Inside The Chieftain's Hatch: M8 Armored Car

30th of July 1941 army g3 sends army g4 a characteristics requirement memorandum for a mass production low-cost vehicle primarily a tank destroyer but capable of alternate roles it would have high mobility be of lightweight with light armor have a low profile and be armed with a 37 millimeter gun now remember this time tank the story branch is still setting up shop the vehicles with which they would enter the war the 37 millimeter m6 and the 75 millimeter m3 hadn't yet had their prototypes built let alone entered service at the time the 37 was still considered to be a viable anti-tank gun especially for the light platoon of the tank destroyer companies a few design studies later October 1941 the ordinance committee authorizes procurement of eight pilot vehicles for each from Ford and Fargo each company will produce two designs one a 6x6 one a 4x4 and two pilots of each type the Fords they were going to be the t22 series the Fargo's the t20 threes at their own car due to Baker also entered the fray they put in the t43 and since formed tends to follow function a lot the three types of vehicle actually looked all fairly similar type destroy command started to favor the t23 the fargo product so interest in the Ford and Studebaker began to wane but by early 42 the 37 was starting to become a little bit less viable as an anti-tank gun so the vehicles were redesignate udders armored cars in march there was a common practice at the time that when a agency came up with a vehicle or other weapons system that would be sent around to the other agencies as well that might have an interest in it and so it was for these armored vehicles they ended up being tested by armored force armored force thought that there was actually a possibility for the t22 the Ford vehicle to be used as a reconnaissance vehicle they'd had to make a couple of changes though to suit it so they made the t22 II - this was basically your basic t20 - that you won was two four by four you removed the bow machine gun he had a caliber 50 you changed the electrics a little bit entered service as the m8 when it went over to the British well they gave it a dog name and it became known as the greyhound by which it has been known ever since and hey presto One m8 available for sale at the Rock Island auction company's auction in early May if you think about the vehicle is basically being a six by six truck with an armoured body on top you won't be far off in fact the vehicle is going to be something of a stopgap until a proper armored car with off-road capability was developed the armoured body is on a 7/8 of an inch basis to the front 3/8 of an inch to the side now when you hear somebody say it's on a basis that means that's the effective thickness that they're going for the actual plates are 3/4 and 5/8 of an inch but because they're sloped that's how you get your equivalency there's nothing molecularly amazing on the front of the m8 I mean your standard collection of headlights and siren and as mentioned the bow machine gun is deleted you move down to the wheel sale of the traditional split rim type 20 inches and they are mounted on the leaf springs if it's an early production vehicle there are 11 leaves if it is a late production vehicle there are 13 you'll also see how it's a simple straight axle through the differential and there is a simple steering system between a Pitman rod which goes to one wheel and then there's a tie rod that steers the other one moving further to the rear under the shovel it's going to be your access port for the fuel filler it's a simple spring release on the strap lift up the shovel take it out of the way still annoying but there are worse things and there you have access to your fuel tanks nothing too complicated the sponson bins in between the wheels initially they used to be racks for mines there will be three anti-tank mines on each side later on I guess the figures that they really needed the stowed space more than they needed land mines and that was the end of that it'll something to tie your goodies onto now what you will see is that there is no ring on the top for the caliber 50 that ring mount which although fairly common in Europe was not a factory production the official place that you put the caliber 50 is actually the pintle on the back of the turret when you get to the wheels the rear bogie is fairly typical of Ford trucks of the time the weight is taken by the leaf springs but the actual thrust for lack of a better word forwards or backwards is transmitted to the body through the bogie by use of the torque rods that you know one from each axle goes into the middle and not through the axles themselves in perhaps you might ordinarily expect if you look underneath the vehicle you see that there's a power shaft from the engine which goes forward to the transfer case at the front of the transfer case you will see the parking brake it's a band parking brake you pulled the lever tightens the band on the outside of the drum from there one shaft goes forward to the front axle and you have two shafts a bit like we saw on the D ukw that go to each of the two rear axles which have course their own differential as you come closer to the back there were more the sponson bins they're not particularly large but at least they're there tail lights well you gotta stop like one side and mark a lot on the other so no indicators these don't really start showing up on American vehicles until the 50s of the late 50s down underneath you can have a quick gander at the suspension components there's a shock absorber and there's also a bump stop which is fairly easily visible the exhaust pipe am off or crosswise underneath just above which is your towing pintle probably nothing that you haven't seen before at this stage although there is no track tensioning system which fills me with sadness the engine deck itself the hood is held in place by use of these little wing nuts it's surprisingly heavy I'll open that in a moment but before I do so you can also see on that mounting point for the caliber 50 it is also the plate which is removed in order to dismount the 37 millimeter gun open up some of these it is quite heavy so I have to do it from up top open and open I must now figure how to come on the vehicle the obvious solution seems to be to Suz the pintle as step yeah that could be harder now while you couldn't see as I lifted up the engine deck on the left side was so look at some confusion as it seemed to be a little bit less crowded inside than I'd anticipated so I've now opened up the right side instead and well at least I know why I didn't see what I was expecting what I was expecting to see was Hercules model jxd about 750 pounds worth of prime inline six-cylinder petrol engine puts out about a hundred and ten horsepower 238 foot-pounds of torque and would be attached to a cooling system using 23 quarts of coolant which by the way the manual says that if you do after we feel that rainwater is preferred over any other sort of water and that would be cooled the air movement by two fans at the back of the engine which is the sort of thing I've seen before instead I have a single radiator fan and an engine that says Detroit Diesel hmm now looking into it it's the four - 53 M was a common conversion by export users such as Guatemala or Mexico or so on so I will also lay wager that the transmission to the fund is an Allison although I haven't really gotten down to it take a close look now the export versions that were converted usually had other changes done as well either deterred or the headlights or whatever so quite what the backstory is to this I'm not entirely sure but again it actually makes a good deal of sense even as a collector or reenact or at least to have the updated version with the diesel engine it's more fuel efficient it's probably more reliable it's just not original and I did notice also that's missing the driveshaft going to the front axle which I don't know if that was a matter of they just broke it or if this is also a reliability feature just makes it easier to maintain if you simply don't have the front axles hook in to the transfer case under the engine you'd find the hydro vac brake cylinder the braking system it's hydraulic Terron all six of the wheels but what the hydro vac does is basically a power assisted braking so you put a certain amount of pressure with the brake pedal the vacuum system increases the brake pressure gives you more braking force but the driver still maintains that sort of tactile sense of how much is pushing down on the brake so yeah the battery's well you may have seen or located on the left hand side not much else to be said for the engine deck I guess so let's move forward and so we get to the turret seven tenths of an inch all around no roof but there was possible to get a canvas screen that would snap into place and keep the worse at the elements out now you will note of course that my head is higher than the roof well the seats I'm happy to say are adjustable however of course the more I go down to bring my head closer to decide the more my knees seem to come up Oh kind of everything I guess two seats of course the TC and the gunner have little round seat pads as I say they are adjustable in height not forwards and backwards there is no turret basket this was a little frame with places that I can rest my feet and to keep them nice and safe Trevor's well it's an armored car it's not a combat vehicle per se and Traverse is conducted once I pull out the travel lock I use of a hand crank obviously speed of lay of a target is rather dependent upon stamina and technique although later productions of the m8 had a two-speed Traverse elevation also manual 20 degrees up ten degrees down very simple down by the feet OB two triggers will be provided the 37 millimeter will be fired by a left foot trigger and the coaxial will be fired by the right foot trigger and I guess the easiest way to remember it is thirty-sevens on the left gutters optic is an M 71 D it's a by three sight with a very simple reticle and well that's basically it for the gunner the gun is the 37 millimeter m6 very common gun of the time although by the time you get to 1943 when these things started coming off the production line its ability as an anti-tank gun is perhaps a little bit overstated certainly it is useful against armored cars or half-tracks things like that but in order to kill a tank you've basically got to go behind it but it can still be done which of course is the automatic segue to that most famous engagement between an m8 and the King Tiger supposedly it's the story goes according to an eyewitness from a different unit an m8 sneaks out behind from behind cover comes right up to within 30 yards to the back end of King Tiger puts a few rounds into a kills king tiger and then goes back into hiding well it is long debated whether or not this engagement actually happened because if you look at the battle records according to the Germans there were no King Tigers anywhere in the vicinity although I don't think anybody says what was in the vicinity there are a couple of possibilities here the first is that it actually was a king tiger and it was just one that had gotten detached from the rest of its unit that was at stab laws and about two days earlier they'd passed through which is not impossible when he realized how often these things broke down and well tanks are not normally supposed to travel around on their own unsupported because if you do a sneaky little armored car might come up behind you and put a couple of rounds in your ear another possibility is that the vehicle was a panther misidentified as king tiger or perhaps it was a simple panzer 4 or stone Bishop something else the observer from answer said from a different unit completely misidentified but he was so impressed by what he saw that he thought it was a king tiger there is also the detail that the arson of tygris it'll be too thick for a 37 punch through at least so save the paper specifications although reality has a way of not caring what the paper specifications say so that argument is a bit of a non runner overall though I don't think we ever will know what truly happened with that ma that soundbooth we know killed something and these were fairly sure killed something as for what it is well your speculation as good as anybody else's so in addition to the a peer and of course I had a very useful canister round which you could fire and well it's better than nothing at all in a light vehicle like this and so the TC side he is of course responsible not only for commanding the car but also the maintenance of the 1919 a4 coaxial machine gun which as you can see feyza over the top to the ammo on the left hand side so of the 1500 rounds or so of 30 caliber though generally bestowed on the lower-left sponson where they're gonna could grab hold of it then he feeds it through that tease he takes over and feeds it into the system on the right side well that's where the racks for the 37 millimeter come in 16 rounds will be generally scattered around the vehicle's turret the remaining 66 will be on the sponson on the right side behind the travel lock forward would be mounted the magnetic compass and yesterday's one on this vehicle or at least would be and okay you got the big metal box into which the compasses rolling around the countryside so means you got to calibrate it so there would be two screws that you would use to calibrate and the manual is rather specific in that it says that when you are screwing the screws for calibration of the compass be sure to use something like a coin and not a screwdriver because the screwdriver is probably made of a ferrous metal and will generally mess you up there really isn't much else to be said for the TC said of course the two boxes of caliber 50 might be found down in between the TC in the gunner and well that's basically it he would be using the caliber 50 if the ring mount was mounted otherwise it's on the back in an a a mount so you'd have to spin the turret the whole way around if you wanted to shoot at something to your front or you simply get out and stand on the back or you better yeah you ask somebody else to expose themselves and shoot with the caliber 50 while you stay inside your armored vehicle I've come into the driver's seat and it took me quite a while to slither in because this huge steering wheel only leaves maybe six inches between the bottom of the wheel and the seat cushion the seat cushion is directly on the whole floor but it's not quite as bad as on that because there's the down slope for the the axle which is under my thighs so I do have one for my legs I can actually drive this vehicle the assistant driver has all the room in the world because it's got no pedals or anything else it's just a down slope to the front hood the front armor plate so he sorted peep doesn't have anything to shoot with he doesn't drive yeah he does have a map case to his right and I guess he can handle communications on the radio the steering wheel of course is large because of you lack of power steering and the control panel is laid out more or less as you would expect although I also suspect there may be some changes because of the engine so to see out when a buttoned-up well first thing you gonna do is button up so I do have this sort of bulge for the head and you pull out well I you don't use your left hand because what will happen is you will get caught in between the armor plate and the handle here it never is down simple enough and then you could release the locking latch here this handle folds up and it allows you to pull down this plate as well except you do it in the other the other sequence so I am now buttoned up inside my MA there will be a periscope I can look at here or if necessary there is a simple direct vision slit absolutely nothing between you and the enemy but it is at the back up if your periscope is all right now that's just see you driving a little bit off to one side you have a similar slid over on your left here and there you go nice and cozy for the limit that the limit that the Amanda armour protection it provides you so let me try to get out of here now this happens first so I can pull down on this okay and then I can push up on this it's this handle to make it go nice and through into the latch and damn the pedals are pretty much as you would expect clutch brake accelerator hand throttle the parking brake is a big lever way at the back here gear shift the gear shift is a little bit different than you ordinarily would expect again this seems to have been modified from the original the year the original gear patterns be different but this one has low is forward and left then two three four five in the sequence you might imagine then reverse fir'd for right and forward but the original one is back and right will be first make it that what you will there's doesn't seem to be any point my sitting in the co-driver seat so I shall attempt to scurry out now which has to be done by putting my legs all the way into the co-drivers position rotating 90 degrees and then getting out in my heart to get out I forgot to mention a few things there are two levers that you will also saw on either side of the gearshift the one on the left was a transfer case the transfer case basically just doubles the gearing ratio on the right side was the front axle engaged / disengage and it was recommended if you're going to engage the front axle do so with slow speed maximum speed was 56 in high range 8 in Reverse and half that for low gear the manual repeatedly observes that the original engine did not have any form of governor so it's up to the driver to ensure that he didn't over rev the engine turning circle 27 feet radius if you did start getting into trouble off road and you've engaged front-wheel drive and you've engaged low range it was possible to add chains I mean honestly called chains to the wheels to give you a little bit extra traction opinions as to the overall effectiveness of the off-road capability of the vehicle tend to vary some people loved it and it's quite possible that if what you were used to before wasn't all that great then yes this will be an improvement but remember this was an interim vehicle with straight axles armored force were looking for something a little bit better and indeed a number of other designs were tried although in the end none of them entered service there was continued development of armored cars the stag count being the most famous example but even if he could above engine today you'll see the bore hound 8x8 was an interesting attempt the bore hand unfortunate sin of ECC now it's not on public display it used to be but it is still there anyway a grand total of eight thousand five hundred twenty three of the m8s were built by the time Ford shut down the assembly line in May of 1945 there was a requirement from tank destroyer command for a command and supply vehicle and they thought that the ma chassis would do nicely so what they did was they took the turret off they made an open-top they put a skate ring for the 50 caliber and they developed the armored utility car m10 fantastico saint destroy branch it enters production then it was observed that there were already a large number of em tens in a tank destroyer unit and things might start getting confusing so the vehicle was redesignated the m20 and that's how we came to know and love the 6x6 open-topped vehicle that we're familiar with today about 3800 of those were built there was an attempt to make a multiple gun motor carriage where the quad 50 was the t69 however that proved not to be anywhere near as successful as the m16 we saw before so that was the end of that when it was done filming the section on the engine deck I did a little bit of digging around to find out the backstory of this vehicle and turns out that it is indeed an x quater Mullen won and Guatemala did the full conversion they also made some changes to the exterior appearance so this vehicle has been backdated to look a lot more like a world war 2 configuration but in other ways silence you look at a vehicle and there's a little voice inside your head saying something looks long but you ignore it because it can't quite place your finger on what it is it's the engine deck the things this much higher than it should be so had I noticed that or at least paid more attention to it I would have not been as surprised when I opened it up anyway thus ends the tour of the m8 this vehicle as I say is on sale at the beginning of May so if you come back towards the end of May I should have updated a text description at the bottom to let you know how much the vehicle sold for if you an interest in such things wait that's it time for me to move this vehicle out of the way and move the next one at the place it's handy to have a step there I have to do this hang on himself so you pull down on this never wear your other hand because your left hand will get crushed between the pieces of metal I meant to do that this is great so I'm alternating when he stops I start talking when he's waiting for me to stop talking then he hits away with the hammer or the saw or the nail gun

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 549,185

Rating: 4.9350467 out of 5

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Id: 3odgOwMBsBM

Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RAPTOR479]

I’ve found a tank bro. Most people don’t realize ford manufactured most WW2 tanks, a lot of the late Sherman’s were by them and used the Ford GAA Engine, So did the Pershing and others