Again, not WW2, but close, 1952, on Hohne ranges, West Germany, from 'Soldier' magazine, June 1952 - apparently there is a Centurion of 11 Armoured Div. somewhere under the 56 infantrymen (actually they look more like other tankies...) hitching on this one. I wouldn't like to try and rotate the turret... This seems a challenge like the "how many people can you get in a Mini"... As a PS, the accompanying article notes the beasts cost Her Majesty's Taxpayer - i.e. us, or more likely our parents - a mere 38,000 quid - which, according to an online inflation calculator thing, is equivalent to about 760,000 quid today. A Challenger is, according to Wiki, about 4.2m quid.
Chinahand - you most likely are correct with the "Mini" comparision as I would say that this Tank is NOT moving so it's a set up by other members of the squadron plus the fact that the ones in the rear would be having their rear ends toasted -we could only carry two sections on the back of a Churchill -i.e 14 - 18 men, safely that is .... Cheers interesting costs for 1952 as we were assured on losing a Churchill in 1944 that we might expect an invoice for the sum of 50,000GBP
It was regular practice for men to go into battle on the back of Shermans... Try that outy for a laugh! Its impossibke, but it did happen sapper
The tactic that calls for tank-infantry cooperation, with infantrymen hitching a ride until the final phases of the assault is (was? ) called "tank-desant", out of the russian tankovyy desant. Uncle Joe´s troops involved in this kind of operations were specially trained and called tankodesantniki. However, in the case of western armies, there wasn´t a developed equivalent tactic, so what pics show all over is a lot of tired grunts on an armored taxi... Here´s some pics on the subject, courtesy of news.webshots.com: Patton´s boys somewhere in Germany Advance to Pyongyang on a Pershing And of Wiki: Tankodesantniki on the attack near Budapest, in ´44
Tom - fair enough. Maybe the GBP50K was inflated to make people be careful to "mislay" a Churchill (reminds me of course of that joke about losing kit that ends with the line "so why do you think a captain always goes down with his ship ?" I seem to recall that one of the main attractions of AFVs of any kind to "tired grunts" was the warm bit at the back, even if you were not actually not top of it...and the constant boiling water for a cup of char
China - we only carried them into action - until the shooting started - the tired ones afterwards invaribaly walked out on their own - we "mislaid' a Churchill once - that was when the talk of an invoice came up - the others were battle casualties - so those were free ! Cheers
