Saw this at the museum in Hämeenlinna . It looks quite odd with a wooden body. Seems the Finns liked them like that. Found a photo of one in use.
Not sure I've ever seen an M3/5 with a wooden GS body.* I like. *If I have, and have posted fulsomely about it here; I claim being old/broken as my excuse.
If that's an M3/5 then how did the Finns acquire them? Captured Russian lend-lease vehicles? Postwar purchase?
https://picryl.com/media/yhteissisu-white-m2-half-track-testing-2-4133a4 https://picryl.com/media/yhteissisu-white-m2-half-track-testing-5fd93e "Yhteissisu" - what a name....
Hello, not my cup of tea, but some general info. The Finnish State ordered 466 White M2A1s half-tracks from US Army surplus stores in 1948, 215 of these ended up to the Finnish Army, they were used as gun tractors. All lost their armoured troop compartment. Of others, IIRC some were used by fire brigades and some by forest industry. PS Checked from one article of Esa Muikku, one of the top AFV specialists in Finland, he writes that the purchased half-tracks were MAINLY M2A1s.
The display board at museum said M2A1. I didn't take a seperate photo of that. Edit. Crop of photo to show info board.
'De-militarizing' by removing armour was one of the post-2WW conditions for selling/transferring wartime stock and returned Lend-Lease equipment. The US had surplus stocks in parts of the world they didn't need them however in light of the early Cold-War were keen to control access. This looks like a perfect compromise.
