I would think that it isn’t an abbreviation, but that the tank was given an animal name along the same line as other Canadian vehicles like Grizzly, Wasp, etc. That means it would be “Ram” like any proper noun, unless the rest of the text is also entirely in capitals of course, such as under the drawing posted. That says “CRUISER TANK RAM II—right-hand side”, so the whole designation is in all-caps. The documents Colin posted bear this out.
I’m guessing the spelling you sometimes see, like “the RAM cruiser tank”, is due to mistaking the name for an abbreviation — much like how a lot of people today write MAC rather than Mac when they mean the computer.
|