The Laffly S20 TL (
French: TL - tracteur, chassis long) was a 6x6 truck developed by French vehicle manufacturer
Laffly in 1935. It was built to serve as a troop carrier for the
dragoon
Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat wi ...
regiment of
Cavalry's Light Mechanised Division (DLM). The first 140 units were delivered to the DLM in 1937.
The S20 could carry up to ten riflemen and two
light machine guns, a ten-man --
heavy machine gun
A heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable (carried by one person) and require mounting onto a weapons platform to be operably stable or ...
crew, a seven-man 81mm
mortar crew, a seven-man 60mm mortar crew, or an eight-man 25mm
anti-tank gun
An anti-tank gun is a form of artillery designed to destroy tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, normally from a static defensive position. The development of specialized anti-tank munitions and anti-tank guns was prompted by the appearance ...
crew.
Anti-tank usage
The anti-tank crew would typically use a 25mm
Hotchkiss SA-L 34 L/72 anti-tank gun. The gun proved too fragile for towing, but could be mounted on the truck in a forward or backward position, with the windshield needing to be lowered when the gun was facing forward. Around 40 special S20s were produced with a split windshield to allow for the driver to keep his windshield up while the other section was lowered for the gun to protrude out the front. These 40 units would be delivered during the period of the
Phoney War
The Phoney War (; ; ) was an eight-month period at the outset of World War II during which there were virtually no Allied military land operations on the Western Front from roughly September 1939 to May 1940. World War II began on 3 Septembe ...
.
Assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha
The Laffly S20 is notably the vehicle that
Ottoman Grand Vizier
Mahmud Shevket Pasha was riding in when he was assassinated. As Shevket's car stopped in
Beyazit Square for roadside repairs, at least five gunmen fired ten shots from another vehice, killing him. The car, Shevket's uniform, and other relics of the event are on display at the
Istanbul Military Museum.
[{{Cite book , last=Beckett , first=Ian F. W. , url=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_the_First_World_War.html?id=BwdMgpDdH8QC , title=The Making of the First World War , publisher=Yale University Press , others= , year=2012 , isbn=978-0-300-16202-8 , location=New Haven, Connecticut, USA , page=31 , access-date=2025-03-20 , archive-url=https://archive.org/details/makingoffirstwor0000beck/page/30/mode/2up?q=%22Laffly+S20%22 , archive-date=2020-09-26]
References
Military trucks of France
World War II vehicles of France
Military of France
Military vehicles introduced in the 1930s