page_title: Armoured personnel carrier
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Armoured personnel carrier / History
context_page_description: An armoured personnel carrier is a broad type of armoured, military vehicles designed to transport personnel and equipment in combat zones. They are sometimes referred to colloquially as "battle taxis" or "battle buses". Since World War I, APCs have become a very common piece of military equipment around the world.
  According to the definition in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, an APC is "an armoured combat vehicle which is designed and equipped to transport a combat infantry squad and which, as a rule, is armed with an integral or organic weapon of less than 20 millimetres calibre." Compared to infantry fighting vehicles, which are also used to carry infantry into battle, APCs have less armament and are not designed to provide direct fire support in battle.
context_section_description: The genesis of the armoured personnel carrier was on the Western Front of World War I. In the later stage of the war, Allied tanks could break through enemy lines, but the infantry following—who were needed to consolidate the gains—still faced small arms and artillery fire. Without infantry support, the tanks were isolated and more easily destroyed. In response, the British experimented with carrying machine-gun crews in the Mark V* tank, but it was found that the conditions inside the tanks rendered the men unfit for combat. Britain therefore designed the first purpose-built armoured troop transport, the Mark IX, but the war ended before it could be put to use.
  During World War II, half-tracks like the American M3 and German Sd.Kfz. 251 played a role similar to post-war APCs. British Commonwealth forces relied on the full-tracked Universal Carrier. Over the course of the war, APCs evolved from simple armoured cars with transport capacity to purpose-built vehicles. Obsolete armoured vehicles were also repurposed as APCs, such as the various "Kangaroos" converted from M7 Priest self-propelled guns and from Churchill, M3 Stuart and Ram tanks.
  During the Cold War, more specialized APCs were developed. The United States introduced a series of them, including successors to the wartime Landing Vehicle Tracked; but the most prolific was the M113 armored personnel carrier, of which more than 80,000 were produced.  Western nations have since retired most M113s, replacing them with newer APCs, many of these wheeled. The Soviet Union produced the BTR-40, BTR-152, BTR-60, BTR-70, BTR-80 in large numbers.  Czechoslovakia and Poland together developed the universal amphibious OT-64 SKOT. A cold war example of a "Kangaroo" is the heavily armoured Israeli Achzarit, converted from captured T-55s tanks.
caption: Czechoslovak and Polish OT-64 SKOT
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2019:10:09 23:54:10", "Image ExifOffset": "2242", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4428", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "12238", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}