HEH HEH HEH Thank you Gunnie..

Cessez le feu !!!! (stop fire)
:-)

BUT Gunnie!

CHEERS TO ALL

I saw a clip on the history channel a year or so back of a quad 50 in a gmc firing at a sniper at the top of a tree.

Don't forget the Western Desert Theatre saw lots of WW2 proto guntruckery...
There are the famous armed Chevys and Fords of the LRDG, the SAS and their jeeps and don't forget the germans got in on the concet as well - there's a photo (will try and find it) of a captured Mack with a 20mm Breda on the back.
The Brits also had Model T's armed with Vickers HMGs during the Palestine campaign in WW1 - this surely qualifies, as the mount clearly shows intent to use the weapon from the vehicle, the defining mark of a 'guntruck'...

acav out

OK, we will change that, from now on they are called "gun-truck"
I'm sorry Gunnie, but what I mean't is just a truck with any kind of fixed weapon on it.

I have problems with my homepage so again my photo:
https://armorama.kitmaker.net/photos/showphoto.php?photo=32120&password=&sort=8&cat=500&page=1
Did you heard anything about this vehicles?

Piotr

Late into the conversation, but for what it's worth:
My Dad was one of the Military Police NCO's running the RedBallExpress; the beach-head truck-fed supply lines following troops into Germany. He then sat in on the Constabulary.
Dad's anecdotes described pretty much a benign countryside behind the advancing Allied Armys. There was no Euro resistamce ambushing Allied convoys.
Most of his stories related to arresting Allied soldiers for black-market activities.
We have many pictures of regularly armed (small arms/static mounted weapons) convoys arriving at Nurnberg-Furth, Frankfurt, Giessen etc. Places we were stationed at in the early '50's.
I remember ('bout 1950) that the Commissary trucks came with USAF SP's carrying just little black "night-sticks". No threat of ambush.
That was in Berlin, when the Red's were just a block away.
So...the answer is NO! No Allied-convoy-gun-trucks in WWII Europe.
Nothing like 'Nam or Iraq.

Don


Don

the GMC I pictured is a mobile anti aircraft unit and in the original text of the question is in fact a gun-truck or truck with a gun.

...huh...?

I've apparently lost the thread of this thread. I thought it was asking about Vietnam era type armored convoy escort trucks (guntrucks) being used in a WW2 era European theater operation. Like escorting the advancing columns east.
From what I understand, after the landings, there was no resistance, so no; there was no "guntruck" protection for convoys that pretty much rolled through the European countryside without a bit of military opposition.
Dad was in Japan later. No underground, no civilian opposition, military dead. No ambushed columns.
No "GunTrucks".
Sorry./
...but there's always the opportunity to join the "What if" crowd.
I'm building an M4A3E8'e$pl@z&h' right now, not sure if it's a right-on designation, but a guy said that it's a dream-machine from 1944/45.
A M4 Jumbo Easy Eight with an M-26 turret w/90mm.
I think it'll look good!

sorry mate. In the original post that started this thread the term "guntrucks" was used. We know now (from later in the thread) that the term "guntruck" was infact applied to the vietnam era convoy escorts.

However what the original question really refered to was more WW2 era "trucks with guns", of which there were a lot. A discussion arose about whether the Quad 50' were ever 'fixed' in the back of the GMC-CCKW's (as per the first pic in this thread) and also used from this position. In fact they were and they could be concidered as a "GUN Truck" of the WW2 era as they were used as mobile AA.

Good luck with your Sherman build I look forward to seeing progress pics of it.

Thanks
Cliff

To answer your original question Dragonslain, there were trucks with guns on them in W.W.II (as shown in the pictures people have posted in this topic), but as far as I'm concerned they weren't true gun trucks. Everyone seems to have their own term for gun truck, so here's mine. I think the term "gun truck" should be taken to mean a "converted", "transport" truck whose main purpose is to be used to "protect" and "escort" other transport trucks in a "convoy". I love quotes If you just take it to mean any truck with a gun then it could be just about anything, including jeeps, transport trucks with a 50 cal. on top, anti-aircraft trucks, etc. I'm not saying there couldn't have been a truck designed in W.W.II to escort convoys like was done in Vietnam, but I haven't seen it yet. NOT SAYING IT DOESN'T EXIST, JUST HAVEN'T SEEN IT. Of course from those pictures that you guys have sent, I could see where the origins, or idea for the Vietnam era gun truck might have came from. Now here's the real debate, is it guntruck, or gun truck :-)

Read about the guntruck and the harden convoy security concept here. http://www.eustis.army.mil/DPTMSEC/museum.htm Click on to the Museum exhibits.

Boyyyyyyyy, get you fellas started........and off ya go!!

GunJeep, GunBeep, GunPlatform, GunVehicle, GunComposite, GunDodge, GunGMC, GunEscort, GunRig, GunTranport, GunFord, GunMac, GunDuece, Gun6X6, GunPopsicle, GunBurpinghotleadinthegeneraldirectionoftheenemy.......whew!

Tread.

lol

gun+truck=guntruck

cheers

joe

I like the gunpopsicle, sounds like something James Bond would always have around.... #:-)

sorry for threadjacking, but whats a popscicle?

:-) :-) :-) :-)
Shaun

For the love of all things Pure and Virtuous - why must these Popsicles be orange!?! I suppose they also bark and respond to "Muffy, Muffy???"

Gunnie

Don't forget they also mounted guns of all sorts on trucks during the "War to end all wars". So it certainly isn't or wasn't exactly a new idea.

shaun,

thanks for that, they are ice lollies!

cheers

joe

NO they are ice blocks supplied to the crew of the Quad 50's mounted and fired from the rear of the GMC guntruck! :-) :-) :-)

they are called iceblocks here in OZ

no they are ice lollies,

im a englishman, and your speaking my language, so get it right! :-)

cheers

joe

IceBLOCK's??............you've got to be kiddin'....right?

Heck....what am I thinkin'.....I used to call breakfast sausage's, ' Banger's'! And simply stopping by my girlfriend's house...'knocking' her up.
But, the very worst of all is, I used to call cigarette's...Fag's!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Try that in a heavily Italian neighbourhood in Newark, N.J. in the sixties!!
Wheeeeeeew!
No wonder I had to literally fight my way home almost every day from school......