Why Gun Tractor Shape

[Ed Landstrom]

To confirm the theory that the sloping back on a Humvee was to give the gunner an unrestricted view to the rear, I was told the same thing by a Humvee driver, so it was what they were being told in training. Specifically, it was designed so that the gunner could fire over the rear with the vehicle parked nose-down on the reverse slope of a berm, using the berm for cover, with the rear of the vehicle facing the enemy. It seems like a rather infrequent use to base a vehicle design on, unless American forward bases are designed with protective berms that would fit this use.

[David Herbert]

Sorry to divert the original point of this thread but I think in the case of the Humvee that the likelyhood of a berm being of a gentle enough slope or just the right height is not great ! I think that Rob's second theory that it was just a way of covering the cargo bed to keep things dry and secure is much more likely, and that similar reasoning was used with the FATs.

David