Stirling's SAS used their jeeps primarily as long-distance personnel carriers initially, utilizing the grenade-sized *Lewis bomb* they developed [both explosive AND thermite incendiary] to destroy multiples of German aircraft on the ground at their airfields. When the Germans were forced to staff their rear-area airfields with ground defence forces, they followed up those stealth raids with brute force, smashing through gates with their jeeps using multiple-mount Vickers .303 MGs taken from obsolete bomber turrets, with a few scrounged .50 aircraft guns scrounged here and there. But the multiple Vickers *K-guns* were their real tools.
The raiding unit that made best use of the jeep as weapon as much as transport was the lesser-known raiders of *Popski's Private Army,* also operating in the British Eighth Army advance areas, both as raiders and intelligence-gatherers. Indeed, General Sir Bernard Montgomery described the unit of less than a hundred men as *the most effective intelligence-gathering unit of the war....*
PPA used the jeep, usually with a .50 and .30 Browning, sometimes with a British Bren or captured paired German MG34s or 42s facing rearward as *getaway guns,* though Italian weapons, a former Messerschmitt aircraft 20mm autocannon and even a flamethrower were among the hardware adapted to their jeeps. Occasionally encountering a German or Italian armoured car or light tank at intersecting route roadblocks, American bazookas were one answer, but the .50 Brownings were said to be quite capable as well, and more certain at night-though the mad Irishman with the flamethrower must have gotten their attention.
Popski's personal jeep, it should be noted, mounted a pair of .50 Brownings, and they were the M2 heavy barreled model, not the lighter barrel aircraft guns that couldn't stand up to sustained bursts in ground fire use.
After the fighting in the Western Desert was concluded, Popski's band relocated operations to Italy, where they worked their way behind the German lines again, further assisting both the British forces and Pattons with route teconnaisance and expectations as to German resistance in the villages and towns they were entering. And so PPA continued, all the way to Venice, thence on to Vienna, where they met up with occupying Russian forces, and things took an interesting turn of events- but though the Soviet forces may have trifled with some Brits, they found that the Gurkhas and PPA were a bad choice for such games.
