Hi,
We spent most of our drills and trainings of military reserve duty on a Nagmash. Literally it means in Hebrew Armored Personal Carrier (APC).
The term in general refers to many vehicles used in the IDF such as: The Akhzarit, the Namer, the Eithan etc…
But in the IDF when you say Nagmash you mean only thing – the American M113 APC (its name is Bardelas, but it is nicknamed Zelda, but nobody used it. We just called it Nagmash)
Israel got it during the Yum Kippur war on 1973 American airbridge (it was the main armored vechile of US in Vietnam war during the 1960’s). The IDF used it to replace the M3 half-track which was used till then.
This vechile is just a taxi for soldiers with low fire power and thin Aluminium Alloy armour (sometimes another layer of armor is added made of holed metal sheet, called Vaizatot).
This is why its named is connected to some of IDF disasters: the Nagmash disaster on 2004, Battle of Shuja’iyya on Operation Protective Edge. And this is why reserve duty soldiers refused to cross the border in it on 2nd Lebanon War.
The Engineering Corps used the Puma while I served in it (an APC based on the Centurion chasis) , and it now switched to a Namera (which is a verison of the Namer, which based on the Merkava tank chasis. It’s name is acronym of Nagmash Merkava).
But in the military reserve duty the Nagmash is still the king, with many variations and varibalities: Medic, heavy mortar, command, mechanical squad, Engineering corps, etc…
Take Care
Elad
A Nagmash in Golan heights training
Command type
Mechanical squad type
Medic type
Mortar type
Aother commanding type
Edited 04.11.2023 – An engineering Corps type Nagmash which we used in Iron Swords war on 2023 from the Yamach