What IS a Hispano Suiza MC-36, anyway?

[Vermis]

Today I've been casting an eye over Minairon's snazzy MC-36, but I'm having trouble finding much info about the real article, online. Being based on the same chassis as trucks and buses, I guess it has some capacity as an APC or IFV, but was that it's role? Or was it all about the turret?

[Etranger]

Lluis from Minarons will no doubt pop up at some point. It was a 'tizano' or armoured car, although the armour can't have been very thick. Although potentially it could have been used as a troop carrier, I've never seen any evidence of such use. There are some photos here  http://vehiculosblindadosdelaguerracivil.blogspot.com.au/

I must finish mine off!

[Arlequín]

As far as I know the 'MC-36' was a competing design to the Bilbao armoured car for the Assault Guards, built by the La Sociedad Comercial de Hierros on a commecial H-S T-69 truck chassis, but was not selected due to the cost.

Despite the heavy emphasis on Soviet, Italian and German help to the respective sides during the SCW, they did not send as many tanks as people might think and those they sent had previously been in use by their former owners. Armour of any type was in short supply and armoured cars even more so. The Republicans had small numbers of the Soviet-supplied BA-3/6 'gun' armoured car from October '36, the Nationalists had nothing comparable.

Unserviceable T-26 tanks usually had little wrong with their turrets (the Nationalists only put about half of those they captured back into use, the rest they used as spares), so there were captured tanks with good turrets on chassis that would never run again.

I assume someone had a brainstorm about re-using the turrets to replace the MG cupola on the 'MC-36' and Olé!

The actual total numbers are hard to determine. Numbers of between 5 and 15 (I'm going with the five that have been identified) are offered here and there for the original run of vehicles, which were deployed in the Madrid area by the Republicans. How many of these were captured and subsequently converted is therefore less than 5-15.

A captured MG-armed one is believed to have operated with Asensio's Column on the Madrid Front in '36.

Certainly a T-26 mod was used as the command vehicle of the armoured car group of the 'Army of the South', which otherwise had the UNL-35.

... and that's all I know.  

[carlos marighela]

A couple of years ago I picked up a fascinating book at a second hand store that chronicles all the captured Republican arms displayed by the victorious Nationalists at the end of the war. Twas insanely cheap so I thought 'why not?'.

It's a kind of illustrated catalogue of the 1939 exhibition. I'll try and find it and see if it has anything to say on the subject.