07/06/2026
"On Infantry and Armoured Carriers," by R. M. Ogorkiewicz, was published in The Royal Armoured Corps Journal in January 1957, only twelve years after the end of the Second World War.
Although written before the introduction of the M113 and the modern generation of armoured personnel carriers, it provides an excellent overview of the evolution of mechanized infantry transport, from the First World War through the immediate post-war period. Of particular interest is the author's assessment of the wartime Canadian and British "Kangaroo" armoured personnel carriers.
The article is reproduced here because it offers a contemporary perspective on a subject that continues to generate debate. While Ogorkiewicz makes clear that the Kangaroo was not the first armoured personnel carrier, he concludes that its protection and cross-country mobility were superior to any other infantry carrier then in service, including the widely used half-tracks. Furthermore, the lessons learned in the use of the 'kangaroo' were not lost.
The opinions expressed are those of the author, writing in 1957, and are presented here as an important historical source.
On Infantry and Armoured Carriers
R. M. Ogorkiewicz
Royal Armoured Corps Journal, Vol. XI, No. 1, January 1957
Editorial Note: This is a verbatim transcription prepared from a public-domain source.
ON INFANTRY AND ARMOURED CARRIERS
By R. M. Ogorkiewicz
One of the problems which has bedevilled the development of armoured formations is that of providing an adequate degree of mobility to their infantry component. Over the years this has proved much more difficult than improving the mobility of tank units and has either tended to separate the infantry from tanks or it has prevented armoured units from making full use of their mobility.
A solution to this last problem, which has been put forward on a number of occasions, is the actual or virtual elimination of the infantry from armoured formations. This solution was subscribed to by the majority of the tank pioneers who thought in terms of "landships" and tank "fleets", and who saw little further use for infantry, even as "tank marines." As late as 1943 General Fuller still advocated armoured divisions without organic infantry. Much more recently still, the same tendency has manifested itself in the armoured division organization adopted in 1955, in which the infantry has been cut to only one motor battalion to four armoured regiments.
The need for infantry.
Experience has shown, however, the inadequacy of armoured formations based on such "all-tank" ideas and the need to complement tanks with riflemen.
As early as 1917, the French found it necessary to attach a company of specially trained infanterie d'accompagnement to each groupe of 16 tanks. The task of these infantry units was to act as assault pioneers, to provide close-in protection, and to clean-up, with rifle and gr***de, small nests of enemy resistance.
In the following two decades of peace-time development, with its extremes of complete subordination of tanks to the infantry or of sweeping armoured strategic manoeuvres, this wartime tactical lesson was largely overlooked.
However, the Germans rediscovered it and the need for a strong infantry component when they began to develop their first Panzer divisions. They started with three rifle battalions per division, but peace-time trials showed that even this was not enough and by 1939 each Panzer division had four rifle battalions to four tank battalions, plus a battalion of combat engineers.
The obvious successes of the German tank-infantry combination led to it being copied elsewhere and from 1941 on all armoured divisions had a sizeable infantry component. Even the Russians, who for many years followed the example of the British "all-tank" ideas, began to replace their mechanized brigades with tank divisions which contained one rifle regiment in addition to two tank regiments.
During the war, unfortunately, the pendulum swung the other way. By 1942, British armoured divisions had acquired four infantry battalions to three tank battalions and in the majority of the German armoured divisions during the last two years of the war there were four infantry battalions to only two tank battalions.
As far as the Germans were concerned, the reason was principally a shortage of tanks which made it impossible to equip each Panzer division with the three or four tank battalions which it was intended to have. In theory the proportion arrived at before the war, of one rifle battalion to one tank battalion, was generally regarded as the best. After the war, even the most ardent German tank enthusiasts, strengthened in their demands for more tanks by the inevitable reaction against the chronic shortages of tanks, concluded that there should be no less than one infantry battalion to two tank battalions. And even then each tank battalion was to have its own organic company of assault pioneers.
Early experiments and ideas.
The recognition of the need to include a strong force of infantry in armoured formations has not been generally accompanied or followed by the provision of adequate means which would enable the infantry to participate in all phases of armoured operations. The lack of such means, in the form of suitable vehicles, deprived the infantry of the armoured divisions of much of their usefulness and has often prevented it from playing a fully effective role.
Yet the development of armoured personnel carriers goes back to the earliest days of tank development. The first was actually evolved in 1917 and was based on the contemporary rhomboidal British heavy tank. The development of this vehicle, designated the Mark IX, was, however, brought to an end by the Armistice and the general lack of interest in the part to be played by infantry in armoured warfare.
What little attention was devoted in the early days to the role of the infantryman in future armoured warfare was inclined towards the individual solution, that is providing each infantryman with his own armoured vehicle or, in other words, replacing the infantryman on foot by a small, one-man tank. Such ideas were already at the back of the French Renault F.T. light tank and after the war they were pursued with some vigour in this country. General Martel was responsible for much of the pioneer work which was most ably carried on by Sir John Carden, who became world famous through the Carden-Loyd tankettes.
Actually, the Renault F.T. and all but the earliest Carden-Loyds were two-man machines and the latter branched out into two distinct lines. One consisted of turretted vehicles similar in principle to the Renault F.T. which produced the long series of Vickers-Carden-Loyd light tanks. The other line was that of the machine-gun carriers, best exemplified by the Carden-Loyd Mark VI. Enlarged, the latter evolved into the Bren Gun Carrier which became the first armoured carrier in the infantry units of British armoured divisions.
Unfortunately, the Bren Gun Carrier could never be regarded as an efficient armoured personnel carrier in view of its very limited carrying capacity. In all fairness, however, it was in accord with the predominant concept of the role of the infantry in the early British armoured formations, namely that of a defensive ground-holding element. Hence the accent on the automatic weapon and the development of the vehicle as a machine-gun carrier or a scouting vehicle rather than a means of carrying riflemen for dismounted offensive action. This was underlined by the fact that for some time it was issued only to the scout platoons of the motor companies while the remaining rifle platoons moved about in light trucks.
It was left to the Germans to make the first determined effort to provide the infantry of the armoured divisions with an armoured cross-country personnel carrier. Interestingly enough, the origin of this vehicle may be traced as far back as the immediate post-First World War period.
Prohibited by the Allies from having tanks and restricted as to the number of armoured cars, the Germans were, however, allowed a number of additional unarmed armoured cars for use as personnel or supply carriers in internal security duties. They were large and clumsy looking affairs but by the mid-twenties Krupp evolved a much improved design with sloping armour and a few vehicles of this type were actually sold to the Netherlands East Indies. They were still four wheelers with solid tyres but in the mid-thirties this Krupp type of hull appeared on the half-track chassis. The latter was originally taken up as an artillery tractor but subsequently the German Army adapted it very successfully to a wide variety of roles, including that of the well known Panzergrenadierwagen.
A few of the German armoured half-tracks were used during the 1939 Polish campaign and they appeared for the first time in quantity during the 1940 French campaign. But it was only in 1942 that there was anything like one Panzer Grenadier battalion per division equipped with them and even by the end of the war only the most favoured Panzer divisions, such as the Panzer Lehr and the Grossdeutschland, were better provided with armoured half-track carriers. To provide more was simply beyond the capabilities of the German industry in the latter part of the war.
Largely because of the industrial limitations the Germans were not able, therefore, to provide the whole of the infantry in their armoured divisions with armoured carriers. This was done for the first time by the Americans, who had the obvious advantage of U.S. industrial resources and the added advantage of a relatively simple and inexpensive half-track armoured personnel carrier.
The origins of this last vehicle actually go back to France which provided much of the early impetus to the development of half-track vehicles. It was there that Adolphe Kégresse, after his return from Russia, developed the half-track vehicle with continuous rubber tracks. And it was there that the Citroën Company, which has never lacked courage to pioneer new developments, first took up its manufacture.
Some of the potentialities of the Citroën-Kégresse half-tracks were demonstrated in 1923, when five of them made the first motor crossing of the Sahara desert. From then on the chassis was adopted as the basis of a number of French armoured cars and then, also, as the basis of a weapon carrier for the dragons portés, who formed the rifle component in the mechanized formations of the French cavalry in the thirties. As a carrier the Citroën-Kégresse was never armoured, however, though in this country an armoured machine gun carrier version, the Burford-Kégresse, was briefly experimented with in 1930.
American half-tracks.
The armoured personnel carrier version of the Kégresse half-track was largely an American development. The U.S. Army bought a sample vehicle from France in 1931 and from then on begun its own development of half-track vehicles.
The first Half Track Car T1 was built in 1931 by the Cunningham Company and was followed by several other experimental models.
The majority of these vehicles were intended as artillery prime movers, but in 1938 the half-track approach was combined with the wheeled armoured scout car which had been developed as a reconnaissance vehicle for the U.S. Cavalry. The resulting Personnel Carrier T7 was the first American armoured half-track and was followed by the Half-Track Scout Car T14, whose development was authorised in 1939 and which was the prototype of the war-time carriers.
The demand for armoured half-track carriers initiated by the mechanized elements of the U.S. Cavalry before the war was greatly strengthened by the 1940 Louisiana manoeuvres, where motorised infantry was first combined with armoured units of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Brigade (Mecz). One of the lessons of the manoeuvres was the need for something better than lorries for the infantry of the armoured formations and the half-track armoured personnel carrier was adopted as the solution, though it actually retained many commercial lorry features.
The T14 was standardised as the M2 and was followed by the M3 Half-Track Personnel Carrier which was capable of carrying 14 men. Six hundred and forty-two half-tracks, including 145 M3 carriers, were included in the establishment of the first American armoured divisions which had two infantry battalions each. From then on the whole of the American armoured infantry was carried in these vehicles. In the latter part of the war American armoured divisions had three infantry battalions and each of these was fully equipped with 62 half-track armoured personnel carriers.
From about 1943 on, American half-track carriers were also supplied to British armoured divisions. There, however, they were only furnished to the motor battalions where they replaced the light trucks of the rifle platoons. The rest of the divisional infantry continued to rely on lorries for their transport. The position was, therefore, the same as that in the German armoured divisions where, in general, only one out of the four infantry battalions was equipped with armoured carriers. The rest of the German Panzer Grenadiers, like the three battalions of the British lorried infantry brigade and the great majority of infantry in other armoured formations, had to rely on trucks which were generally mere adaptations of commercial designs.
War-time expedients.
Equipped with little more than such adaptations of commercial trucks, the ability of the infantry to co-operate closely with tanks was obviously limited. It was particularly so under the difficult terrain conditions encountered on the Eastern Front, in Russia. These and the general shortage of motor transport forced the Russians to the expedient of carrying infantrymen into action on tanks. This was by no means a novel method, for it was used earlier on a number of occasions, nor was it confined to the Soviet Army. The latter was the only one, however, to develop and use this method on a large scale and to adopt it as the method of transport for the organic infantry detachments of its armoured brigades. The troop carrying capacity of each tank became part of its official characteristics and the Russians even invented the name of "tank landing troops" for those who rode into action on tanks.
Another expedient, though far less costly in terms of infantry casualties than the Soviet method, was tried in the closing stages of the war by the British and Canadian forces. In fact, it was dictated by a desire to reduce infantry casualties as much as to increase infantry mobility. It consisted of converting tanks or self-propelled guns into heavily armoured personnel carriers by removing turrets in the first case and the main armament in the latter. Shermans, Stuarts, Priests, and Canadian-built Rams were among the vehicles thus converted into what were generally called "Kangaroos."
By their very makeshift nature the "Kangaroos" were inefficient as personnel carriers but they provided a degree of protection and cross-country mobility vastly superior to that of any other infantry carrier, including the American half-tracks.
Dissatisfaction with the American half-track carriers was inevitable after a time in any case. They were largely a compromise solution which retained some of the shortcomings of both the lorry and the tracked vehicle without having the full advantages of either. So much so that after the war the U.S. Army decided to abandon it in favour of fully tracked carriers.
Fully tracked carriers
The first of the American fully tracked armoured personnel carriers was also of the "Kangaroo" variety. Designated the M39 it consisted of the highly mobile M18 tank destroyer minus its turret and armament. It suffered from the same shortcomings as the British and Canadian "Kangaroos" and was still open-topped. However, it was followed fairly closely by the M44 which had armour protection all round and which was designed from the start as an armoured personnel carrier. As a carrier it was definitely much more efficient but because it was built to carry as many as 27 men it rivalled in size a large bus.
In view of the enormous target which it offered it is not surprising that the M44 was built in limited quantity and was abandoned in 1950-51 in favour of its smaller edition, the M75. This has the same type of box-like superstructure with overhead protection but because it was designed to carry only twelve men, including the driver, its overall dimensions are much more reasonable.
A small number of M75s was tried in the closing stages of the Korean war, by which time this model was joined in service by the very similar M59. Externally the M59 is almost identical with the M75 but it makes considerable use of components from civilian production and by clever detail design advantage has been taken of its relative bulk to provide it with limited amphibious characteristics which enable it to operate in relatively calm water without any preparation.
Otherwise the mechanical characteristics and performance of the M59, as of the M75, are very similar to those of the M41 light tank and the M46-M47-M48 Patton medium tanks. It can, therefore, follow tanks over all types of terrain and it makes possible the formation of closely knit tank-infantry teams, right down to platoon level, which are a common feature of American armoured tactics.
The post-war British armoured personnel carrier, the six-wheeled Saracen, is less suited to such methods. Under most conditions it can, however, be used much more effectively to rush infantry detachments from one part of the battlefield to another. This is probably just as well, if there is to be only one infantry battalion to four armoured regiments! But it is still very doubtful whether any degree of mobility could produce results comparable with those obtained by a greater number of infantry co-operating more closely with tanks.
The Russians have also introduced a six-wheeled armoured personnel carrier since the war. This, however, is basically only an open-top armour-plated truck and is hardly an advance on the pre-war American scout cars.
Much more interesting and up to date are the French fully tracked armoured carriers of the post-war period. There are now at least three basic models: one based on the AMX 13 light tank and two lighter types by Hotchkiss and Hispano-Suiza respectively.
The carrier based on the AMX 13 tank can carry 12 men and is generally similar to the American M75 and M59 carriers, though it is not, like the latter, amphibious. The Hotchkiss and the Hispano-Suiza, however, represent a somewhat different approach. For one thing they are much smaller and can carry only six men. Because they can carry fewer men they are less efficient as transport machines. But because they are smaller they represent a far smaller target than vehicles of the M75-M59 type and are, therefore, less vulnerable and better capable of close co-operation with tanks. Because they represent a smaller target the infantry need not dismount so soon and should be capable of fighting much longer from the vehicle thus helping to maintain the mobile tempo of armoured operations. At the same time they are quite large enough to carry what is now widely considered as the optimum size infantry section of half a dozen men.
In addition to the French Army, the new German Army has also decided to purchase a considerable number of French tracked armoured carriers. The Germans obviously intend that the new Panzer Grenadier units should be well provided with armoured cross-country vehicles. They have always shown a sound appreciation of the importance of the infantry in armoured formations and each new Panzer division is to have three Panzer Grenadier battalions.
At the same time they have not forgotten the war-time lessons of the need to provide such infantry units with armoured cross-country vehicles, which, incidentally, coincide with the much more recent lessons of the tactical atomic weapon trials in the Nevada desert.
The importance of cost.
The total number of carriers said to have been ordered for the German Army amounts to 15,000. This is a large order by any standard and involves a considerable sum of money which emphasizes the very important cost aspect of the problem of providing armoured infantry carriers.
The importance of cost has been shown clearly by the Saracen. It was the cost of this vehicle which has prevented it from being supplied to more than one battalion per division and this in turn contributed to the recent drastic cut in the infantry strength of the British armoured divisions, from five to only one battalion. In this case, therefore, as in so many others, costs have proved a most important factor. They have not only overshadowed the technical features of the vehicle but, also, affected the organization of whole formations, with most unfortunate results.
Acceptance of the importance of costs does not mean, however, that some of the high unit costs which have been quoted for armoured personnel carriers should be accepted as irreducible. The Americans have already shown, with their M59, that unit costs can be brought down considerably. For all its 18 tons the M59 costs £10,000 which is about one-half of the cost of the earlier M75. The same figure has been quoted for the much smaller Hotchkiss carrier, but there is no reason why a vehicle of this type, which seems very attractive from other points of view, should cost more than about £4,000 in this country.
To achieve such a cost figure would require, of course, a fairly efficient manufacturing organization. It would also require greater cost consciousness on the part of the designer and user, greater use of units from civilian production and a fair quantity order—which need not, however, be anywhere as high as 15,000 vehicles. Given these the figure of about £4,000 for an armoured carrier capable of carrying half a dozen men seems entirely feasible at the present level of industrial costs and one which would still provide manufacturers with the essential motivating profit.
The result would not, probably, please the perfectionists and it would certainly lack some of the frills. But it should be a thoroughly practical cross-country vehicle which could be provided in reasonable quantities. In consequence it could be possible at last to furnish armoured formations with an adequately strong infantry component possessing the essential high degree of mobility.
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(transcribed/edited for clarity WJM)
