Sorry for the break, had a tough couple of days. So, what else do we have here… a couple of interesting Stuart photos. This is a M3A1 in Burma. The photo wouldn’t be that interesting – after all, the Stuarts were used in that theater of war well until 1945. What makes it interesting is the fact that the photo is apparently from 1965. In a way it’s not that uncommon – in South America, Shermans and even Stuarts survived in service well until the 1960s – after all, why buy latest tech when your neighbor has a bunch of obsolete Stuarts and Shermans as well?

This is a rare variant of the Stuart called M3A1 Satan. The photo was taken in 1944 on the island of Tinian. M3/M3A1 Satan is a self-propelled flamethrower. The main gun was replaced in the field by a Ronson flamethrower by the USMC. Around two dozen tanks were converted like that and survived until 1945.

This is a post-war Chinese conversion of the Stuart. The United States supplied a number of Stuarts along with other surplus vehicles to the Chinese nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War. In this case, the turret was cut off and replaced by a low superstructure with some sort of heavy machinegun or light anti-tank gun. Such field conversions weren’t rare and the Chinese Civil War spawned a large number of rather strange vehicles (such as the American LVT with a 57mm AT gun).