M8 Greyhound
1943 armored car series by Ford
The M8 light armored car is a 6×6 armored car produced by the Ford Motor Company during World War II. It was used from 1943 by United States and British forces in Europe and the Pacific until the end of the war. The vehicle was widely exported and as of 2024 still remained in service with some countries.
In British service, the M8 was known as the "Greyhound," a service name seldom, if ever, used by the US. The British Army found it too lightly armored, particularly the hull floor, which anti-tank mines could easily penetrate (the crews' solution was lining the floor of the crew compartment with sandbags). Nevertheless, it was produced in large numbers. The M8 Greyhound's excellent road mobility made it a great supportive element in the advancing American and British armored columns. It was marginal cross country, especially in mud.
Development and production history
In July 1941, the U.S. Army Ordnance Department initiated the development of a new fast tank destroyer to replace the M6 37 mm gun motor carriage, which was essentially a ¾-ton truck with a 37 mm gun installed in the rear bed. The requirement was for a 6×4 wheeled vehicle armed with a 37 mm gun, a coaxial machine gun mounted in a turret, and a machine gun in the front hull. Its glacis armor was supposed to withstand fire from a .50 in (12.7 mm) machine gun and side armor from a .30 in (7.62 mm) machine gun. Prototypes were submitted by Studebaker (designated T21), Ford (T22) and Chrysler (T23), all of them quite similar in design and appearance.
The public source identifies “M8 Greyhound” as 1943 armored car series by Ford. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Greyhound, armored and series.
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This entry incorporates text from “M8 Greyhound” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.