The Priest and Ram Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carrier

[David Herbert]

The prop shaft tunnel shown in all three of Hanno's photos is the standard one as originally fitted in a Ram gun Tank. The design was inherited from the Lee/Grant with very minor changes and continued almost unchanged right through Ram production and was adapted with small changes for Sexton.

All Rams had it from new so there was no need to replace it for the modified vehicles and other boxes etc were just bolted in round it. There is no question of operating without a prop shaft tunnel as it is needed to contain a broken shaft which would otherwise flail arround destroying everything in the tank quite apart from the obvious dangers of it being possible to touch a shaft spinning at up to 2400 rpm.

The last photo shows a mock up of a scheme for a different stowage layout installed in a very early Ram hull. It is NOT the same as ANY production Ram.

Mark refers to the part of the hull that overhangs the tracks as 'panniers'. This term can be found in period documents but the word 'sponson' was far more common and was the term used in manuals and other official documents, where as pannier tended to be used by non technical civil servants who were inventing their own vocabulary.

David