This is a look at Cambodia’s use of WWII tanks and armored vehicles before the coming of the Khmer Rouge in 1975.
Tag: armored cars
the MAS-36 in Burkina Faso
France’s WWII MAS-36 rifle served in a number of francophone African nations after WWII. This is a look at one of the more obscure, Burkina Faso.
(French soldier with MAS-36 rifle during WWII.)
(Upper Volta army soldiers with MAS-36 rifles during 1976.)
the M8 Greyhound in Mexico after WWII
The WWII American M8 Greyhound armored car has had an incredibly long run in Mexico, still being upgraded in the 21st century. Beyond these vehicles themselves, it is a chance to look at Mexico during and after WWII. At least in English-language sources, Mexico – considering its size and population – is often given scant attention.
(US Army M8 Greyhound during WWII.)
(The Mexican army’s M8 Modificado II, still in service almost 80 years after WWII ended.)
Switzerland’s Staghounds
Many of the WWII weapons which served on past 1945 were the result of well-thought out procurement strategies, often second- or third-party armies wisely wringing new value from ageing but bargain-priced WWII gear. The Swiss army’s experience with the WWII Staghound armored car is not one of these stories; instead it was a situation bungled from the word go.
(The Radpanzer, Swiss-modified Staghound, preserved today at a museum in Thun.)
WWII, the autobahn, Ike, the Interstates, and one-mile-in-five
Earlier this summer I was talking with a fellow veteran and the subject of “one-mile-in-five” on the Interstate highways came up.
The vague gist is that before WWII, Germany designed its famous autobahn network with war in mind. Near WWII’s conclusion, Gen. Eisenhower was impressed with the autobahn and during his later Presidency ordered a copy of it made, the USA’s Interstate system, mostly for military reasons including for US Air Force bombers to use when their bases got taken out by Soviet ICBMs – and one mile of every five is straight and level for this reason.
Like many Americans I have heard this before and in fact, the specific highway identified by my acquaintance (a certain stretch of I-80 in Nebraska) I have also previously heard as an example location.
(German Bf-110G staged for autobahn operation near the end of WWII in Europe.)
(Harley-Davidson WLAs of the United States Constabulary on the German autobahn after WWII.)
(Sign of the USA’s Interstate highway system.)
This is the type of thing that enough Americans have heard that it becomes accepted through cycles of repetition. To anybody who has driven the endless straightaways of I-15 in Utah or I-70 in Kansas it probably seems reasonable that bombers could land there, and there is usually somebody in earshot to interject “yes he’s right, I’ve heard that too”.
“One-mile-in-five” and the military on the Interstates in general, has equal portions of real fact, misconstrued things, and outright error. Mostly in wwiiafterwwii I cover weapons and equipment; for readers who prefer that I will return to that in the future. Perhaps this will be of interest however.
the T-34 in Laos
The USSR’s most-produced tank of WWII, and most successful during that war, was the T-34. After WWII many nations received this tank, one of the more obscure ones being Laos.
(Soviet soldiers with a T-34 during WWII.)
(Lao T-34 during the 2010s.)
(Ex-Lao T-34s in the Russian Federation during 2020.)
The path by which these T-34s came to Laos and then “returned” to Russia is quite winding and interesting.
For starters, they didn’t really “return home”, at least not in the strictest sense of the words. They are all Czechoslovak post-WWII production, having first gone through Vietnam.
the 98k in Iraq
When I began wwiiafterwwii almost seven years ago, this was one of the first subjects I intended to cover. At that time Iraq was still a current topic, and I thought it would be easy to document the 98k’s history there.
As it turns out, the WWII German 98k in Iraq is complex and full of caveats; poorly-covered by substantive sources. So it took a tad bit longer than planned to complete. Hopefully this subject is still of interest.
(A 98k rifle captured by the US Marine Corps during the post-2003 occupation.)
(A heavily-modified Mauser rifle captured by American troops.) (photo via Silah Report)
(A 98k manufactured by Mauser Werke in 1940. This was a WWII German, post-WWII Czechoslovak-refurbished, then ex-East German gun – an indirect route not uncommon for Iraqi 98ks. The jeem marking on the receiver and barrel is Iraq’s property marking.) (photo via gunboards online forum)
strange Stuarts of Brazil
The USA’s M3/M5 Stuart family is a fairly well-known tank used by numerous countries during and after WWII. In the case of Brazil, what makes the story interesting is the variety of modifications done to Stuarts decades after WWII had ended.
(Brazilian M3 Stuarts on the Italian front during WWII. These are early-production tanks, still with the nearly-useless sponson machine guns and prewar hatch design.)
(Brazilian X1A2 Carcara tank of the 1980s; the last member of the M3 family tree.)
(The XLF-40 ballistic missile system of the 1970s.)
WWII weapons in Shanghai: VJ Day to 1949
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Shanghai was famous as China’s international city, a busy trade port with notorious underworld . During the latter part of the 20th century, the city languished through Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, before once again becoming a world-class city leading in finance, technology, and culture at the turn of the millennium.
There was a very brief time after WWII, only four years, when the city was under the Kuomintang (KMT), or nationalist Chinese government. What makes this period interesting militarily, was the unusual combinations of WWII weaponry fielded there, and a now largely-forgotten American military presence in China.
(Officers of the Shanghai Police Department monitor a political protest in 1948. Equipment includes a stahlhelm M35 helmet and Arisaka Type 38 rifle.)
(An abandoned Mitsubishi Ki-21 “Sally” bomber sits opposite American C-46 Commando, C-54 Skymaster, and C-47 Skytrain transports at a former Japanese airbase near Shanghai after WWII.)
(Soviet-made T-26 and American-made M3/M5 Stuart tanks of the nationalist army together in Shanghai during 1949. An irony of this last battle is that the nationalists were partially equipped with Soviet gear and the communists were partially equipped with American gear.)
Philippines pt.2: WWII weapons used 1946-2018
(part 2 of a 2-part series)
After achieving independence from the United States ten months after the end of WWII, the military of the Philippines was infused with a variety of WWII American weapons, some of which are still in use in 2018.
(Recruits train with a mix of M16s and M1 Garands in 2018.)
(Philippines army soldiers display weapons captured from Abu Sayyaf in 2017 including a pair of M1 Garands, one of which has been spray-painted glossy black.)
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