Lee AA Half-Track

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*"Now that's a true American lightshow!"*

- Lee gun operator downing a Century Bomber, unaware of the irony.

## Tactical Analysis

* **Dang Kids and Them Flying Machines!** Though it dates back to WWII, the Lee is still quite good at its job, which is to shoot down aircraft. It can also be used against infantry with decent results, though it shouldn't be expected to fare well against much else. Thanks to stolen radar scramblers, the Lee is also cloaked while not moving or shooting.

* **Get Off My Lawn!** The Lee is also armed with another weapon; balloon mines. These mines can provide a highly visible obstacle to aircraft, leading them into traps or simply serving to blow them up.

* **Ow, My Back!** While versatile, the Lee's guns are weaker than the advanced AA platforms fielded by other factions and are ineffective against heavy air. As a result, attempting to ambush a Mesofortress is usually a very bad idea (unless there are a lot of Lees).

* **Take That, You Whippersnappers**: Some Lees have managed to get their hands on incendiary ammunition, which has a tendency to set their targets on fire, at least until the targets manage to put the fires out.

## Background

One of the most numerous and under-appreciated vehicles of the Second World War was the Whippet half-track, a rugged and dependable half-track originally produced in Germany for their own army to get around post-war armour restriction, but swiftly licensed to the rest of the Allied powers and manufactured worldwide. Because of the treaty restrictions on Germany, when the nation remilitarized in the late 1930s it took full advantage of whatever loopholes it could (as well as outright ignored certain restrictions either secretly, or essentially daring the Entente to do something about it). Though the treaty placed harsh limits on manpower and outright banned tanks, there were no provisions regarding light combat vehicles or armoured cars, weapons that had proved mostly useless during the First World War. Germany thus produced these machines with abandon, using whatever unusual configuration of locomotive systems struck their fancy to bypass the ban on caterpillar tracks. After experimentation with wheels, air cushions, and even early walkers, the German government officially backed half-tracked designs. In addition to the advantages in power and all-terrain capability the half-track held, the vehicle could be driven by anyone with knowledge of the operation of automobiles, cutting down training time, and allowed the Germans to build up the industry related to tank engine, suspension, and track production. In the event of war, conscripts with minimal training could drive the half-tracks, while factories could easily be switched to manufacture the new panzers being designed in secret.

 File:LeeAttack.jpg
The Germans developed a great many half-tracked designs prior to the war; by 1945, nearly every vehicle the Wehrmacht officially possessed was some form of tracked hybrid, including motorcycle-like designs, staff cars, and even a bulldozer. Of these many, varied designs, by far and away the most common was the Sd.Kfz. 500 series, which was something between a truck and an armoured car. Endlessly flexible, the machine could be used in any role one could think of, armed with any weapon that would fit on the chassis, and operated with ease. Like with their Kar 98 rifle, the Germans stockpiled a massive number of the vehicles, far more than their tiny army could hope to operate; thus, if war broke out, they could field them as fast as they expanded their ground forces. The huge number of these vehicles meant that for the first years of the war, they were omnipresent on the front; the German government gave them away by the thousands to any infantry force in need of mechanization, meaning that soon every nation in the young Alliance was well versed in their use. Soon, other countries were manufacturing them, under the "Whippet" name based on a nickname given to it by Kaiser Louis Ferdinand von Hohenzollern himself, simply due to the familiarity and good reputation they had.

The Whippet was a tremendously versatile chassis, and variants served as troop carriers, anti-aircraft vehicles, artillery support, direct fire support, ambulances, engineering vehicles, powerful towing machines, and much, much more. After the war, the Whippet was retired from mainline Allied military service in favour of more specialized vehicles like the Riptide and Multigunner designs, but the dependable half-tracks continue to serve in the Allied Reserves across the world, mostly in non-combat roles.

The United States, on the other hand, mothballed most of its Whippet fleet and stored them in the Boneyard, favouring its home grown Ranger design instead. As a result, most of the Whippets interred in the Boneyard were the anti aircraft variant, one of the few Whippet designs the Americans admitted was superior to the attempt at a similar Ranger design. Of course, after the Third World War, it only meant that the Boneyard was a one stop shop for Continentals looking for mechanised and armoured equipment. The rebels rebranded the German machines **Lee Half-Tracks**, and stole them in great numbers in preparation for dealing with the Allies' feared air power.

The Lees aren't quite the same as the Whippets used during the Second World War, however. Whippet crews had complained of the tracks' hard and uncomfortable seats from the opening days of the war, and the first modification the rebels made was to replace the seats with recliner chairs donated by local furniture stores and bolt them to the floor. The second modification was to install sophisticated electronic countermeasure equipment smuggled out of various Sprawls by Ayn Rand's Objectivist Coalition. Developed in the Sprawls to make gang vehicles invisible to Syndicate eyes in the skies above, the *"scramblers"*, as the less technologically savvy rebels have taken to calling them, proved just as useful for combating Allied air power. Finally, the Continentals have also taken to using Lees as platforms for deploying so called balloon mines--devices which consist of a high explosive bomb designed for maximum fragmentation, a crude proximity detector, and a literal balloon. Generally, these are obvious enough for pilots to spot and avoid them, so the Continentals have taken to using them with other anti-air weapons as well.

Today, Allied airmen may scoff at the idea that relics from the Second World War could possibly be a threat to the famed Allied air squadrons of today, but the steady rise in aircraft losses over the United States is its own testament to the skill and determination of Lee crews.

## Global Upgrade

**Health**: The Lee lengthens and is covered in barbed wire.

**Power**: Ammo belts are attached to each gun.

**Speed**: Exhaust pipes pokes out of the side and tracks are lengthen.

**Rate of Fire**: Gains two more pairs of autocannons, and ammo boxes are mounted at the back.

**Armour**: A roll cage surrounds the Lee.

**Vision**: Two Spectrum rangefinders are mounted on top of Autocannons.

## Behind the Scenes

This unit is most likely based on the German Opel Blitz variant, the sdKfz 4.