Remote controlled expolosive Carriers.

[RichardT10829]

nah you got it all wrong... he is thinking Vi did Vee not Zink Ov Zis ourselves !


EDIT: either that or "I vonder who is going to vin Xfactor zis year"

[Ben]

Thanks Kevin

I had a quick look and that one did stick out, there's a nice mix of brens, scouts (for Phillip) and the odd early batch MK1.

There's some good early BEF pictures to be found on the ww2 site too.

Ben

[Bob Carriere]

..... how did we loose so much equipment....... in good shape and still win the war...... hell it could have ended a lot sooner if they did not have our stuff.......

Amazing how many conversion were made to the UC..... and a lot faster than out own system would allow.....

Was Ford selling them under the table to Germany....?

Surprising we had any left to fight with....

Fascinating series of pictures...... really enjoyed it.

Bob

[Lynn Eades]

The only visible conversion done to that "U.C"carrier was the painted cross
It was a Proper "Bren" MkII., And yes, Henry's factories in europe were producing more for the axis, than for the Allies, at one stage during the war.

[Niels V]

Would the british reuse a carrier if they capture it from the germans ?

[RichardT10829]

if it was servicable i would say yes. You really need to stand back and look at the desperate situation we were in at Dunkirk we were pretty much flee'ing for our lives and ordinance / vehicles were sabotaged and left right up to the beache's. the germans had ford before the war and many of their trucks were powered by ford units so the carrier was an easy fix other than track etc... but as we had left so much stuff behind they had a healthy stock of spares........ my great uncle Jimmy Lawson was on the beaches at Dunkirk got covered in phosphorus, he had the shakes through nerve damage right up to the day he died in 2003.

[Alex Blair (RIP)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_tracked_mine

Interesting read..I have seen the one in the Canadian War Museum and it is complete with cables and controls..


In late 1940, after recovering the prototype of a miniature tracked vehicle developed by the French vehicle designer Adolphe Kégresse from the Seine River, the Wehrmacht's ordnance office directed the Carl F.W. Borgward automotive company of Bremen, Germany to develop a similar vehicle for the purpose of carrying a minimum of 50 kg of explosives. The result was the SdKfz. 302 (Sonderkraftfahrzeug, ‘special-purpose vehicle’), called the Leichter Ladungsträger (‘light charge carrier’), or Goliath, which carried 60 kg of explosives. The vehicle was steered remotely via a joystick control box. The control box was attached to the Goliath by a triple-strand cable connected to the rear of the vehicle, for transmitting power to the electric driven version. Two of the strands were used to move and steer the Goliath, the third was used for detonation. The Goliath had 650 m of cable. Each Goliath was disposable, being intended to be blown up with its target. Early model Goliaths used an electric motor but, as these were costly to make (3000 Reichsmarks) and difficult to repair in a combat environment, later models (known as the SdKfz. 303) used a simpler, more reliable gasoline engine.