M113 armored personnel carrier

The M113 is a fully tracked armored personnel carrier developed and built by the FMC Corporation and adopted by the United States Army in 1960. It was the first aluminium hulled combat vehicle to go into mass production, light enough to be carried by air and moderately amphibious while still stopping small arms fire. Early vehicles used a gasoline engine, and a diesel version, the M113A1, soon replaced it. The carrier saw heavy use in the Vietnam War, where crews fitted gun shields after early losses, and its hull became the basis of a very large family of ambulances, mortar carriers, command posts and engineer vehicles. Production ended in 2007 after an estimated eighty thousand vehicles in the family, used by more than fifty countries.