On this page: Heavy Section / Royal Artillery Section

The responsibilities of Heavy Section were the transport of large amounts of supplies from Cairo to outlying base camps and the stocking of supply dumps in the middle of the desert to effectively enlarge the patrols' range. The Section's achievements are quite astonishing: after relatively short training periods, drivers routinely crossed terrain that only a few years before had been considered impassable to all but the lightest vehicles in huge 6- to 10-ton trucks. The Section's overall capacity increased from originally 40 tons to well over 100 tons at the end of the African campaign, highlighting the importance of carrying supplies to the often-changing LRDG camp locations.
As the available literature almost exclusively focusses on patrol cars, detailed information on and images of vehicles used by Heavy Section are hard to come by.

• Mack NR4
• Ford Marmon Herrington 6to
• White 10to
• Mack NR9
• Ford F60 CMP (various cab styles and wheelbases)
• Lancia 3RO 6to (captured)

The Ford F60 with the earlier No.12 cab, a small but reliable vehicle

A number of No.13 cab Ford CMPs of various wheelbases at Bisharra. The vehicle to the left might be a Mack truck.

This mysterious Ford F60 is supposed to be on display somewhere in Libya and might be an ex-LRDG vehicle. Feel free to tell me more about it if you have any information.

The Marmon Herrington 6-tonner	A Marmon Herrington bogged down in soft sand. Despite the vehicle's weight, its six-wheel drive made it comparatively easy to get it going again.
A White 10-tonner, the heaviest vehicle ever used by LRDG	Two captured Italian Lancia trucks. These were shortly used by Heavy Section after being captured at Jalo, but most of them were abandoned or destroyed when LRDG had to move out of Jalo before the German's advance.

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• Porteed guns - Upon the Section's inception, it was first equipped with a 4.5in Howitzer. This gun was porteed on a Mack NR4, but the combination proved way too heavy to be of any use. The howitzer was consequently handed over to Leclerc's Free French Army, who presumably put it to better use, and the experiments continued with a 25pounder. It was this gun that was carried to Gtafia and caused so much trouble on the way.

A 25pounder porteed on a White truck. Actually, this image does not show an LRDG vehicle (unfortunately, there are no images of the original LRDG vehicles with porteed guns), but it gives a good impression of how the LRDG artillery truck might have looked like. Note: I have recently been informed that the truck in this picture might indeed be an LRDG vehicle; I hope to find out more about that soon.



• M3 Stuart  - The story of LRDG's tank is something of a mystery - nothing except for the existence of the tank is known for certain. From the brief references found in several LRDG texts, it seems that LRDG's tank was an M3 Stuart, but this is far from certain since no actual photos of the tank exist. From the available sources, it also remains unclear if the tank was actually used in RA's only combat mission or if the idea was given up before taking off on that mission. Like the gun mentioned above, the tank also seems to have ended up with the Free French after LRDG gave up on the idea.
  It is also unknown if the tank was supposed to be porteed to its location by a Heavy Section truck (quite a daring idea, carrying a 13ton tank on a 10ton lorry over sand dunes) or if the tank was supposed to be driven to its destination on its own tracks (which would have required a truckload of fuel).

M3 Stuart
Armament: 1 37mm M5 gun, 2 7.62mm machine guns (plus external A/A machine gun)
Max. Armor: 44mm
Max. Speed: 60km/h (on roads)
Weight: 13t
Engine: 7cyl. Continental 250hp
Range: about 120km

For further information, including very detailed descriptions of all the interior workings of the Stuart, visit AFV Interiors' pages on the M3 Stuart.

The M3 Stuart

Interior details

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