Improvised vehicle armour

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Improvised vehicle armour is protection added in the field that was not originally part of the design or centrally planned.

Contents

[edit] History

Improvised vehicle armour has appeared on the battlefield for as long as there have been armoured vehicles in existence.

[edit] World War I

In effect the first armoured cars to see combat were entirely improvised although this soon changed as the war continued. A few were used by the Belgian army during the German invasion[1] . The British Royal Naval Air Service received reports of this and converted some of their own cars[1]. Improvised conversion continued until December 1914 when the first standardized design entered service. [1]

[edit] World War II

Most armies involved in the conflict adopted some form of improvised armour at some point. The Home Guard in the United kingdom equipped itself with a number of vehicles with improvised armour. Later in 1944 some Churchill tanks had sections of track attached to their existing armour to provide extra protection[2]. M8 Greyhound crews would sometimes line the floors of their vehicles with sandbags to provide extra protection against landmines.[3]. U.S. tanks sometimes had spare strips of track welded to their the hulls. This was done with the Sherman, Grant, and Stuart tanks.[4]

[edit] Post-WWII conflicts

In the Vietnam War, U.S. gun trucks were armoured with sandbags and locally fabricated steel armour plate.[5] More recently, U.S. troops in Iraq have armoured their Humvees and various military transport vehicles with scrap materials: this came to be known as "haji" armour by Iraqis[4] and "hillbilly" armor by the Americans.[6]

[edit] Non-military use

During the 1984 UK miners' strike, buses used for transporting strikebreakers to work were armoured against attacks by strikers by fitting metal bars to their windows. These improvised armoured buses were nicknamed "battle buses".

[edit] References

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  1. ^ a b c Livesey, Jack (2007). Armoured Fighting Vehicles of World Wars I and II. Southwater, pp.12-13. ISBN 9781844763702. 
  2. ^ Forty, George (1995). World War Two Tanks. Osprey, pp.9. ISBN 1855325322. 
  3. ^ Livesey, Jack (2007). Armoured Fighting Vehicles of World Wars I and II. Southwater, pp.71. ISBN 9781844763702. 
  4. ^ a b Moran, Michael. "Frantically, the Army tries to armour Humvees: Soft-skinned workhorses turning into death traps," MSNBC, April 15, 2004.
  5. ^ Gardiner, Paul S. "Gun Trucks: Genuine Examples of American Ingenuity," Army Logistician, PB 700-03-4, Vol. 35, No. 4, July-August 2003, Army Combined Arms Support Command, Fort Lee, Virginia. ISSN 0004-2528
  6. ^ Hirsh, Michael; Barry, John and Dehghanpisheh, Babak. "'Hillbilly Armor': Defense sees it's fallen short in securing the troops. The grunts already knew," Newsweek, December 20, 2004.

[edit] See also