Hillbilly Armor
Improvised vehicle armour is protective materials added to a mobile platform such as a car, truck, or tank in an irregular and extemporized fashion, using available materials. Typically, improvised armour is added in the field and it was not originally part of the design, an official up-armour kit, nor centrally planned and distributed. Improvised armour is used to protect occupants from small arms, crew-served weapons and artillery (or tank) fire, and mines. Improvised additions have included metal plate, scrap metal, sandbags, concrete, wood, and, since at least the 2000s, Kevlar. These materials vary widely in their ballistic protection. Improvised vehicle armour has appeared on the battlefield for as long as vehicles have been used in combat. In WW I, the first armoured cars were made by adding metal plating to regular vehicles. In World War II, tank crews of many armies attached spare metal tracks to the hulls and turrets of their tanks. In the Vietnam War, U.S. "gun truc ...
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Home Guard (United Kingdom)
The Home Guard (initially Local Defence Volunteers or LDV) was an armed citizen militia supporting the British Army during the Second World War. Operational from 1940 to 1944, the Home Guard had 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, such as those who were too young or too old to join the regular armed services (regular military service was restricted to those aged 18 to 41) and those in reserved occupations. Excluding those already in the armed services, the civilian police or civil defence, approximately one in five men were volunteers. Their role was to act as a secondary defence force in case of invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany. The Home Guard were to try to slow down the advance of the enemy even by a few hours to give the regular troops time to regroup. They were also to defend key communication points and factories in rear areas against possible capture by paratroops or fifth columnists. A key purpose was to maintain control of the c ...
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Shaped Charge
A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to form an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, initiating nuclear weapons, penetrating armor, or perforating wells in the oil and gas industry. A typical modern shaped charge, with a metal liner on the charge cavity, can penetrate armor steel to a depth of seven or more times the diameter of the charge (charge diameters, CD), though greater depths of 10 CD and above have been achieved. Contrary to a misconception (possibly resulting from the acronym for ''high-explosive anti-tank'', HEAT) the shaped charge EFP jet does not depend in any way on heating or melting for its effectiveness; that is, the EFP jet from a shaped charge does not melt its way through armor, as its effect is purely kinetic in nature – however the process does create significant heat and often has a significant ...
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