A Canadian-built Ram tank at A33 Canadian Armoured Corps Training Establishment, Camp Borden, Ont., in July 1943.[LAC]
Hikers in England’s Peak District discovered a long-abandoned relic on a former gunnery range in 2020. The rusting husk appeared to be a military vehicle, likely a tank devoid of its turret. Neither British nor U.S. in make, the walkers had instead stumbled upon a distinctly Canadian creation from the Second World War: a Ram Mark II tank.
Some 1,949 of these cruiser tanks were built in the wake of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuations, when the British had to abandon a mass of heavy equipment on French beaches. The U.K. needed to replenish its own supply of vehicles, leaving few to spare for Canada. This, alongside other factors, left the Dominion needing to take matters into its own hands, as quickly as possible, back at home.
“It’s never easy to design and manufacture a tank at the best
of times, not least your first one.”
“It’s never easy to design and manufacture a tank at the best of times, not least your first one,” noted Stuart Wheeler, historian at The Tank Museum in the U.K., in an email. “To go from concept to production in 15 months is testimony to the ingenuity and industry of Canada’s government and people.”
Adapted from the U.S. M3 tank chassis, neither the Ram Mark I nor II engaged in conventional combat, but rather “fulfilled a training need and in the Ram Kangaroo [variant where the turret was removed],” wrote Wheeler, “it proved itself as an armoured troop carrier par excellence.”
The Kangaroo was one of many adaptions, along with the Sexton self-propelled 25-pounder artillery vehicle, that displayed success in the field. Arguably, however, it was in its ferrying form that the Ram most excelled. In providing protection and mobility as an armoured troop carrier, concluded Wheeler, “infantry [could] keep up with tanks in the armoured advances from Normandy and over the Rhine to victory.”
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