When people on drugs design armored vehicles…

Hello everyone,

it’s not 1st of April yet so I think I can leave this actually serious French project here.

Panhard AML with MARS turret II

This is a Panhard AML armored car with MARS turret by Hispano Suiza. A single prototype was built in the 1980s. The vehicle itself is not very remarkable, but the turret is.

You see, despite its oscillating turret look, the gun is manually loaded. Let that sink in. If you are wondering how the fuck did that work there is a small hatch in the roof of the vehicle. For each shot, a crewmember has to pick up a shell from inside the vehicle (the rack was on the left side), remove it from rack, squeeze it through the roof hatch also on the left side, somehow squeeze himself along with it and load the shell into the automatic loading mechanism while half of his body is exposed.

In effect the vehicle could only fire when stationary and if it came under fire, the gun turned into a single shot weapon.

*sigh*

Needless to say, this design did not gain any customers.

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