Remote controlled expolosive Carriers.

[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.

[Ben]

There was a Goliath at belting this year, £4000 complete and working. There are some clips on YouTube of them working, fun but I think the novelty of it not being "drivable" would wear off pretty quick.

Ben

[eddy8men]

excellent post kev, very interesting to see the amount of carriers pressed into german service.

cheers

rick

[Lynn Eades]

To put Richards comments into perspective,The army left behind;
2472 artillery pieces,
20,548 motorcycles,
and 63,879 vehicles
This info from Richard Colliers book, The Sands Of Dunkirk

If every vehicle (not including the guns and motorbikes was 2 meters wide,(my carrier is 1.9m wide) and they were parked side by side, touching. The line of vehicles would be 127.75 kilometers long.

[Ben]

The photos of the piers made from trucks do start to put that in perspective.

I've always wondered exactly how my grandad got off the beach.

Ben

[Philliphastings]

A great series of links - thanks Kevin.

Many of the Scout pics are new to me and I search the net fairly regularly. A lot of the frontal pics are of Scout Carriers. The giveaway is the flat armour panel above the front gun port but even that is not definative as it is a part which can be readily changed.

Seems the wehrmacht got plenty of use out of their (our) carriers. I wonder if the average German soldier had as much fondness for them as many of their former allied crews...

Cheers and thanks

Phill

[Bob Carriere]

Never realized HOW MUCH equipment got left behind...... nor the fact that the germans were that familiar with the Ford V8.

Some of the pictures show some UC with the side armour either cut off or lowered....some with sloping back...... are these the "scouts" you are referring to...? So most of that captured equipment would be Early Mark I....
Did we actually used early models with the sloping backs or was that purely a german modification...?

Bob