'Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine 1936' [‎57r] (118/294)

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strengthened "by means of additional cross-members and channel-bars be
tween the floor of the lorry and the frame of the chassis, and ^-inch armour
plating was fixed to the sides and front and reinforced in some cases
by protective mattresses. The driver's seat and the lower part of the
windscreen were also armoured. Guns were fitted to the floors of the
lorries on their original pedestal mountings and the shields were re
tained. Five pom-pom lorries were employed with accompanying search
light vehicles, the combined crew of each unit consisting of a naval
officer and seven ratings, while the drivers were specially picked Jews
who turned out to be exceptionally good. Crews were found at first by
" Durban 1 1 , "Arethusa ", "Sussex " ( 2 ), and " Cyclops ", but later were all
taken over by " Valiant " on the departure of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron.
The single 3-pr. lorry was manned in turn by the Haifa Heavy Battery R.A.,
H.M. S. "Durban " , " Sussex " and "Valiant ",
A method of mounting the mortar in a 15-cwt. truck is shov/n in
Appendix X, and this gave steady and accurate fire from the vehicle.
The possible traverse inside the truck was considerably restricted owing
to the fixed position of the bipod, and sometimes the truck had to be
manoeuvred in order to bring fire to bear in the required direction.
This could however be reduced to a minimum by placing the mortar truck
some five or six hundred yards behind the head of a column with a rifle
escort in a separate truck: with this arrangement the mortar was usually
in a position to fire to the front and flanks immediately on encountering
opposition without any need of manoeuvring the vehicle.
Some examples of gun lorries are shown in Photographs Nos. 14 to 16.
TACTICAL RAILWAY VEHICLES
At the start of the rebellion there were no armed or armoured vehicles
available for tactical use on the railv/ay, and a number of these had to
be improvised. They are described in detail in Appendix XI and illus
trated in photographs Nos. 17, and 37 to 41. The original detachment
of Royal Horse Artillery brought with them from Egypt 12 sets of motor
trolley units. These consisted of old "T" model Ford chassis mounted
on railv/ay wheels and set in pairs back-to-back to avoid long runs in re
verse. They carried two Lev/is guns to a unit and v/ere unarmoured. By
the middle of June all but five had been put out of action either by
breakdowns, derailments or damage from percussion bombs, and a little
later only one unit still remained intact. Two replace tnem two new
types of trolley were introduced. Twelve rord v'8. cars v/ere convex ^ed
in the Egyptian State Railv/ays workshops into single light unarmoured
"pilot" trolleys for the daylight piloting of passenger brains, while
twelve V8. commercial lorries were converted by the Palestine Railv/ays
into six armoured "back-to-back" units. Unfortunately it was not pos
sible to adapt the Fords to run on the narrow gauge Hedjaz railway, and
here use was made of three small Drevry trolleys normally used f 01 line
inspection purposes. They v/ere unarmoured one-piece vehicles, peorol
driven and with gear arrangements v/hich enabled them oc ^un ecualDy ^ we
in either direction. During the interval while the new Ford chassis
v/ere awaited improvised engine-and-armoured-truck patrols v/ere irm i u e
to give some form of protection from close-range rifle flro f whic „ was
specially intense on the Jerusalem-Lydda line where tne railway ran or
a long v/ay through deep gorges. On the steep climb up to Jeru^a em,
the grades and curves were too much for the armoured tiolleys, an 1
was inadvisable to run pilot trolleys which had no overhead cover.
Improvised armoured fighting trucks v/ere therefore attached to pa^oenger
trains in this section.
In addition to the railway vehicles described in Appendix XI two
armoured trains were also fitted out and manned by naval personne •
They suffered from the usual drawbacks of armoured trains, an Ju0r
it was soon found that the opposition encountered was never enoug o