Author: Military Collectors

M2 Half Track Car: Military Collectors History

M2 Half Track Car

Few vehicles have made as much of a difference in impacting world history like the M2 Half Track Car. The M2 halftrack vehicle was originally intended to be used for hauling artillery, but it was applied to a number of other uses by the U.S. armed forces. The M2 was deployed to North Africa, the Pacific, and Europe during World War II.

The M2 Half Track Vehicle stands at 7.4 feet tall, 7.1 feet wide, and 19.5 feet long. Weighing in at 9.9 tons, most of it from the tracks and the armor, the large steel tracks are the primary emphasized feature of this tactical vehicle. The truck is powered by a White Motorcar Company 160AX engine with 147 horsepower, with a maximum speed of only 40 miles per hour and a maximum range of 199 miles before refueling is required. 17,000 of these were produced for military use.

History of the M2 Half Track Car

The M2 Half Track vehicle is the result on a lesson learned the hard way during the First World War in Europe: hauling weapons or other loads can be a nightmare when harsh weather ruins the roads. It rains often in Western Europe and the roads were often turned completely to mud, which then made the roads completely impassable.

The Army’ Cavalry units in particular suffered when their armored scout cars would become bogged down in mud. This problem prevented a lot of weapons, supplies, and manpower from getting to where they were critically needed during the war. Uncle Sam knew he needed a vehicle that could get around no matter how rough the weather or terrain. The next generation of tactical fighting vehicle would need to have metal tracks that could roll through any terrain.

The M2 is based on a type of industrial truck used by the French army during the 1930s. It was adapted from an old M3 Scout Car by the White Motor Company in 1938, but with the rear bogie assembly from a Timken truck added to the back. The original design, the T7, was far too underpowered for the heavy duty upgrades. After going back to the drawing board, the improved model was the M2 Half Track Car. In 1940 the U.S. government made purchase of a line of M2 Half Tracks and the White, Diamond-T, and Autocar motor companies began assembly line production.

The M2 vehicle in World War II

By the time the M2 Half Track Car entered into production, the Second World War was in full swing in Europe. Great Britain was in desperate need of vehicles, weapons, and war materials and the British received thousands of the M2 under the Lend-Lease Policy. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, only a few months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Once the U.S., UK, and Soviet Union officially became allies, over 800 units of the M2 and M9 halftrack vehicles were sent to the Soviet Union. Under the Monroe Doctrine, several M2s were given to Nicaragua and Argentina in 1942.

The U.S. military used the M2 in every theater of the war. The M2 was an invaluable asset for the Allies in the North Africa campaign, since the previous models of Scout Cars and Armored Personnel Carriers would never have been able to get over the wide desert with rubber tires. The Allies extensively used the M2 in Italy and Greece before eventually deploying the M2 to northwestern Europe in the Normandy invasion.

The Red Army deployed its limited number of M2 Half Tracks during the major counter-offensive against Germany. The U.S. Marine Corps also relied on the M2 during the long island hopping campaign in the Pacific. Like the North African desert, the dirt roads of the Philippines and the thick jungle in most of the Pacific Islands would have bogged traditional vehicles down in an instant.

The M2 Half Track on the battlefield

The M2 Half Track Car proved its worth on the battlefield in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. While it was not specifically designed to be an offensive fighting vehicle, the M2 was in more than its fair share of firefights. As mentioned earlier, the maximum speed was 40 miles per hour, meaning its regular cruising speed would be between 20 and 30 miles per hour. It was by no means a fast vehicle, but it was not meant to move fast. It was meant to move forward, which was only possible because of the steel tracks.

It comes with armor plating over the doors, windows, and the entire cabin of the vehicle. The cabin is small and designed only to hold a crew of 2. It came equipped with a standard M2 Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun and 1,000 rounds of ammunition to make the enemy think twice about fighting Uncle Sam. Even in its original form with no modifications, the M2 is a fearsome fighting vehicle.

M2 Halftrack Assembly
M2 Halftrack Assembly

Military Collector Ranking

  • Collectability: ★★★☆☆
  • Rarity: ★★★★☆
  • Est Value: $45,000 – $80,000

Vehicle Specifications

  • Weight: 5,917 lb (2,684 kg) (empty)
  • Engine: Dodge T-245 78 hp (58 kW)
  • Speed: 55 mph (89 km/h)
  • Number built: 115,838

Battle Tested: M2 Variations

At nineteen feet long, with armor plates and a .50 caliber turret mounted machine gun, and rolling forward at 40 miles an hour, I would have taken a tank or a powerful rocket launcher to bring stop an M2 Half Track. Other variations made this vehicle even more powerful and effective in combat.

The M4A1 81mm Motor Mortar Carriage – The standard M2 equipped with an 81 millimeter M1 mortar. The doctrine was to fire the mortar dismounted, but the M4A1 was specially designed for the mortar to be safely fired while mounted on the back of the truck in a battlefield emergency.

The T1E1 – This variant of the M2 was fitted with a Bendix mount with two .50 caliber Browning M2 heavy machines guns, turning this vehicle into a mobile anti-aircraft gun.

While the M2 Half Track Car played a crucial role in winning the war, it was replaced by the M9 Half Track by 1945. The last M9 vehicles still in military use were donated by Argentina to Bolivia in 2009.

The History of Bankhead – 1920

Most people today find the thought of making the long journey from one side of the United States to the other by car a daunting prospect, but in an era when motorized transport was still a fairly new idea the Transcontinental Motor Convoys of 1919 and 1920 were truly epic undertakings. Not only were the vehicles involved prone to regular breakdown but the roads themselves were also often unpaved and sometimes near to impassable for great stretches. It was in fact partly to emphasize the importance of improving the nation’s highways that inspired the convoys in the first place. Other aims were to test the mobility of motorized forces over rough terrain, to demonstrate the usefulness of motor vehicles for military purposes, to test how well different vehicles performed, and to promote recruitment to the Transport Corps.

A small number of intrepid individuals – not to mention a film crew who made a record of their four-month journey in 1915 – had already completed transcontinental trips in earlier years, but the massed convoys of 1919 and 1920 were different matters altogether. Organized by the US Army’s Motor Transport Corps, the two convoys comprised “truck trains” of dozens of trucks and other vehicles, many of them surplus vehicles churned out by factories for use in World War I.

The 1919 expedition consisted of 81 such vehicles, ranging from heavy trucks and tractors to staff cars, ambulances and motorcycles. It is said there was even a light tank mounted on a flatbed trailer. The vehicles were manned by 258 enlisted men and 24 officers, all under the watchful eyes of a team of staff observation officers from the War Department whose numbers included a young Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower of the Tank Corps. The party also included engineers, machinists, mess units, a medical team, a recruiting officer and a civilian band. This small army set off from Washington, D.C. at one pm on 7 July 1919 with the aim of getting as many of the vehicles as possible to journey’s end at San Francisco, 3251 miles distant. They were to follow the planned route of the unfinished Lincoln Highway until they reached Oakland, California, from where the trucks would be ferried to San Francisco itself.

Many of the drivers had little or no training at driving motorized vehicles. “Most colored the air with expressions in starting and stopping that indicated a longer association with teams of horses than with internal combustion engines,” Eisenhower later confided. Not that the officers had much more experience themselves at keeping everything moving at a good pace. The first 46 miles took all of seven and a half hours to complete.

Progress in the early stages was reasonably good, but things got worse as the quality of the roads deteriorated the further west they got, particularly once they reached Nebraska. Vehicles broke down on dirt tracks, got stuck in mud or quicksand, or came off the road completely. On one memorable day no less than 25 trucks all skidded into a ditch. Sometimes there was no alternative but to get out and push. Water ran short while they were in the Salt Lake Deserts and had to be rationed, with each man getting just one cup to last from supper and through the night. Many men suffered injuries as a result of accidents. Dozens of the wooden bridges the convoy crossed had to be repaired after the vehicles had passed over, due to damage from the weight of the trucks.

All along the way, however, ecstatic crowds turned out to welcome these heroes as they battled with exhaustion and a host of other tribulations. To keep spirits up between stops Eisenhower and a friend staged practical jokes on the junior officers, even staging fake knife fights and a Wild West shoot-out.

By the time the convoy eventually reached its destination, six days overdue, it had logged 230 incidents on the road. Nine vehicles had dropped out along the way and 21 men had been unable to complete the trip due to injuries sustained. The whole thing had taken 62 days at an average speed of around 6 mph, which is little faster than walking, though speeds of up to 32 mph had been attained at various points.

The 1920 convoy left Washington, D.C. on 14 June 1920 for San Diego, California. It was on a slightly less ambitious scale than the first convoy, with just 50 vehicles manned by 160 enlisted men under 32 officers, and it got off to a good start, until it reached Tennessee. There, flooding created an additional hazard to those encountered by the first expedition. Having struggled through the waters of the Mississipi region, the convoy then floundered in the shifting desert sands of Arizona before finally making a triumphal entry into San Diego on 2 October, no less than 111 days after it had begun. Once there the vehicles were handed over for the use of California’s public services.

So how successful were the two convoys in meeting their goals? The Army certainly learned a lot in terms of logistics and about the strengths and weaknesses of its vehicles, though recruitment to the Transport Corps did not rise appreciably during the course of the two trips. Millions of civilians, however, came out to see the “truck trains” go by, so the ventures were big public relations successes at least.

More importantly, public attention was attracted to the push to improve the nation’s major road routes. This proved insufficient in the short run to persuade the federal government to assume responsibility for a national highway system, but in the longer run it did serve to promote a change in policy. In the 1950s it was Eisenhower, now President, who was to draw on his experiences in the 1919 convoy to promote the building of a modern system of interstate highways, with the federal government meeting 90 per cent of the cost.