Kiwis With Truck Mounted Boys .55 Anti-Tank Rifle
Yesterday I posted a photo of Jordanian Special Forces with truck-mounted Barrett anti-material rifles and in the comments a reader shared this photo of the The Long Range Desert Group operating a .55 caliber Boys Anti-Tank rifle mounted on a truck.
The The Long Range Desert Group were a British Army unit made up by volunteers mostly from New Zealand. They specialized in long range operations behind enemy lines in North Africa and were able to go thousands of miles into the desert without external support. Their trucks were stripped of any non-essentials and they favored two wheel drive rather than four wheel to save on weight. When the unit was initially formed, they had 11 lewis machine guns, four Boys anti-tank rifles and one Bofors 37mm anti-tank cannon mounted on their fleet. Later they would add .50 Vickers machine guns. Each vehicle had six to weight weapon mounts or which two or three would be utilized.
The below photos of the LRDG are from Wikipedia …
Thanks to bbmg for the photo and information.
I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!
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My deceased Kiwi step dad was a officer in the SAF, he would of gotten a kick out of this article if he was still alive.
My area of History that I study is the British Forces in North Africa. (and I mean all troops with the Union Jack in their flag, including the New Zealanders, and all the other countries that fit that description.) It is awesome how adaptive, innovative, fierce, and determined said forces are. My big paper I had to do as undergrad focused on the LRDG, the No. 8 Commandos, aka Layforce, the SAS, and the 7th Armored Division, aka the Desert Rats. My paper focused on the push and general acceptance of small units vs. large armies, an how Winston Churchill was a main proponent for small units, and so when David Stirling created the SAS, despite breaking into Middle East HQ, he wasn't laughed out of the HQ, they practically immediately put him to work. All very interesting stuff.