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1950s Heavy Air Drop, MSP Development


Cheshire Steve

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Who said Land Rovers don't have crumple zones ! There were one or two of these incidents in the drops at Watchfield too, but I guess the loss rate was acceptably low.

 

Now if you had an equivalent 1950s picture, that would be very interesting. I should think there were a few hard landings while they sorted out the system, possibly using Larkhill DZ from Boscombe.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have a lead on the location of the archives from the Museum of Army Transport. According to Derek Armitage, vice-president of the Air Despatch Association, he was involved with the move of material from Beverley, and many of the documents went to the Museum at Deepcut. I will follow up with him for a bit more detail.

 

Excavations this week in the archives of the Airborne Assault people at Duxford revealed a lot of photos of air drop of all manner of things from 1940s to 1980s. I think they were the lay ups of the photographic plates used in report production, but without any narrative, and precious few dates, it is hard to get any context. Disappointing from my perspective as no Beverley air drop info, no Rover Mk5s either. However I did jot down a few reg marks of vehicles involved in air drops.

 

Champ 92BE17 was involved in rigging trials at Aldershot in 1958 to see how long it takes to load the MSP.

Stressed platform loaded with Jeep 32YF75 appears as does Rover Mk 3 02BH88 loaded with howitzer.

There is a picture of C-119 DT-CAK apparently used in drop trials

Rover Mk 3 71?BD48 is shown loaded on a non-MSP pallet, and another non-MSP with a pair of motorcycles, 38YA21 and 34YA71. Probably related to the C-119 drops.

Other Champs appearing in air drop context are 16BE40 and 29BE91, and Jeep 85YK14.

 

Its the Beverley drop trials at Boscombe 1956-1958 that are my main interest - still working on tracking that info down.

 

Steve

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I sent an e-mail to Peter Stubbs in February using the e-mail on the Beverley Association web page and it came back e-mail address does not exist. I wondered if maybe the Beverley Association had been wound up. I see there is a surface mail address on one of the pages for Brian Holt, maybe I should write him a letter.

 

Steve

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  • 3 months later...

Introduction.

Hi. I am ex army served in the R.E.M.E .With boys service a total of 15 years, the last six was with the R.E.M.E W/shop at

A.A.T.D.C. Old Sarum working on the Medium Stressed platform and it's big brother the Heavy Stressed platform. I have a few photos showing heavy drops, two of the Heavy platform loaded with 13 tons exiting the Beverly, I would be happy to try to answer any questions you may have.

Mike

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  • 3 years later...

Steve.

I was stationed at Old Sarum (AATDC) from 1956 to 1962..The MSP was dropped from various planes while I  was at Old Sarum.

Nor Atlas (French) Single Platform.

C119 Single Platform

Beverly Twin MSP single HSP

C130 Twin MSP single HSP

Heaviest Load on the HSP was 13 tons .

I have two photos of the HSP exiting one of the Boscomb Down Beverlys.

I hope that this information is of some help.

MKAY

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  • 4 weeks later...

Been a long time since I started this thread, but my knowledge has advanced much about the 1956-1958 air drop trials. Perhaps MKAY, you can elighten me about what Old Sarum (AATDC) did and what Boscombe did. I suspect that Boscombe, being a civilian (Ministry of Supply) site back then, did not have any military vehicles assigned to them, but that all vehicles involved in the drops were likely on AATDC books.

I have also been wondering if MSPs were loaded at AATDC, shipped to Boscombe and placed in the Beverley and then flown back to Old Sarum as a drop zone.

Steve

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  • 5 months later...

I was OC Aerial Delivery Section at JATE around the time of the Gulf War of 1992. It was a REME  responsibility to design and teat rigging schemes for Heavy Drop using the MSP and HSP which had been reintroduced to service. I would hope that the REME Museum would have some archive material and possibly copies of the platform clearances. These had to be endorsed by Boscombe Down after the RAF decided that they needed to take over as the Design Authority for Aerial Delivery systems. I had a load of old photos in my office and kept a few. One shows what was left after a Hornet Malkara hit the deck at terminal velocity, and I have a few other shots of Champ and Landrover loads. Also one of  a Saracen .I rigged a Champ with trailer on an MSP for the REME 50 exhibition using the last remaining early mark MSP and original parachutes. It then went to the REME Museum at Arborfield but they saw fit to get rid of it. There is a nice colour photo of the rig at the front of Gus Gowers book on the Champ called the Champ Enigma.

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I would set the scanner to Grey (=Gray) Scale assuming these are B&W (don't use B&W setting as that is for scanning grubby documents where you just want crisp cleaned up lettering)

Set resolution to 300 dpi

Save as .jpg (This is the most widely used format that is relatively compact compared with say .bmp  which will be many many times larger file)

Then you can upload on here or attach as a pm or email to me :)

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  • 1 month later...

Hi

My father (now deceased) commanded the AATDC (incidentally the Army Airtransport Training and Development Centre) during the time that this thread covers - about 1958-1960.  Unfortunately, I did not even possess a camera in those days, so have no pics or docs from that time, though I seem to remember a photo of a Ferret which arrived on the ground without the benefit of parachutes.  I later attended a UEO course at JATE, then at Abingdon..  The venturi on the Wombat pic above looks very short, though it opened sideways to load the round, as compared to BAT,  Mobat and Conbat on which the venturi dropped down.  Some nice pics above. Thankyou for those.  If I do unearth any pics I will post them here.  Incidentally, the Royal Engineers Museum at Chatham contains a large bulldozer rigged on an HSP, reputedly as dropped in Borneo to construct an airstrip. 

Chris

Edited by chrisgrove
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