Odd units you love and hate
 

There are plenty of weird and wonderful pieces of kit that various OOB's have.

For me my fave odd stuff is the Pookie MRAP and the M50 Ontos. The Pookie is just crazy looking and has that improvised feeling the Rhodesian stuff has especially the COIN aircraft converted from civvy planes.

The Ontos could be awesome on paper but it's ammo supply is so limited it's a love hate thing. The same could be said of the M551 Sheridan it has that half and half role that makes it useful sometimes.. Definitely belongs in the what were they thinking camp.

Re: Odd units you love and hate
 

The Pookie WAS improvised. It was a Volkswagen Kombi with most of the body removed, used Formula One racing tyres and commercial metal detectors.

troopie

Re: Odd units you love and hate
 

The M50 Ontos was intended as a "shoot 'n scoot" anti-tank weapon; small, fast.
The 106mm reconciles was a decent AT weapon for it's day but just wasn't man portable and putting them on jeeps had limitations as they were unarmored. Of course if you missed or had multiple tanks attacking it suffered the same problems any anti-tank gun does, in spades due to the back blast. So multiple guns wasn't a bad idea. Why 6 vice 2 or 4 I have no idea. And the chassis was just too small to carry much 106mm ammo. they were never intended to slug it out with tanks so this wasn't seen as much of a problem.
Come Vietnam they became the terror of the VC when loaded with 6x beehive rounds. Can't see the VC hiding in the jungle? *BLAM* No more jungle.