The "Z Arm" on CDN Jeeps

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In the 60s there was a TV show called the Rat Patrol which featured Jeeps and mounted machine guns, and the characters would win the war for the good guys by shooting up the bad guys. For a while, that was a lot of peoples' cultural reference for mounted MGs. The late 70s was no different.

In the reserves we thought putting a C1 "GPMG" on a Jeep was fun but not necessarily as easy to use as it first appears. In the end it was a way to make noise on exercise, and a way to carry the gun and ammo on battle runs at Gun Camps. But at least someone thought about us.

I saw two different improvised weapons mounts in my time. One was to wire an old Lee Enfield sighting tripod into the Jeep and (insecurely) attach an FNC2 as a noisemaker. The clamps didn't fit the C2 handguard very well. The legs got in the way of using the back seat and radios. And, the 30-rd magazine meant the firer had to cant the gun to the side. Not a stellar solution.

The other was a one-of-a-kind that I plan to reproduce for my M38A1 CDN3. It resembles the one in the pictures with the BREN. A fellow had welded one up or borrowed it off someone. Take the windshield off. Imagine a piece of steel angle with hinge pins and tiedown levers that fitted onto the cowl in its place. There is a rifle butt clamp on the right end and a vertical piece of 3/4" pipe about 6" high in the middle. Attach about a 12" long 1/2" pipe section to the middle of the C2 barrel with hose clamps. Clip the butt into the clip, and poke the male/female pipe sections together. When it was time to make noise, swing the gun to the front and fire left-handed over the hood.