[Iris7]

New Guinea in 1942, the north coast - "Cape Endaiadere, Buna, Gona and Sanananda" - were very hard. The local National Guard lads here in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula were made into an Army division, the 32nd Infantry, and got into it early. First US Army division to see combat, as I recall.

No artillery, no tanks, no motorized transport, just your feet and a rifle. Food was bad and starvation rations besides. I met some of those guys, all gone now. Pretty tough bunch.

The "Honey" was very popular with British crews in the desert in 1941. Fast and fun to drive in the peacetime way, and with an adequate gun and fair to OK armor for the day.

Looked at one owned by a collector. Amazingly small. He drove it over a scrapped car, and had to be careful not to turn the thing over. The car hardly crushed at all, about 50%. Armor seemed to be just over an inch frontally. The Russian 14.5 mm anti-tank rifles (an actual shoulder fired weapon, carried with ammunition by one man, and used by about one man in eight) would have made swiss cheese out of a Stuart. They made swiss cheese out of a bunch of PanzerKampfWagen IIIs too.

Stuarts are still soldering on in Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Haiti also. This is in accordance with my Jane's 1983.

[GATOR NAVY]

Looked at one owned by a collector. Amazingly small.

At 6'4" I would not have been a Stuart driver.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Iris7.

A Good book on the Stuart in British use in North Africa is "Brazen Chariots". I've read that the early Stuart had a bad habit of throwing tracks.

New Guinea was some of the worst terrain to have to fight through and doing it on a shoestring supply line made it even worse.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning Iris7.