The Priest and Ram Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier

[Mark W. Tonner]

The links to two articles I wrote recently, one on the ‘Priest’ Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier, and a three-part article on the ‘Ram’ Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier, that some may find of interest.

The ‘Priest’ Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier, in Canadian Service, 7 August to 30 September 1944 (of 28 August 2014)
http://servicepub.wordpress.com/2014...eptember-1944/

The 'Ram' Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier, Part 1 (of 16 October 2014)
http://servicepub.wordpress.com/2014...arrier-part-1/

The 'Ram' Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier, Part 2 (of 27 October 2014)
http://servicepub.wordpress.com/2014...arrier-part-2/

The ‘Ram’ Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier, Part 3 (of 6 November 2014)
http://servicepub.wordpress.com/2014...arrier-part-3/

Cheers

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Great work, Mark

Have to digest it all in detail yet, but I have a question re. the covering over of the drive shaft:

Therefore, their conversion to that of armoured personnel carriers, simply
required the removal of the bins for 17-pounder ammunition, the Tannoy loudspeaker
system, and the covering over of the drive shaft.

Do you mean the drive shaft covering was to be removed from the gun towers during their conversion to APC?

If it is the covering shown in picture one, I do not understand the reasoning as this was not part of the conversion to APC, but part of the original tank configuration as seen in picture two.

Hanno

Picture 1: Ram APC interior
RamC_zps9ff5197d.jpg

Picture 2: Ram tank interior (shown with turret removed)
ram 2 interior a.jpg

[David Herbert]

The prop shaft tunnel shown in all three of Hanno's photos is the standard one as originally fitted in a Ram gun Tank. The design was inherited from the Lee/Grant with very minor changes and continued almost unchanged right through Ram production and was adapted with small changes for Sexton.

All Rams had it from new so there was no need to replace it for the modified vehicles and other boxes etc were just bolted in round it. There is no question of operating without a prop shaft tunnel as it is needed to contain a broken shaft which would otherwise flail arround destroying everything in the tank quite apart from the obvious dangers of it being possible to touch a shaft spinning at up to 2400 rpm.

The last photo shows a mock up of a scheme for a different stowage layout installed in a very early Ram hull. It is NOT the same as ANY production Ram.

Mark refers to the part of the hull that overhangs the tracks as 'panniers'. This term can be found in period documents but the word 'sponson' was far more common and was the term used in manuals and other official documents, where as pannier tended to be used by non technical civil servants who were inventing their own vocabulary.

David