"Machine Gun v. Half Track" Topic

American halftracks were extremely unpopular in some quarters (dubbed "Purple Heart Boxes") by American troops. Among the grievances leveled was that the armor was inadequate against machine gun fire.

Doesn't look to me like the German halftracks were much better.

What tactics were utilized by the halftrack crews to deal with MG fire? Put the engine between the MG and the crew compartment?

Opinions, comments, anecdotes and historical source material all appreciated!

mjc

Among the grievances leveled was that the armor was inadequate against machine gun fire

I always thought halftracks weren't meant to be battlefield transport? If there's a MG about there's a good possibility of an AT gun or some suicidal mook with a panzerfaust/schreck too.

Personally, if I was entering a hot zone I'd prefer to be on foot finding cover. Not jaunting around in a bloody big metal target.

Patton made the statement that Jeeps and Half-Tracks were the worst inventions of the war. (paraphrasing) One makes it easy to run away from combat and the other makes the riders think they are riding in a tank!

They were never meant to be machine gun proof; just meant to provide small arms protection plus the mounted machine guns made them mobile gun platforms. They dealt with machine gun fire but jumping out and taking the ring mounted guns with them or by staying in and moving.

"What tactics were utilized by the halftrack crews to deal with MG fire?"

The simple answer is: don't put the vehicle where a machinegun can fire at you! Seriously, they were not designed or intended to shield the troops aboard from direct fire. That's why, if at all possible, you debussed/unloaded in a covered position.

Amicalement,

Allen

I imagine at longer ranges, and against .30 cal MG's, the will provide adequate protection.

Against .50 cals, and larger, they're sitting ducks.

At least the Germans were smart enough to slope the sides/rear a bit to provide additional ballistic protection for no added weight.

I think I read somewhere that the infantry where expected to dismount 300 plus yards away from where they expected to contact the enemy. Does that sound familiar to anyone? They would provide some protection against flying shrapnel and the stray round or two, but they weren't designed to stand up to any kind of sustained fire.

Even "modern" APCs do not protect against heavy MG fire. When I went through Infantry Officer Basic course at Fort Benning in 1971, they made a point of showing us a piece of armor that a 50 had turned into swiss cheese. The purpose is mobility, delivering less fatigued soldiers more quickly, allowing them to keep up with the tanks, and providing protection from low-velocity shrapnel from HE artillery rounds, which was still considered the big killer. You DISMOUNT to fight, and the platoon sergeant positions the tracks for a quick departure (in either direction!) and maybe to provide some fire support with their own 50s.

Never trained with Bradleys, after my time, but I assume not much different.

As stated above, Hts like modern APCs are vulnerable to MG fire.
At Fort Riley in 1981, I had to participate in an investigation of a training accident by a Mech Inf Bn. They were doing a night fire fire excercise. One Apc got too far infront of the otehrs and was crewed up by MG (M60 and 50 cal. All 11 men suffered injuries with 4 dying.

HTs were designed to protect troops from indirect fire such as bombs, mortars and artillery landing near the HT. It was not designed to stop direct MG fire.

The HTs job was to transport the troops as close to the battle area as possible and then dismount the troops. If a mounted MG was carried, it was used to provide long range fire support THOUGH the main purpose of the mounted MG was not fire support but anti-aircraft fire.

"slope the sides/rear a bit to provide additional ballistic protection for no added weight."

Not true-the no added weight part I mean. If the sides are sloped, then the sloped sides would be longer for the same vertical distance than vertical sides would be(that square of the hypotenuse thing)and so would have a greater area-and therefore a greater weight-than vertical sides on a vehicle if the thickness were the same.

It may be that the advantage of the sloped sides is greater than the disadvantage of the additional weight, but for the same thickness of armor the weight of sloped sides would be greater.

Dennis

Eleven hit and four dead. Yup. The biggest problem is when the MG round has enough velocity to penetrate the armor once but not twice. So it just bounces around inside until it hits somebody.

The only unit I ever served in for any length was a Reserve basic training battalion. But my friends who were Infantry Branch mostly preferred the leg units, regarding the tracks as casualty-makers.

Had another friend who was Transportation Corps and spent a tour in Vietnam commanding truck convoys. He was always ed because he couldn't get the Infantry Combat badge but had been in more firefights than most infantry officers. But he said once he preferred riding the trucks because they did not offer the illusion of safety; you KNEW you had to dismount instantly.

"The bullets just came in one side and rattled around a bit."
-Anonymous Soldier to Gen. Omar Bradley after Kaserine Pass.

Rudy, I remember the incident at Riley. They made life miserable for the Range Safety Officers after that. Care to guess who was one of them?

Just taking a look through the reprint of the 1942 Panzer Grenadier Manual by Matthew Gajkowski, published by Nafziger. This is from a few pages in under the 'Battle Methods' section –

"If the amoured halftrack comes under hostile fire, the hatches are closed on (the) command.

"The armoured halftrack will drive through hostile rifle and machine gun fires. If possible, the armoured halftrack will drive around fire from high angle fire weapons (mortars I presume) and artillery, otherwise it drives through them at normal speed.

"The fight of the sqaud is lead with the armoured halftrack as long as the effect of hostile fire, the terrain, and the mission allow it.

"The main weapon of the squad fighting from the vehicle is the board MG. The MG in the AA mount besides being used for AA defence can be used against hostile ground targets, for example, adversaries in the rear and flank of the squad. As a rule, it will have to fire while the armoured halftrack is moving. The riflemen participate in the firefight at the first breakthrough of the enemy Hand grenades with simultaneous machine gun and machine pistol fire, as well as running over soldiers are the most effective means to destroy the enemy in close combat from the vehicle."

I think that description can be interpreted as an aggresive use of infantry mounted in armoured vehicles! The manual is dated May 1942 and said to be in effect till Jan 1943, and I don't know whether later manuals recognised that the battlefield had become a more hostile environment for armoured vehicles.

Gary

My friend's dad was in the Third Army in Europe. He said a favorite tactic of theirs for engaging Germans in frame buildings was to bring up a half-track and fire at ground level (using the .50 cal.), back and forth, until the building fell over.

using the .50 cal.), back and forth, until the building fell over.

Shades of some Clint Eastwood movies!

Cold Steel, being a prior Safety Officer for the First cavalry Division at Hood, they considered me independent enough to assit with the interviews BUT I had no input in the finding or recommendations.

I think the german halftracks were a bit sturdier and more sloping sides, but basically they'd be vulnerable to sustained MG fire.

Against a .50 cal or a DSHK, I'd feel a lot more comfortable hugging dirt outside of it.

As noted by Mr. Kennedy, several sources indicate that the Germans used halftracks as IFVs, only dismounting to occupy positions if necessary.

I first heard the comment about US halftracks being susceptible to penetration with the bullets bouncing around inside from an uncle (armored division combat engineer). He also noted that the German tracks were not readily penetrated by the US .30s (the primary MG US troops had available).

What sort of armour thickness, and hence weight penalty, would go along with making a half track impervious to light machine gun fire?

I think you have to differentiate between being shot at by .30 type calibres and .50

The 0.50 is not really a MG per se, its an autocannon, and WW2 H/T were not designed to cope with them.

The WW2 H/Ts were designed to cope with artillery blasts shrapnel (the biggest killer for advancing PBI on foot) and squad weapons used from a distance, but not at point blank.

"What tactics were utilized by the halftrack crews to deal with MG fire? Put the engine between the MG and the crew compartment?"

Park 1000m back from the line of departure and dismount.

I did see some penetration stats for MG fire against various types of HTs. M3s wre vulnerable to rifle calbre MGs at hundreds of metres, whereas the 251 was only seriously vulnerable at short ranges (60m IIRC).

In the latter case it is certainly conceivable to conduct a mounted assault, as long as all the MG positions on the objective had been suppressed first, just the same as an infantry assault really, excpet you'd have to worry less about the flanking fire for the supporting positions. It is also possible to traverse longer range defensive barrages either of mortar/arty fire, and belts of MG fire.

The essential point though, is that halftracks are not IFVs and they aren't tanks. Even if they are better armoured, the crew still need to expose themselves to fire. Their primary role is to provide tracked mobility and safely corss defensive artillery barrages.

I believe the M2 .50 Cal. is granted magical powers by many gamers, rules, and veterans.

I had been quoted sightings of .50 cal's penetrating Sherman armour on the ranges at Camp Borden in Canada. When seeing close ups of the vehicles actually penetrated they were American built FT-17's acquired for training at the start of WWII!

I'm quite surprised by the date of Gary's document.
Everything I've read previously suggested Jery's aggressive use of half tracks quickly died out early war due to losses.
Then was "rediscovered" by particularly inexperienced units late war. Again with rather dire consequences.

I suppose that's not mutually exclusive if you emphasise the key phrase in there.
"as long as the effect of hostile fire, the terrain, and the mission allow it."

I've got a copy of that manual as well, although I think it is the earlier infantry platoon/company sections which are 1942 dated (based on the four section platoons and 50mm mortars). The armoured infantry manual is certainly quite aggressive and includes a load of jazzy hand signals for use by halftrack commanders, not sure of the exact date though.

I am vaguely minded of a Soviet account from 1945 when a group of five German halftracks held up an infantry advance. They just wheeled up a 45mm AT gun and knocked the lot out.

Halftracks aren't tanks.

The date for the manual the text comes from is given as 25th May 1942, corrected to 8th January 1943. It also matches exacly with the Nov 1941 KStN for the Armoured Panzer Grenadier Coy in terms of personnel and weapons.

The Bn and Coy field manuals for the US Armd Inf (well, the Nov 1944 versions at any rate) are both online. FM 17-40 for the Armd Rifle Co and FM 17-42 for the Bn. I've just had time for skim read and that point that Ditto Tim picked up on re 'for as long as terrain and conditions allow' is mentioned in the US version. It's also clear that the Rifle Coy was expected to dismount and advance to contact on foot, and their track MGs are referred to as primarily AA weapons, not fire support.

All in all I'm starting to wonder what particular advantages armoured infantry had if they were expected to debus and go in on foot from a good distance out. It seems an adequate provision of lorried infantry (as in the British Armd Div) was perfectly capable in most circumstances, especially with a decent road network to hand.

Having a look round the web and those old fashioned things called books, it looks like the M3 halftrack used 1/4-in (6.35-mm) armour for the majority, rising to 1/2-in (12.7-mm) on the hull front. Also some mention of an increase to 5/16-in (7.92-mm) in areas on later models.

The SdKfz 251 is quoted with 8-mm side and rear, and 10 to 15-mm on the hull front. That compares with 8-mm on a light scout car such as the SdKfz 222.

Obviously neither is intended to stop anything much above bullets and shell splinters, but would they be particularly vulnerable to rifle calibre machine guns (Bren, DP, MG34/42 and so on)?

Gary

Having a look round the web and those old fashioned things called books, it looks like the M3 halftrack used 1/4-in (6.35-mm) armour for the majority, rising to 1/2-in (12.7-mm) on the hull front. Also some mention of an increase to 5/16-in (7.92-mm) in areas on later models.

Is that 'armour' armour, or plain old mild steel? There's an important difference. Mild steel simply gives rigidity to what is essentially a large mobile box.

All in all I'm starting to wonder what particular advantages armoured infantry had if they were expected to debus and go in on foot from a good distance out.

Infantry in tracks in WWII seems very much a German/US thing (discounting the RAM Kangaroo). I'm sure German armoured infantry were a product of the Blitzkrieg doctrine more than anything else. The US? Dunno.

Proper armour for both as far as I'm aware, though I did happen across a reference to (I think early) SdKfz 251s using iron plates and being referred to as 'ungep', or unarmoured.

The British did go on to have the Motor Bn of the Armd Bde in halftracks, but the Inf Bde just used lorries, so a similar ratio to the Panzer Div overall. All of the Inf in the US Armd Div were in haltracks, which always seemed a good idea to me, but perhaps the greatest aid was in cross country mobility, not firepower?

Gary

Connard IIRC correctly Patton used HTs and scout cars to 'mechanize infnatry in his Fort Pope Louisiana excercises in the late 1930s.

So it must have been a tactic that the USA had worked on before the war.

Connard, In regards to the RAM carrier, was it employed mainly or solely by the Canadians? I regard it as a truely IFV with its high armor protection.

In 21AG there was one Canadian and one British Regiment, each equipped with the RAM, from October 1944 onwards. The armour protection was much better than halftracks or universal carriers, but as ever there was no overhead cover, and debussing was an art in itself.

Gary

"…but perhaps the greatest aid was in cross country mobility, not firepower?"

If you go back to the first prototypes (the Citroen-Kegresse), mobility was indeed the reason for the development of the half-track concept.

Amicalement,

Allen

Bit OP, but relevant

How much more off road mobility does a half track get compared to a 4WD lorry? And given they have no roof, why load them up with all that armour?

I understand the German panzgren platoon relied on the heavy weapon assets outside the platoon being the main instrument of suppression of enemy positions (HMGs and mortars) and that the squads of the platoon were to play the role of close in direct assault firepower once those heavier weapons did their job.

So it makes sense that German halftracks would go into battle close in like that since they assumed the heavy weapons would have already worked the enemy over and when the halftracks got in range they would find the enemy in a vulnerable state for an assault from close in dismounting infantry now under fire from their halftracks MGs.

Not that it always worked out that way mind you.

Plus, a halftrack is much better for the breakout and drive deep role to keep up with the panzers than walking or a truck better suited to roads.

The Germans seem to place a lot of emphasis on maintaining momentum. There reconnaissance manuals, which I read some time ago Ifound it via goggle), are also very aggressive about taking the initiative and trying to grab positions/opportunities as they come up.

If you asked a German of the time to rationalize it, he might say something to the effect that you have a better chance of getting at least some of the unit through in the time it takes to drive through MG fire, than dismounting and walking thought the follow on artillery/mortar fire.

U.S. halftracks took up more road than 2.5-ton trucks, I believe (that is, carried fewer men each), but supposedly had better off-road capability.

I'm pretty sure a U.S. .50" MG could penetrate the armor of an sdkfz 251 or 250.

"How much more off road mobility does a half track get compared to a 4WD lorry? And given they have no roof, why load them up with all that armour?"

The armour is mainly to protect them from shell splinters, softskins are hideously vulnerable to mortar and shell fire. Armoured halftracks aren't, but we often just don't have as much artillery in wargames as there was IRL.

4WD and H/T are probably comparable in mobility on firm ground, but throw in some mud….

Someone asked about 6mm armour.
6mm is the critical sort of number for rifle fire – 6mm at 90 deg is the sort of number usually quoted for rifle fire penetration.

There's an effect which iirc is called "beating" where repeated hits heat up armour and reduce it's effectiveness. Plus haltrack armour was not hardened steel.
All in all, there's quite a difference between 6mm and 8mm.
Also a big difference between some machine gun with a very high rate of fire and one with a lower. So there's an argument says the Jerry halftracks were quite a bit better than US.
Until they met a 50 cal.

There's an account where a captured german officer somehow watches a US unit assaulting a village.
An assault group of tanks and half tracks drive up pretty quick for a coup de maine, with a load of supporting fire.
I can imagine that the armour stops the occasional bullet and gives the infantry confidence.

I've also read of bren carriers doing this sort of thing.
Worked well against weak opposition which finds itself surrendering before it gets to do much.

I got the impression that there were the odd occasion where the bren carriers were forced to retreat ignominiously leaving one or two wrecks behind.
Bren carriers have worse armour than a half track if anything. The fact they have some, and speed across country was supposed to be enough to get away with it though.
Advance.
If you hit heavy opposition, withdraw.

Martin, your point about arty is taken, but why do all WWII APCs have no overhead protection then?

Likewise, I know all about mud and all wheel drive, but surely in NW europe hedgerows, walls and boundary ditches reduce the real off road capacity.

On the russian steppe, do you not get someting comparable to wadis which would stop HTs dead?

It just seems an awful lot of work to get a poor solution to keeping up with tanks and protecting the PBI.

A sort of extended Bishop or a less luxurious Dorchester (YMCA?) come to mind

Actually Tim, your rambling makes quite a bit of sense to me.

Remember that we have come a long way in terms of power-to-weight and ground pressure since WW2.

A Sherman (350hp for the Continental radial) has about half the installed horsepower of a Bradley (600hp), for example.

*modern* wheeled vehicles have pretty good cross-country performance, but they have at least 3-4 times the horsepower. A SdKfz 251 has all of 100 horsepower. A Stryker has 350.

The open top saves weight, you can shoot over and there's supposed to be an advantage in it if artillery shells land near.
I forget why but less overpressure.

Halftracks were cheaper and lighter than fully tracked vehicles and better cross country. They were also sort of fashionable in the 1930s. A couple of explorers used them inter war.

wrt artillery, most of it WW2 was ground burst HE with sideways fragmentation. WW1 type shrapnel had fallen out of favour (as it was useless against fortifications and increaseing useless against dispersed infantry formations) and HE airburst was pretty high tech in WW2. So merely armouring the sides was sufficient in most cases, certainly for the sort of roles envisaged for halftracks, carriers etc

The other thing to remember is that air burst artillery was not around or perfected before WWII or the middle of WWII, IIRC.

First used in the Bulge, December '44 so pretty much all over bar the shouting by then! IIRC the Americans had a working shell a while before that, but there was a fear that if deployed the Germans would capture some and develope their own, which would have been bad news for the Allied infantry. The Bulge was a desperate enough situation at times to make it worth the risk.
Notice how quickly APC had overhead armour after the war though. I can't think of a post war design that didn't have overhead armour, or aquire it pretty soon after deployment.

My brother reminded me that one of the sources that referenced the aggressive use of halftracks by the Germans was Guderian. Which might tie in with early war – don't have it in front of me for dates.

Insofar as APCs in combat, Zaloga had a chapter in one of his books about the ARVN using M-113s in lieu of tanks in Hue (as I recall). Presumably the VC/NVA didn't have heavy machine guns?

Or RPGs or mines or any of the myriad other weapons they had …..

I can't think of a post war design that didn't have overhead armour, or aquire it pretty soon after deployment.

BTR152, BTR50?

BTR152, BTR50?

Both of which aquired overhead armour!

The Egyptian army used open topped BTR152s into the 60s.

I'm intrigued now, and trying to view this from a 1930's perspective, rather than comparing new to old.

So back in the late Thirties, if you're designing a vehicle to afford a degree of protection to infantry, your list of potential threats is likely to be artillery, mortar, machine gun and rifle fire, probably in that order. I'd wondered about the airburst/variable fuse effect of artillery, which has already been asked and answered, and being a late war development wouldn't really figure in a pre-war approach. That means you can exclude the need for overhead cover, which keeps weight down and allows the riflemen to keep themselves orientated.

You've also got technical constraints, real world issues of what you can build and how much units will cost. From reading previous halftrack related discussions, my impression was that that drivers of wheeled vehicles could move to halftracked ones without too much specialised training, unlike drivers of fully tracked vehicles who had to learn new techniques. A halftrack ‘should' have improved cross country mobility over a 15-cwt truck or 2-ton plus lorry, but still not to the extent of a fully tracked machine. Maintenance work would not be as complicated as for a tank, but equally not as simple as for a lorry or truck.

So in 1939, if you've got a halftracked vehicle that can follow the tanks, and has sufficient armour to deflect rifle calibre rounds and shell splinters (from say 100m?), and can carry its own machine gun, you'd probably be reasonably happy. What it cannot do is resist fire from dedicated anti-tank weapons, such as anti-tank rifles and 37-mm/2-pr calibre anti-tank guns. However, that's also true of quite a few tanks of the day, so you can't realistically expect an infantry carrier to exceed the specs of a tank.

Fast forward to 1943-45, and the battlefield has become a lot more dangerous for anyone in an armoured vehicle, regardless of type. Tank armour has increased and they're still getting brewed up with regularity, while halftrack armour protection does not appear to have changed by comparison. There is now a whole new array of infantry operated anti-tank weapons that will quite happily write off a halftrack, and its occupants, as much as a Sherman or Stug.

Having compared the snippet on the early war German manual with the late war US manual for infantry in halftracks, I'm interested as to whether the 1942-43 era US version was quite so focussed on the vulnerabilities of the halftrack to enemy fires. The British manuals from quite early on reminded commanders in forceful terms that Bren/Universal carriers were NOT tanks, and should not be used as such.

My guess is in 1939-41, the opponents the German Army met were not routinely brimming with anti-tank capability, so the sudden appearance of a modest infantry force under armour would negate a good deal of defensive firepower. A couple of years later and there are a lot more anti-tank weapons on the battlefield rendering armoured infantry more vulnerable.

Going back to Tim's earlier post on his experience of tank/APC co-operation, the one thing that strikes me as different in the 1943-45 period would be communications. That kind of close co-operation between tankers and infantry I think would have been much harder to achieve with the limitations of the radio equipment of the period, with sets restricted to Platoon commanders on the infantry side.

One thing that did occur was the Canadian decision to shift from the halftrack to the 15-cwt armoured truck in late 1944, suggesting that 4x4 drive was a viable alternative to halftrack designs. And there was no option for fitting a machine gun to the C15TA that I'm aware of?

Gary

The Egyptian army used open topped BTR152s into the 60s.

The Israeli's were still using M3 halftracks in the 60's, but none of the kit was new. Both the BTR 152 and BTR 50 aquired an armoured roof within a few years of entering service. The Egyptian kit was hand me downs from early Soviet production.