I came across this interesting tidbit of history recently. In 1987 the African nation of Chad (not to be confused with its arch-nemesis, the neighboring country if Todd) got into a shooting war with its neighbor to the North, Libya.
It seemed that none other than Whacky Qaddafi thought that the border region between the two countries, with its wealth of uranium, should belong to him. Chad thought otherwise and asked their old colonial overlords in France for some help. Part of the help they got was a fleet of 400 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks.
These trucks were put to stunning effect against the Libyan T-72 tanks. The tanks had a max speed of about 30 MPH and a main gun that took a crew to operate. The trucks had whatever a welder could bolt onto the bed or just some dude with an RPG. Libyan losses at the conclusion of hostilities were nearly 10:1, the credit belonging entirely to men with brass balls, imagination, and a low-tech solution to a madman wanting to invade their homeland and steal what was theirs. Read on:
It seemed that none other than Whacky Qaddafi thought that the border region between the two countries, with its wealth of uranium, should belong to him. Chad thought otherwise and asked their old colonial overlords in France for some help. Part of the help they got was a fleet of 400 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks.
These trucks were put to stunning effect against the Libyan T-72 tanks. The tanks had a max speed of about 30 MPH and a main gun that took a crew to operate. The trucks had whatever a welder could bolt onto the bed or just some dude with an RPG. Libyan losses at the conclusion of hostilities were nearly 10:1, the credit belonging entirely to men with brass balls, imagination, and a low-tech solution to a madman wanting to invade their homeland and steal what was theirs. Read on:
