Category: WW2 British Armored Cars

United Kingdom (1940)
Mobile Pillbox – ~200 Built

In the years since the Second World War, the Bison has been roundly mocked for being a terrible AFV and a bad idea. This is often held up as part of the ‘Declinist’ view of Britain’s war effort, an attempt to ridicule the entirety of the British armor design process or just as a meme on the internet. However, with an understanding of the context and the intended use of these vehicles, their merits and worth are apparent.

On the 18th of June 1940, Winston Churchill stood up in the House of Commons and gave the first of three speeches which would become some of his most famous works. One passage was:

‘Our Army and 120,000 French troops were indeed rescued by the British Navy from Dunkirk but only with the loss of their cannon, vehicles and modern equipment. This loss inevitably took some weeks to repair, and in the first two of those weeks, the battle in France has been lost.‘

He was, of course, talking about the evacuation from Dunkirk. The second sentence, where Churchill talks about the losses in equipment being made good, might seem quite peculiar, especially given the extent of the losses incurred in France. However, this was quite accurate, as the British war machine was rapidly churning out weapons to fill the ranks. However, the problem was the massive increase in the size of the armed forces. For example, the Home Guard was a quarter of a million men strong by the end of May. Three months later, it was a million men strong. Equally, the regular armed forces were undergoing massive expansion, and all of these new troops required weapons and equipment far in excess of what had been available even before the debacle in France.

On top of this situation, there was the threatened invasion by the Germans. While a daunting prospect for many in the English public and administration, the realistic chances of success of such an operation were non-existent at best. This was not common knowledge in the UK at the time, and the country lept to face the threat. This common drive was a useful tool for the British Government, as the emergency reinforced in people’s minds the need to come together, and that they were in a very real war. This enabled the complete conversion of the British economy to a wartime footing.

Like most inhabitants of the UK, John Goldwell Ambrose and Charles Bernard Mathews turned their minds to the apparently impending German invasion after Dunkirk, and asked themselves: ‘what can we do?’ As they were the owners of Concrete Ltd, a company based at the Stourton Works near Leeds, they could do quite a bit more than most. Both Ambrose and Mathews were ex-Royal Engineers, and had served in the First World War. They had met each other when both began working on the problem of bunkers for the front lines and the time it took to erect them. Together, they had created pre-cast concrete bunkers which could be installed relatively quickly. After the First World War, they had formed Concrete Ltd, which specialized in the construction of precast structures. During the Invasion Scare, they hit upon the idea of using reinforced concrete pillboxes on the back of trucks. Mathews set the company to work and soon, a prototype was ready. This was demonstrated as a proof of concept vehicle to the military authorities, who gave some helpful criticism. The feedback was incorporated into the designs and production was begun. The vehicles were named after the logo of Concrete Ltd, a blue bison.

Description

No two Bison’s were alike, although they can be pigeonholed into two distinct types. It should be stressed that it appears the two types do not appear to be official designations, and are nomenclature added after the event by historians.

The first and more common design featured a separate octagonal bunker, which was elongated along its length, on the bed of a heavy truck, which could be either four- or six-wheeled. The driver’s cab and engine were protected by a thick square concrete body.

The other type of vehicle was a lengthened bunker that incorporated the flatbed and the cab into one structure, again on a heavy goods vehicle chassis. In both cases, the concrete was around six inches thick, which would have rendered the Bison immune to any contemporary infantry anti-tank or tank based gun the Germans had access to, apart from rare and extreme cases, like the 15 cm sIG 33 (Sf) auf Panzerkampfwagen I Ausf B, or other large caliber artillery pieces.

These bunkers all had loopholes for armed men to fire from with their personal weapons, and had a coverage of 360 degrees, apart from the areas where the cab’s superstructure blocked them. Of course, the vision slits in the cab could cover this blind spot.

Total crew numbers, their dispositions during combat, and even what they were armed with was entirely down to the unit operating them, and what they saw as beneficial to their local conditions, although the weapons had to be of a personal nature, as the loopholes would not accept any mounted or crew-served weapons. The crew accessed the bunker through an opening cut in the base of the flatbed and reportedly climbed into the cab through the roof.

Due to the nature of the Bison, it could be adapted to any number of truck chassis, with a variety of engines, drive systems, and wheels. However, they all shared common features. They were of civilian stock, and all not useful to the current war effort. This would mean most of the trucks were of older designs, often dating back to the First World War, or earlier. There is even an example of a steam engine-powered truck being converted to a Bison, although, in this case, the steam engine and associated equipment were removed from the outset, and the chassis was designed to be a trailer.

It is unknown if the chassis were requisitioned, bought, or donated. While the Home Guard modified a great number of vehicles and operated even more, these were all arrangements between a local vehicle owner and the Home Guard unit in question. In the case of the Bison, it was an official program run by the government for use by the armed forces. This meant that a more permanent and official status would be required. Certainly, for the one vehicle for which there is something approaching a detailed history, the original owners never seem to have made any move to reclaim it, even when abandoned. This again suggests that ownership was obtained, and some form of reimbursement given by the Government by some means.

Construction

Although each Bison was a different shape, usually around the cab and bonnet, the means of construction were the same. When the donor vehicle arrived at the Concrete Ltd works, it was first stripped of all the bodywork and spare weight. Then, wooden shuttering was built up around the cab and bonnet. Into this, several layers of expanded metal were placed, then concrete poured in. On the flatbed of the truck, the precast bunker was installed. This was constructed in the same manner as the cab protection. Finally, a precast roof was attached.

The exact numbers of how many Bisons were produced are unknown. Several secondary sources suggest that the number was around 200 vehicles converted.

Service

The only hostile gunfire a Bison would ever encounter was in the imaginations of children playing over the discarded wreckage of Bisons. Even so, the Bison served an important role in both the RAF and the Army.

Army Service was very very limited. For example, there is one entry in the war diary of the 40th Royal Tank Regiment, where seven Bisons were collected from Leeds. This is dated to the 5th of October 1940. At the time, the 40th RTR only had two tanks on its strength, one light, and one cruiser. Thus, the Bisons seem to have been a useful addition, giving them some vehicles to train on, and the manpower of the regiment received a bit more muscle in case of an invasion. The Bisons are never mentioned again and it is likely they were discarded by the following year, when the regiment was shipped to North Africa. Except for this example, very little is known of their use by the British Army, which seems to have been meant as a jury-rigged expedient.

In regards to RAF service, even less is known, as just about the only sources we have are photographs of Bisons at assorted airfields. As with most ill-documented vehicles that served but never saw combat, it is quite difficult to give a clear idea of what they did. However, in the case of the Bison, there are reasonable details on one such vehicle, which will hopefully give an idea of their service and eventual fate.

This specific vehicle was based on a 1915 Leyland box van as a donor chassis, with solid rubber tires, and a chain drive. It was owned by a company called Cammocks, in Lincolnshire, and used as a removal van. In 1940, it was sent to be turned into a Bison. After being fitted with its concrete overcoat, it was sent to active duty at RAF Digby station, also in Lincolnshire. It remained at RAF Digby until the later part of 1944 when the station was downgraded to non-combat duties. At that point, the Army Transport Corps was tasked with its collection and removal to storage at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire. It is quite possible that a large number of Bisons ended up here.

As was the case with many Bisons, the weight of the modifications caused severe strain on the chassis. The Bison from RAF Digby was no exception, and the condition of the chassis was found to be extremely poor. Thus, the Bison was donated to the Home Guard, where it was moved about nine miles from RAF Digby to Quarrington near Sleaford. There, it was placed in a copse of trees and served as a bunker in support of a Home Guard checkpoint on the A15. On the 3rd of December 1944, the Home Guard was stood down, and the Bison was abandoned in the copse. At some point, a local farmer decided to salvage the chassis. The concrete parts were pulled off the chassis, with the bunker laying upside down on its roof. The chassis was converted to a farm trailer. The abandoned bunker in the copse of trees was well known locally and often played over by local children. In 1988, a local heritage society was tipped off about the strange bunker, and in 1991, the remains were recovered and placed on display at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre.

Most other Bisons were likely scrapped or met similar fates. Today, only the remains in Lincolnshire and a half-authentic mock-up at Bovington Tank museum survive.

The Combat Role

The Bison should not be seen as a conventional AFV. The fact that some Bisons were reportedly constructed without a power plant, and even that the massive weight of the concrete modifications caused Bison engines to fail did not stop them from remaining in service. The Bison was a mobile pillbox.

Such a device was very practical for the defenders of the airfields where they were stationed. Any attack on the airfields would quickly run afoul of a Bison for several reasons. Firstly, the German Fallschirmjager would have an anti-tank rifle at their disposal at best, which would lack the ability to harm the bunkers, even assuming the Germans could get to their weapon containers. Secondly, the ability to move strongpoints about at random on the airfield grounds meant that planning any assault would be extremely difficult, as the attacker did not know in advance where the bunkers would be.

Other things could be done with a mobile pillbox. Flying from some airfields was a day time only event. Overnight, a Bison could be placed in the middle of the airfield, blocking the airstrip, and left there until flying needed to resume again. This could be done in order to prevent enemy airplanes from disembarking troops on the airfield in case of invasion.

Conclusion

The Bison was not a typical AFV, but a mobile pillbox. In that role, Bisons provided a flexible defensive tool for the Local Defence teams of each airfield they were stationed at, and they provided it cheaply without drawing on any scarce resources, such as armor plate. They could also be used for training, when nothing better was available. Unfortunately, their use has been ill-documented and even the vehicles themselves have disappeared, with partial remains of just two vehicles surviving.

While the Bisons were a vehicle born out of a feeling of urgency and desperation, they made sense in the context in which they were built, and they provided supplemental defensive tools without drawing on important materials which were in high demand elsewhere.

Bison, Type 2. This type featured a separate fighting compartment.

Bison, Type 3, late model. As seen in a government photo from 1940/1.

Sources

Mace, Martin (July 2001). Vehicles of the Home Guard. Historic Military Press. ISBN 1-901313-08-5.
Wheels and tracks, Issue 41 (1992).
http://www.warwheels.net/BisonConcreteTruckINDEX.html
https://www.forterra.co.uk/our-brands/bison-precast/
http://www.pillbox-study-group.org.uk/restorations/rescues-n-z/recovery-of-a-bison-mobile-pillbox-by-the-lincolnshire-aircraft-recovery-group/
Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre (www.lincsaviation.co.uk)

United Kingdom (1939)
Armored Car – 101 Built

In 1937, the British Army had just completed re-equipping its reconnaissance formations with a new armored car, the Morris CS9. However, the CS9 had one critical flaw: it only had two-wheel drive. The War Office was well aware of the superiority of a four-wheel drive armored car, however, time pressure had meant that they had selected the CS9, which was based off a commercial truck chassis, for service. With the CS9 in service, this gave breathing space to develop a four-wheel drive armored car. The first port of call was again Morris Ltd, with a joint venture with Steyr of Austria. They produced a large 4×4 vehicle that was delivered for tests. The trials went badly, with the report citing terrible mechanical performance. The final nail in the coffin for this vehicle was the Anchluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, which meant that Steyr now belonged to a hostile foreign power.

The Morris company then adapted the technology obtained from Steyr for a new design, which also performed poorly in trials. A new contender was sought, and found, in the form of Guy Motors. The starting point for the Guy armored car, was their Quad-Ant field artillery tractor that was being trialed for use by the Army. The tractor had an armored body fixed over the chassis. The exact source of the body design is unknown, but the Guy armored car does have more than a passing resemblance to the Morris armored car, which had its body designed by the Woolwich Arsenal.

Originally, the Guy armored car was meant to mount a turret very similar to that of the CS9, which was an open-topped cylinder armed with a Boys anti-tank rifle and a Bren light machine gun. However, before production began, the War Office changed the specifications and requested a fully enclosed turret with armament standardised to that of the Vickers Light Tank Mk.VI. This mounted both a .50 and a .303 Vickers heavy machine gun in a square fully enclosed turret. With this weapon change, the vehicle was reclassified as a ‘Light Tank (Wheeled)’. The suspected reasoning behind this change is that a 4×4 armored car could come close to the performance of a light tank, but at a much-reduced cost. At least one of the five Guy prototypes was placed in comparative trials against the Morris four-wheel drive armored car and an Alvis-Straussler built design. The Guy entry comprehensively beat its competitors in every field.

Following this, two prototypes were placed under troop trials with the 2nd Dragoon Guards. One was sent to Egypt where it suffered from severe cooling problems. The troop trials caused some minor modifications to be implemented, with the size of both the tyres and the gap between the wheels and the mudguards being increased.

The Guy Light Tank would begin to enter service in 1939, and would have a very short but interesting career.

Design

The Guy Light Tank had a body made of 14 mm of armor, with a centralised driving compartment and a box-like structure around the driver’s head. Behind this, the main superstructure mounts a square turret. The sides of the body sloped slightly outwards from the chassis to the widest point, giving an appearance similar to modern Mine Resistant Vehicles, although there is no suggestion that this was done for protection from mines. From the superstructure roof, the rear engine deck sloped backwards to the rear plate.

The first prototype Guy Light Tank had riveted construction, along with all the usual weaknesses this entailed. At the time, the idea of welding the armor plate was considered impossible. Guy Motors, however, offered the War Office a deal. They thought they had cracked the problems with welding, and they wanted to try it on the new light tank. Guy Motors signed a contract that allowed them to experiment with welding, but should it fail, then the company would absorb the cost. The welding was a total success. It made the Guy better protected against small arms and more waterproof, thus being able to ford water bodies easier. Welding even made the vehicle slightly lighter. In addition, it made the vehicle a lot cheaper and quicker to build. The Guy Light Tank became the first vehicle in British service to be of entirely welded construction. The welding technique was then given to the War Office, for free, for use during the Second World War. After the war, the invention attracted an award from the Royal Commission for inventions.

The Guy was a rear-engine vehicle, with a petrol 4-cylinder Meadows 4.E.L, with a 95 mm bore and 130 mm stroke. The horsepower produced by this unit is up to some debate, as one primary source, albeit for the prototype, states the output as 22.38 hp. In contrast, most of the modern secondary sources state the output is 55 hp. The answer could be differing RPM’s when the measurement was taken, or the jump from prototype to production may have included a change in gearing.

The engine on the prototype was cooled by a gallay type radial-pump, linked to a four-bladed fan with 3.75 gallons of water. Ignition was of the coil type. The engine also had a Solex 25 RFGVL carburetor. The engine output fed through a four-speed gearbox, with one reverse gear. The forward gear ratios ranged from 7.33 to 1.1, the Reverse gear had a ratio of 10.41. The clutch was a Borg & Beck Dry plate. The wheels fitted to the prototype were Dunlop TG 10.50-16, but these would be increased in size on the production model. Breaking ot the wheels was both foot and hand, linked to Bendix 14in Ferodo systems on each of the wheels. Fuel capacity was 20 gallons, with a 9.5 mpg. Lubrication was provided by 1.5 gallons of oil.

In 1939, the War Office changed the standardised armament for light tanks, switching away from the .50 and .303 Vickers guns. Instead, the new weapons were to be 15 mm and 7.92 mm BESA machine guns. Thus, the design of the Guy Light Tank was updated as well. To differentiate between the two vehicles, those armed with Vickers Guns became the Mk.I, and those armed with BESA’s became Mk.IA. The changeover happened exactly halfway through production, with fifty Mk.I’s produced, and fifty-one Mk.IA’s.

Action Guy

In 1940, the War Office was requesting much-increased production from Guy Motors. However, even with the savings in man-hours that welding provided, the company was just unable to cope with the increased workload without prejudicing its other commitments such as building trucks. Thus, the design was handed to the Rootes group, which produced an almost identical vehicle which became known as the Humber Armoured Car. This was a Guy Light Tank body placed on a Karrier KT 4 artillery tractor chassis. In this guise, it became one of the outstanding success stories of British armored cars from the Second World War.

The switching of production to Rootes Group left 101 Guy Light Tanks in service with the Army. The Guy had one unique property, it had enough space to carry around 10cwt (0.56 tons) of stores. This is a remarkably large volume of space, especially considering that the standard truck of the British Army was only rated to carry 15cwt (0.84 ton). This large capacity and roomy interior meant that the Guy Light Tank would be used for two very special roles.

Six Guy Light Tanks were formed into two troops, and joined by a platoon of motorcyclists. The formation carried many names. Officially, they were called either Mission No.11 or the GHQ Liaison Regiment. They also had the code name Phantom. Commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel George Frederick Hopkinson, the force consisted of about 120 personnel, a large portion of which were trained signallers. The role of Phantom was to provide liaison between foreign armies and perform intelligence gathering duties. This information was then passed to No.3 Air Mission in order to allow the RAF to perform accurate close air support, with relatively up to date information on the ground situation. The reconnaissance was also passed directly to the British Expeditionary Force HQ without having to go through the usual chain of command, thus the data could be acted on in a much more timely manner. Phantom also utilized signal intercepts to obtain information on German movements. Although the intercepts would be encoded, the originating type of unit could be determined, which helped place German formations.

During the battle for France, all the Guy Light Tanks sent to France were knocked out or captured. As the formation was atypical, it lacked the War Diaries that would normally be associated with combat and so we lack any detailed reports on how the Guy’s performed. One action involving a Guy can be pieced together from subsequent accounts and photographs.

On 27th May, Phantom was requested to support the 144th Brigade west of Wormhoudt. The area to their front was contested and the situation very confused. A Guy Light Tank, possibly commanded by Second-Lieutenant Piers Richard Edgcumbe, with Lance-Corporal Leonard Frank Webber as one of his crew, was approaching a café on the Esquelbecq to Zegers-Chappel road, named Hunter’s Rest. It appears from photographs that the Guy pulled out of a T-junction, and was immediately hit by a German anti-tank gun. The car rolled forwards off the road, and stopped partially in a shallow ditch. It was hit a second time, and started to burn. One of the crew was killed outright, the other two managing to get inside the Hunter’s Rest. It then appears SS personnel attempted to close with the two unarmed British soldiers and a bitter round of hand to hand fighting ensued. The British were using what items they could lay their hands on to defend themselves, even resorting to using the cast iron stove lids as weapons. Both British crew were killed.

After the six Guy’s were lost in France, the next role was as part of the Coats Mission. This was a close protection detail formed from the Grenadier Guards to protect the Royal Family. The guns and ammunition on the Guy Light Tanks were removed, and an extra seat fitted in the roomy hull. This, in effect, gave the vehicle the ability to function as an APC carrying three soldiers, or as a VIP transport able to seat one of the royal family, plus two bodyguards. The driver in both cases could double as a fighting-man or stay with the vehicle. Around eight of the Guy Light Tanks were so converted.

The remaining Guy’s were handed out to various regiments, most notably Belgium, Danish and Dutch units being formed in the UK. The Belgium forces received fourteen Mk.IA Guy’s on 2nd October 1941. That winter during an exercise, a local Home Guard platoon blocked a road with a hay cart to spring an ambush on a column being led by a Belgium Guy Light Tank, named Calamité. The Belgium driver reacted exactly as one should when in an ambush; get out of the killing zone. Thus he rammed into the hay cart at full speed. Needless to say, this gave rise to an inquiry, as the Home Guard had to explain to the local farmer why he would not be getting his cart (and hay) back, and the Belgium forces were billed for the damages caused.

The Guy’s remained in their role of training vehicles until they could be replaced with more standardised equipment, and were phased out of service in February 1943.

In Dutch use, around four to five Mk.I Guy Light tanks were issued to reinforce the Humber Light Recognizance Cars the Armoured Car Squadron was then equipped with. After brief service as training vehicles, the Guy’s were withdrawn in January 1943. The Dutch soldiers took great pains to refurbish the Guy’s back up to the best standard they could, working hard to replace worn parts and get them in to the best condition possible. They were rather annoyed when the cars were simply sent for scrapping when they handed them over.

Conclusion

Although short lived and of a small production run, the Guy’s were Britain’s first truly modern armored car, with four-wheel drive and a welded hull. Up until this point, the armored cars had all been two-wheel drive, with a bolted armored body dropped onto a commercial car or truck chassis. The Guy would show that Britain was on the right course, as the Guy quickly morphed into the excellent Humber, which could keep pace with the other outstanding success story of British armored cars, The Daimler Dingo, which appeared the following year to the Guy.

Guy Mk.1 Armoured Car, standard livery, 1940.

Guy Mk.1a Armoured Car, armed with a Besa 15 mm heavy machine gun. Anti-invasion exercises with the Southern Command, 7 May 1941

These illustrations were produced by Tank Encyclopedia’s own David Bocquelet

Sources

WO 194/44 Medium tanks and armoured cars, National Archives, Kew.
Mechanised Force, David Fletcher, ISBN-10: 0112904874
Armoured Car, Issue 16, March 1993
Tussen paard en pantser [Between Horse and Armour] written by Jan Hof, published by ‘La Riviere & Voorhoeve’ in 1990.
www.royalsignalsmuseum.co.uk
sussexhistoryforum.co.uk
ww2talk.com (1)
ww2talk.com (2)
ww2talk.com (3)
www.historywebsite.co.uk
www.warwheels.net

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