STEN APC?

If you look at the OP, our STEN APC only needs to protect infantry against rifle bullets and shrapnel from air-bursting artillery. Think of artillery shells detonating at tree-top level. So our STEN APC needs a better roof than most WW2-vintage APCs to protect passengers against rain and shrapnel.

If the German Army had more wheeled transports during the early stages of the Battle of France, tanks would not have needed to wait for infantry to catch up.

Those Bedford trucks converted by the German Army were what I originally had in mind when I started this thread.

Oxford and Cambridge carriers look like good ideas. What is the largest size APC you could built on Universal Carrier suspension?

Falk's Katzchen is clever, but probably cramped. In another forum, a "whatif" modeler built a pseudo version with a faceted troop compartment that resembled an SDKFZ 251 from a distance. His model had a door on the left side of the transom. However, troops had to clamber over a full-length drive shaft on their way to their seats. Hopefully his Mark 2 Katzchen would move the engine forward to sit beside the driver (ala. M113). Apparently many APCs (e.g. Canadian Bobcat) put the engine and drive axle at opposite ends to balance the vehicle. It is difficult to predict balance when you cannot predict infantry casualties.
That Skoda tank chassis had plenty of room for upgrades on its reliable chassis. The ultimate upgrade was the Swedish PBV 301 IFV with the engine moved forward and room for 6 infanteers plus a turret-mounted 20mm cannon.

Mind you the OP posits a rifle-caliber MG as standard armament with perhaps a few later upgraded to .50 caliber heavy MGs.

WW2 armies did not take APCs seriously until they suffered heavy infantry casualties: Germany on the Eastern Front and the Canadian Army during the summer of 1944.
 
Realistically for the UK, it wouldn't have made a significant difference in the war, simply because they were relegated to fighting on secondary fronts after 1940. It might have hastened the prosecution of the Africa campaign, though simultaneously slowing logistics due to the increased matériel weight of units shipped to Africa.
That's pretty much the traditional British method of fighting a continental enemy. Takeout the colonial possessions and supply your continental allies with weapons and only if unavoidable funds the wear your enemy down. When your enemy is rushing around trying to put out fires send your own troops in to finish them off. It may note be entirely honourable to fight to the last allied soldier, but it's worked fairly well for the last 300 years.
 
The issue is how "armored" does an APC for WWII need to be. IS protection against .50 cal and shrapnel enough? 37mm AT? Doesn't have to be tracked, could be 6 wheel

Kangaroos were not armoured vs enemy fire but against friendly shell fire, hug the barrage de bus on top of the defensive line. Protection vs enemy fire was a bonus.
 
Too big and too slow. It would be a gunners dream target, not to mention that with no suspension and no engine compartment the infantry it carried (30 of them) would be in no fit state to fight when they debussed.

Didn't say it would be unchanged from 1918 form.

And the Marines did ride these monsters in South Vietnam
lvtp5.jpg

it had up to 5/8" Armor, but was amphibious

And any APC is a dream target, as if you armor it enough to stop AP rounds, it's too heavy to carry a full squad.
You want it to stop shell fragments and bullets, the big killer of infantry
 

FBKampfer

Banned
I think that if the British had proper(ish) APC's in large enough numbers for them to take part in the Battle for France 1940 then they would only have been deployed as part of 1st Armoured Division. OTL this division wasn't deployed due to a lack of suitable tanks (although as the defeat unfolded it was sent to France piecemeal and achieved little. However if there is increased interest in APC's prior to the start of WW2 than this IMHO would also increase interest and production in tanks (certainly the capacity to produce armour plate would be increased to provide for the increase in APC's). That is amusing that the arguments about if you increase one thing you must decrease something else (I like to hand wave this away with just saying the Government involved borrows a little more on the never never).

Now if 1st Armoured Division was present at the start of the German offensive in France (with several hundred admittedly uninspiring Cruiser tanks and several hundred TTL APC's) could it have made a difference? A possible scenario could be 1st Armoured gets used alongside the OTL forces for the Arras counter attack. Could this cause enough damage and panic in the German high command to cause Hitler to lose his nerve and therefore order the armour to halt until the infantry caught up? Perhaps this would give the French enough time to sort themselves out? Could this be a cause of a very different Battle of France and with it a very different WW2?

Personally I think in this kind of scenario the British would have produced something like a bigger Bren Gun Carrier like the oxford tracked carrier Whamsize mentioned above.

Its important to remember that in the OP's time-line, APC's are fairly developed by the time war breaks out. We can assume that they would be quite widely present in France.

And I do not believe they would make a difference on the outcome, even if 1st armored was present. The Germans encircled 61 French divisions, and almost the entirety of the BEF. 62 Divisions would have been no more difficult to contend with, especially after they had already broken through the front.

Secondly, Hitler was a gambler, and once committed to a particular decision, he was quite hard to sway. Perhaps some of the OKW or Heeresgruppe A staff get skiddish, but I don't think the advance would be halted for the difference of a single division.
 
That does seem like something developed from the MK IX could be. A 1920s or 30s step in the development from the MK IX to the LVT 5 would be of riveted construction and break down alot more often and I really wouldn't want to try landing on a hostile beach in one. Who knows, a government more willing to invest in the military so that any future war could be fought with machines rather than hundreds of thousands of men, I could see that being the result.
 
"Who knows, a government more willing to invest in the military so that any future war could be fought with machines rather than hundreds of thousands of men"

Well.... You could sell that to the britsch army/politicians. Avoiding huge losses among the infantry was at the back of the mind, for a lot of british commanders in WW II.
A lot of them were of course junior officers out in the front in WW I, which had giving them an personal and up close experience to the horror of modern war.
 
Top