#aml-60

[eltee1]

A Panhard AML60 of the Irish Defense Forces at the Curragh Military Museum in County Kildare, Ireland. (July 2017)

[historyfail]

Cambodian AML-60/AML-90 Armored Cars

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure this is a historical accuracy fail, and I'm open to any comments and/or proof to solidly back it up.  Basically, the suggestion is made in many places that the Cambodians received a certain number of AML-60 and AML-90 armored cars from the French during the 1960s. 

If you go to the Stockholm International Peace Reseach Institute's (SIPRI) Arms Transfer Database and generate a trade register with Cambodia as the sole recipient and set the dates from 1950-1975 these vehicles appear.  The total number, 15, is in parenthesis, indicating that its unconfirmed.  The date the vehicles were ordered, 1963, is also in parenthesis.  However, SIPRI shows a clear date range for the delivery of these vehicles (1964-1965).  That Cambodia received these vehicles is reiterated in Albert Grandolini's Armor of the Vietnam War (2) Asian Forces. 

That Cambodia could have had these vehicles does not seem at face value to be difficult to believe.  They received a number of AMX-13 light tanks from France during the same time period.  However, I have seen no photographic evidence of these vehicles.  There are pictures in the aforementioned book by Grandolini that are captioned as such, but they are clearly either M8 or M20 armored cars, which the Cambodians also received.  Research I conducted in the US National Archives of the records of the Military Equipment Delivery Team - Cambodia (MEDTC) found no reports that made mention of them, even when all other armored vehicle types in inventory were mentioned in great detail (even the small number of M8 Howitzer Motor Carriages available, of which only one was operable circa 1974).  It seems hard for me to believe that 15 vehicles would disappear in a decade so completely as not to be mentioned at all in these reports.  The AMX-13s, acquired around the same time as the supposed AMLs, were mentioned.

Ken Conboy's 2011 FANK: A History of the Cambodian Armed Forces 1970-1975 might indeed have a clear answer to this, but I have no yet been able to pick up a copy.  Like I said, if anyone knows or has access to this book, I'd be interested to know.