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Wednesday 29 May 2013

Who makes an armoured truck like this?

The Swedish army had, what they called, an armoured car. In reality it was more an truck with some armour. They used both Volvo and Chevrolet trucks as a base. They put on some armour and machine guns and they called it pbil m/31. This made is slow, its top speed was 60 km/h and it could only drive on roads.

They were built from 1931 to 1940. Because of this and that they were built on different trucks they were not all identical. The armament was two m/14-29 machine guns or one 37mm canon and a machine gun. The trucks were painted steel-grey. They were never many of them, from 1931 to 1937 12 were delivered and a further 7 until the start of ww2. The machine guns were later up-graded to the m/36.

The armoured trucks were given to the cavalry. There were three trucks in each platoon. In each platoon one had a canon and the others machine guns.
pbil m/31 with machine guns


pbil m/31, some with machine guns, some with 37mm guns


Later they were re-armed and got a nice paint job. But that is a different story.

6 comments:

  1. Greate post Björn!!!

    Didn't know thy had them, a must, Will you learn us how to building one?

    Best regards Michael

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  2. What an interesting vehicle.I too look forward to hearing how to create one in 28mm scale...

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  3. The trucks were pretty funny. The armour was made as a kit. So when a truck broke down they just toke off the armour and put it on another truck.

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  4. I would suggest that a simple conversion or modification to an existing diecast would work.

    The metal clad body could be built with plastic card armour over a lego block blank.

    Tony

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  5. I suppose you are right. I'm just very bad at conversions.

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  6. By the way:
    The shields that can be seen on the sides were from the beginning trench shields. They were supposed to give riflemen protection while they shoot from one trench toward the other. But when the idea of trench warfare was discarded the shields stored with no use. So when the armoured car was developed someone thought it was a good idea to use the shields to give four 4 riflemen protection while firing.

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