's. I have spent several fruitless hours searching the web,my library and the local library. My next step will be to drive to the HQ for the Florida National Guard in St.Augustine. So if anybody knows of a website or book, please help so I can save some gas.

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