- Yes
- Maybe
- No
History.
The Universal Carrier were tankettes often used as troop/artillery transport vehicles of British origin and derived from the 1927 Carden Lyod. In 1934 the first prototype was born, and two years later the first examples took service the British Commonwealth armed forces. With the beginning of the Second World War, the vehicles were widely used by British forces, but following the German invasion of the Soviet Union the two sides (until then somewhat at odds) decided to put aside their differences against the common enemy: thus the British in the second half of 1941 set off Antarctic convoys with military supplies for the Soviets, who were short of vehicles and weapons after the invasion, in order to refill the holes in their production. Among the millions of tons of material sent appear more than a thousand British- and Canadian-made Universal Carriers, which began to flow between Soviet lines already with the first convoys and were immediately used as reconnaissance and troop transport vehicles. The vehicles remained in use by the Soviets for a long time, and there is a documented case in which one such vehicle, in use by the 4th Armored Guards Corps “Kantemirovka”, which was modified at some unspecified time between 1944 and April 1945 in Ukraine by its crew. The vehicle’s armament was upgraded with the addition of an indigenous heavy machine gun, and it appears that the vehicle was also used in a firefight (or training). Unfortunately, the end of the vehicle and its crew is not known, but the vehicle was probably returned to the British at the end of the war or was hidden/destroyed so that it would not have to be returned to the builders.
Armaments and propulsion.
The vehicle was armed with a 12.7-mm Degtyaryova-Shpagina Krupnokaliberny DShK 1938 machine gun placed in a 360-degree rotating drum and with a 50-round belt magazine. The amount of ammunition stowed is unknown, and it is not known whether the vehicle had any other armament.
In terms of motorization, the vehicle was powered by an 85-hp petroleum-powered Ford V8 engine, which could propel the vehicle up to a top speed of 46 km/h.
Specifications.
Spoiler
Crew: 3-4
Mass: 4.2 tons
Length: 3.66 m
Width: 2.06 m
Height: >1.57 m
Engine: 85-hp petroleum-powered Ford V8
Maximum speed: 46 km/h
Armament: 1x Degtyaryova-Shpagina Krupnokaliberny DShK 1938
Armor: 10-0 mm
Pictures and drawnings.
Sources.
Spoiler
Universal Carrier - Wikipedia
САУ на базе английского БТР - Тягача "Universal Carrier" - Альтернативная История
Lend-Lease - Wikipedia
New: Bolt Action Soviet Carrier! - Warlord Games
Engines of the Red Army in WW2
USSR Carriers - Nevington War Museum
Universal Carrier — Википедия
4-й гвардейский танковый корпус — Википедия
DShK - Wikipedia