I forgot where i saw this originally.  It's more stealth than outright in your face.
Palestinians rigged this dump truck with rocket tubes.  They would drive up, lift the bed, and fire away.  Then drop the bed and run like a bastard before the gunships showed up.

Wish I would have taken pics of the contractor gun trucks back in 05.

Most where set up pretty good

Just out of curiosity...

Have our forces ever tried out the "Q-ship" concept for convoy-escorting gun trucks?  The truck that looks just like every other truck in the soft-skinned convoy, but then goes all "surprise cockfag!" on attackers?

I would be stunned if it hadn't been done already, but you never know. I haven't found anything in a brief google search indicating that it has ever been tried with truck convoys.

Sometimes you want to scare the bad guys off, but sometimes you want to sucker them in and kill the fuck outta them.  

I've got an old whistler turbo deuce.  

If money was no object, I'd turn it into a reproduction gun truck.

Link to a story about Vietnam Gun Trucks in an ambush 9 June 1969

http://www.vietnam-guntrucks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/UPDATE-2-Apr.-2014-AMBUSH-UPDATED-BY-JOHN-DODD-9-Jun-69-.pdf

I need to find a gal like that.

 

Kool looking trucks,kicked a lot of ass.

Vietnam would win if it wasn't for M134. Vietnam trucks better style and art. ETA: Some Vietnam trucks had miniguns.

Awesome to see some different ones not posted on SteelSoldiers.com

Almost makes me want to make my M35A2 into one.  

Makes me want to slap AR500 plate on the sides of my dads M35A3.

You posted a picture of one on 1st page.  Check out the gun on Pandemonium - at left in picture below.











Here's a pretty good pic of Little Respect - note the minigun.










 

 

Mmmmmmmm, quad 50s.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

It was.  Probably with an ACAV kit on it.

Holy shit, is that an M113 body on a flatbed?  

Quick easy way to get an armored box - yank the tracks off a worn-out 113 and bolt it to the truck.  Add leaves to the springs, etc.

I love guntrucks but cant help but think that some of them were grenade traps

Lol, gun CONEX box. Not a bad idea, you could transfer it to any vehicle that can carry one.

proves that when the shtf.. 2 things happen: 1) vehicles get MORE armor and 2) vehicles get a whole metric shit ton of guns.

Awesome

It was dark on 20 February as the convoy neared Camp Vandergrift. The mountain ridge to the south came within yards of Highway 9 and a valley of tall elephant grass covered the valley to the ridge line to the north. Around midnight a mile and a half from their destination, Baird heard an explosion followed by an intense volume of small arms fire from the jungle on the ridge to his left. An RPG had struck Satan?s Lil? Angel?s gun box from the north side of the road, killing right rear gunner, SP4 Richard B. Frazier, and wounded left gunner and NCOIC, SGT Chester Israel. Small arms fire shot out the tires of the gun truck. The NVA had learned to take out the gun trucks first before they went after the rest of the trucks. Without a crew to fire back, the driver of Satan?s Lil? Angel drove his truck on rims out of the kill zone.


Baird raced ahead and passed a disabled 5-ton cargo truck in the ditch. He ordered his driver to stop so they could check on the driver. They came to a halt a hundred feet ahead of the truck. He did not want to leave the disabled truck until he was sure that its driver was safe. To do so required him to wait in the middle of the kill zone. As soon as his gunner tried to return fire, both M60s failed to fire. Evidently, he had put the gas plugs in backwards when he reassembled them. The three men only had one M79 grenade launcher and their M16s to defend against an NVA company. Baird immediately radioed the two lead gun trucks and told them to come back. The one thing that Baird could depend on was the loyalty of his gun truck to rescue him or any other truck in trouble.

Neither the crew of Uncle Meat nor King Kong had heard the gun fire behind them. The majority of the convoy had continued to Vandergrift as nothing had happened. Uncle Meat had already entered the compound and King Kong had just made the right hand turn into Vandergrift when they heard Baird?s call for help. Immediately backed up, turned around and raced as fast as their trucks would let them back to the kill zone.

Baird knew his gun truck crews and had confidence in their judgment. He also knew that too much jabber on the radio would cause confusion and tie up the radio net. He quickly and precisely informed the gun trucks of the situation. Satan?s Lil? Angel had been hit, his gun jeep and one 5-ton were still in the kill zone. The crews asked which side of the road the enemy was on and Baird informed them that he was taking small arms fire from the ridge to his south and the field of elephant grass to his north. The enemy was close enough to throw hand grenades at his vehicle. He then quit talking. He would count on their judgment as what to do.
Ten minutes of steady small arms fire had elapsed since the beginning of the ambush. By then Baird was taking fire from both sides of the road. Enemy was closing in from the elephant grass while others fired down on them from the ridge to the south. His gunner, Downer, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I see one. What do I do?” Baird turned, looked back down the road and saw an enemy soldier about 15 meters away on a berm alongside the road loading an RPG. He told his gunner to shoot him. The gunner fired his M79 grenade launcher at him. The enemy soldier was too close for the 40mm grenade to arm in flight. It struck him with enough velocity to either kill or incapacitate him, because he did not fire his rocket.

Around ten minutes after the initiation of the ambush, King Kong raced up to their convoy commander?s ¾-ton, parking right in front of it at an angle facing to the north. Uncle Meat similarly parked near Satan?s Lil? Angel. Baird was never as glad as when he saw the tracers of those .50s. There was a reassurance that everything would turn out alright. He knew his gun truck crews knew what to do. Baird called on the radio, “They?re in the ditches. They?re in the ditches.” The gunners on the Kong swung their .50s around and sprayed the ditches.

The success of an ambush depended upon surprise and extreme violence. The gun truck crews had learned to turn the fight back on the enemy as fast as they could with even more violence. This would take the psychological advantage away from the enemy forcing them to break contact. The .50s blazed away in four to six round bursts at the muzzle flashes to their left and right. The gunners poured 30-weight oil from plastic canteens to help cool the barrels and ensure the smooth function of their breaches after firing off about three to four boxes of ammunition.

An RPG hit the rear duals right and exploded in all the colors of the rainbow under left rear gunner, James Cochran, knocking him backwards on Larson who manned the right .50. Cochran then jumped back up, grabbed his .50 and went back to work. King Kong was an APC gun truck. Large chunks of hot shrapnel had come up through the aluminum floor of the hull and lodged in the top of the box right under his machinegun. One piece of shrapnel had burned a hole in the charging handle and others had left five or six holes in the barrel, but it still fired.

The one advantage to fighting at night, the gunners fired in the direction of the enemy muzzle flashes, which betrayed their positions. There was no concealment in the dark once one fired his weapon.
The tactic worked. After about ten minutes of firing, Uncle Meat and King Kong had turned the fight back on the enemy and they broke contact. During the fight, the driver of the disabled 5-ton had run to his convoy commander?s vehicle. That close to Vandergrift, Uncle Meat loaded the wounded from Satan?s Lil? Angel into their gun truck then drove off the road and backed up to Baird?s vehicle. The drive shaft had broken and the vehicle could not drive. The crew of Uncle Meat hooked up the ¾-ton to Uncle Meat, which towed it into Vandergrift. The two gun trucks that came to the rescue also received damage but could roll under their own power. After the initial volley of fire, no other casualties were taken. King Kong limped back to Vandergrift on its rims.

The sweep of the area the next day discovered four enemy dead and one wounded NVA soldier 25 meters from the road. The enemy usually made great effort to recover their dead and conceal their losses, so no one could accurately determine the total enemy losses. These were the only confirmed enemy kills by the 39th Transportation Battalion Soldiers during Lam Son 719.

holy shit thats clever.



 

Most of the modern gun trucks pictured happened iin 2004-2006 before any of those kits were really being thought of and long before the MRAPs were even being dreamed of.

When our guys first went into Iraq soft Hummers and trucks were the norm, the IED's started to change all that.

When the IED's really started to become a problem, it didn't really matter what vehicle our guys were in.  

155MM shells daisey chained together were taking out everything we had.

There is a video of an Abrams that drives over a large IED, it literally turned it inside out.

During the big push, the 523rd received a priority call for a night convoy to the border. An artillery unit was nearly out of ammunition. If they did not reach the artillery fire base by 6:00 in the morning then the unit would be out of ammunition. Fuller briefed his drivers. It was a critical convoy and they only had to take two right turns. They had to be real quiet.

The Eve of Destruction and Uncle Meat were in Fuller?s platoon. Fuller was especially fond of the gun truck crews. He liked to ride with them instead of in his 3/4-ton gun jeep, Daughter of Darkness. He felt better when he could stand up and look out. At night he would string his hammock between the two gun trucks to sleep.
The convoy started out at around 10:00 that night with nearly a hundred vehicles. Fuller rode in the Eve in the back of the convoy. After a couple of hours on the road, they reached the intersection where they were supposed to turn right and cross the bridge. The trucks behind the Eve took the wrong turn in the dark. Fuller called ahead to the convoy commander, “Six, be advise that the cargo truck behind me took a left.” The Eve raced back down the road and caught up with the lead truck. Fuller told them to turn around. The trucks turned around and Fuller called ahead to Uncle Meat to be watching for them. They reached the fire base just before first light. Sure enough the artillery unit had exhausted all its ammunition. The convoy had their replacement ammunition.


The Eve led out on the return trip. Uncle Meat closed up the rear of the convoy. Fuller heard an explosion. Uncle Meat had run over a mine and blew out its left rear duals and air tank. David Rose, the driver, climbed out of the cab to assess the damage. David was a draftee from California. No one was seriously injured but the axle was resting on the ground. They could not drive with it in that condition. The Eve came back. Fuller got out and checked the area. He saw the sandal tracks of a lone VC who had planted the mine. He did not expect more but knew they could not stay in the area long. He told the crew of Uncle Meat to blow up the truck so they enemy could not use it and abandon it. The crew felt too loyal to their gun truck to abandon it to the enemy. David Rose told his lieutenant, “Give us a minute, sir.” He had an idea. He had seen an old Western where a wheel on a wagon had broken and the axle was also resting on the ground. They used ropes and tied up the axle so it would not drag. They tried the same with Uncle Meat. They chained up the axle to the frame and hooked up the gun truck to a tow truck. They towed Uncle Meat all the way back to Vendergrift after the convoy stopped at Khe Sanh. The crew disconnected the gun box and placed it on the frame of a new truck. Uncle Meat was operational again.


Around 19 February, 2LT Baird had been sent back to Phu Bai to pick up 17 brand new 5-ton trucks. They returned after dark. The convoy doctrine at the time was to limit convoys to no more than 30 trucks with a gun truck ratio of 1:10. Uncle Meat led the convoy with King Kong in the middle and Satan?s Lil? Angel in the rear. All gun trucks had three M2 .50 caliber machineguns. The M2 .50 was the most successful design in American weapons and had seen very little change in its design since its original issue in 1919. This time Baird rode close to the rear in a ¾-ton gun beep with twin M60 machineguns. He noticed that some Transportation Corps officers preferred to ride up front. He knew that if there was trouble it would invariably occur in the rear and that is where the key decisions would be made. If an ambush split the convoy, by doctrine the trucks out of the kill zone would continue to role of to the next security check point or camp. If the convoy commander was in the lead then the commander in would be unable to make the key decisions for the rest of the convoy either trapped in the kill zone or behind. 1LT David R. Wilson was killed trying to reenter the kill zone in an unprotected jeep.

I got the trucks. Just need the guns

Which would be more acceptable?


Making a repro deuce gun truck in the style of a historical one, but with different art/name?

Making a repro deuce gun truck copy of a historical one, in tribute?  Same name, same art?

and

We called them "Hate Trucks" when I was in.  Pretty much a rolling armory filled with pissed off guys fueled on monsters, jolt gum, rip fuel, and dip.

I love the ingenuity of people on the ground. No fancy engineering or contracts with Lockheed rape you in the ass Martin. Just get some sandbags, scrap steel, a welder from mech shop, stuff you can scavenge off blown up vehicles or enemy vehicles and tack that shit on into carnage machines of death.

+1

Here's a nice video from Vietnam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H7U71KZEJw

nice mini gun action

Here's another video of Vietnam gun trucks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7age9oapFnw

and a third video from Vietnam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wat8r3tAvJQ

So weird to run across this thread. I was literally thinking about writing about gun-trucks in the sequel to Gentle Propositions. Thanks for the motivation!

Do eeetttt

 
Seriously.

 
No spoilers but the boys are gonna build one out of a chop-top bus with a quad .50 in the back, and a 7.62mm mini-gun mounted on a swing pedestal for the passenger to fire out of the front windshield.


 

Idea.  gun truck with miniguns and 105s with beehive or canister rounds.  with claymores on a perimeter waist belt of triple thick armor to maintain directional explosions....  

M240s and M60e4 for light contact.
Minis for serious contact
105s for coordinated attacks
Radios and claymores for air support and last ditch effort to prevent being overrun.

ETA:
I found out my cousin Kenneth H. Mashlykin as Company E (recon) 1/52 of the 198th Infantry when he was killed in Quang Tin province, Sept. 24 1968 after 2 months in country.