The diminutive Vespa scooter was an unlikely tank destroyer but it proved to be surprisingly effective
‘The Vespa TAP could carry two people and pull a small one- wheeled trailer’
A vintage ice cream or sherbet-coloured Italian Vespa scooter might be the last image which comes to mind when contemplating classic military vehicles. But so successful, reliable and durable did the Vespa prove to be, that the maker designed a military model which had a beefed-up frame and carried a recoilless rifle: the Vespa 150 Troupes Aéro Portées (TAP).
The Vespa TAP was conceived of by the French Ministry of Defence in the early 1950s to be employed in Vietnam during the First Indochina War. The Corps Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient troops were facing artillery and Soviet T-34 tanks supplied by China to General Giáp’s Viet Minh troops, usually concealed in thick jungle. The French Army therefore required an agile vehicle which carried anti-tank weaponry, and which could be para-dropped from the C-119 Flying Boxcar behind enemy lines. The army also wanted to replace their American Cushman scooters with more modern machines.
Piaggio had already been contemplating a military Vespa for some years. A prototype, t…
