@CWO:
@vonLettowVorbeck1914:
Priest as Mechanized infantry? When they were APC’s it was decidedly an exception from what I can tell.
I checked one of my WWII armour reference books at home last night and it mentioned that the Priest – more correctly the Priest Kangaroo – was a design suggested by a Canadian officer to the British Army. He proposed modifying an existing gun carrier into an APC, to give mechanized troops some light armour protection.
Last year at FMGC the reason for this was unit and request explained in detail by real Veterans. There was even a special diarama set up in the museum there, to discuss several famous battles where this unit/new-tactic was used.
Keep in mind, at the time, there was no such thing as an APC, and that typically infantry simply rode on the outside of the vehicles…
I’ll explain this as basically as I can.
Standard Operating Procedure for German Infantry (SOP) was to allow allied tanks to pass through the defenses, without giving German positions away. THEN to use their machine guns etc on the allied infantry, that came following the tanks.
Tanks seperated from Infantry, and Infantry seperated from tanks, is bad news for the attacker, and the German tactic was to exploit this.
This SOP was observed by Canadian officers. And thus was born the Kangaroo. The tactic being, to send in allied tanks (what looked like tanks) with NO immediate infantry wave. The Kangaroo’s would reach the objective, and the infantry would bail out BEHIND the immediate german line, and secure the objective (Hill, Church, Bridge, etc) Before the battle had even begun. The German positions would then be attacked directly, (as opposed to a rush for the objective) from in front and behind, with no immediate fall back position available. Surrender suddenly became a much more viable solution.
The secret was kept all the way through until the end of the war, and there were many documented debriefs of German soldiers/officers who had NO idea, how the hell allied troops got through their defensive formations, and secured the objective so rapidly…
