Armoured personnel carrier: Encyclopedia II - Armoured personnel carrier - History

Armoured personnel carrier - History

During World War I, when the tank was developed, the British Mark V tank was designed with a small passenger compartment to carry troops. By some definitions this can be considered the first armoured personnel carrier. The first specialised APC was the Mark IX of 1918.

Often, APCs were simply armoured cars with the capacity for carrying troops, but they evolved into purpose-built vehicles to suit the demands of motorised warfare from World War II.

In 1944, the commander of 2nd Canadian Corps, General Guy Simonds, ordered the conversion of 72 US-produced M7 Priest self-propelled howitzers to personnel carriers. They were due for replacement anyway, as the howitzer barrels were worn out. The howitzer was removed, and the resulting hole was plugged with whatever steel was available. The vehicle was called Kangaroo, after the workshop which did the conversion. Later in the war Canadian-built Ram tanks were used as a basis for the majority of conversions, as they were then obsolete and the original Kangaroos were worn out.

After the war different specialised APCs were developed. The United States developed a series of tracked vehicles, culminating in the M113 "box on tracks", of which 80,000 were made. The Soviet Union developed the wartime BTR-40 into a series of 8-wheeled APC.

At the end of the 1980s, Israel converted captured T-55 tanks to APCs, reminiscent of WWII conversions. The result is one of the best protected APCs in the world, called IDF Achzarit.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki