fv1609

Yes big brother or big sister is watching! In relation to my work, I wrote to a government department on an important matter. After 6 weeks no reply then I wrote again recorded delivery, no reply. After 6 weeks I went onto a subscription only password protected forum, asking if anyone had any problems like that. The next day I am rung up by the central wing of this government department "aware of my posting" they want to talk, what's the problem? I have decided to no longer do any more contract work for this lot.

Ah the RAF Police one is bit devious. "They" used SB401 at RAF St Mawgan? Cornwall. There was some suggestion that the US stored nuclear material there & high security existed by means of patrols in RAF Police marked SB401s. But the RAF numbers look like RAF serials but they are bogus, there are pics around of US servicemen in them - no RAF chaps to be seen. The bumper can just be read ith the intitials "USMC". Bob M did a thing in LRO many years ago. I think the idea was to underplay the US involvement. So the first two groups on the list are really the same!

Because Shorlands were relatively inexpensive armoured vehicles, easy to drive and easy to maintain they found favour in many countries around the world for a variety of roles such as: border patrol, reconnaissance, convoy escort and mobile police duties. At least 38 counties have purchased Shorlands, among the known customers are British Army, RAF Police, RUC, US Marine Corps, Argentina, Botswana, Brunei, Burundi, Greece, Guyana, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, Pakistan, Portugal, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, Thailand, & United Arab Emirates. From time to time you can catch the glimpse of a Shorland on the TV news in hijack and siege situations somewhere around the world. http://www.shorland.info/faq.html#item12

I know why you are interested in wanting to get hold of it. But the makers of both were keen to explain the concern with historical accuracy. This is questionable as the vehicular accuracy is appalling. In the news footage of the time the main riot scene showed pigs in the background then as it gets nasty a Foden water cannon comes along squrting dye over the crowd (& the camera crew. You can here a squaddie shout "Corr brilliant guv!"). In one of the films intead of a Foden they use a Saracen with a hose pipe in the turret. looks pathetic. The "RUC" vehicles are army spec Rovers with grey painted (wood actually!) bodies with silly snow ploughs on the front like a Wild West train. Then the pigs they have are MK 2 which were introduced the year after BS!! After a few minutes of this I gave up watching.

In the period 1966-69 there were 16 Mk 1 Shorlands supplied via The Ministry of Home Affairs to the RUC. All but one of the were issued with miltary numbers in the BT sequence for use by the UDR, Subsequentlty UDR acquired some (can't remember off hand maybe 50-60) Mk 3 Shorlands with 6cylinder. But not all Mk3s had 6cylinders. I have a list somewhere but most small Arab, African states used them. I have seen them on the news in Pakistan & Lebanon, even the Greek Cypriot police had them & Dutch airport police had the anti-hijack version. Also the 17/21 Lancers had one & a SB301 APC, quite why I don't know. I expect yours was exUDR why not paint it to restore it as it was in service? I know the one you mean that was sand & green but it was exUDR & anyway it ended up being painted the correct colour (IRR NATO Green)

Richard Yes thats very interesting. I need to savour the detail of those a bit more. Unfortunately I don't have any VAOS that are wartime, other than a NZ Guide to Stores Accounting, & yes they must be quite civilised over there as their VAOS is a close copy of ours it seems. I was a bit suspicious of the Vocab No, I'm so used to Paints, Dopes & Varnishes being in VAOS H1, but H1 used to be split into a & b sections. So I am not clear what happened in the wartime. I know quite a lot of VAOS for Tents are JA but in postwar they were J or J1. Ah & then COSA came along. In addition to the Equipment Regulations of 1947, I also have a 1955 version & that still requires the water jerrycans to be this brown. When it changed I don't know but in the 1961 edition it is black. Ah and another puzzler the colour is "Black CS.2000" Now what sort of black is that? I have googled for it but unfortunatelyCS2000 is a very popular name for all sorts of equipment nothing to do with paint. You even get DEFRA pages on the Countryside Survey 2000 coming up! I like the tricolour.

When you get to my age, 27 still seems young. You looked young when I last saw you but of course since then you got that pig thing so it could well have aged you before your time.

Yes I expect the postage would be more than it costs for you to insure it, what with you being a young man still

So I suppose Paul its going to end up looking like this: I did that mainly with the Bosch electric chisel.

Richard Dark Earth is BSC 450 but this was only introduced into BS 381C in 1964, it became renumbered as BSC 350 in 1988. & then deleted in 1996. I do find it difficult to work out what was what. I remember David Fletcher telling me that BT White as a boy during WW2 used to go off & draw colour pictures of the vehicles as soon as he had seen them go by. I have a 1941 book 26/GS Publications/644 "Painting of Mechanical Transport", it talks of just three colours for UK & N.Europe, Khaki Green No.3 or Standard Camouflage Colour No.2 the disruptive dark bits should be in Standard Camouflage Colour No.1A. Not very helpful for us bods years later trying to work out colours. Do you think Standard Camouflage Colour No.2 is the same as No.2 Camouflage Brown? Yes on line charts can help a bit if you can fix your mind on a colour you know & then try & compensate for the colour you are checking on. For instance on http://www.indfinspec.demon.co.uk/bs_381c_colour_chart.htm DBG looks almost black, well on my monitor. I have put my query on a US AFV site, which is mainly modellers as far as I can see. They probably take colours more fanatically than we do. But I am just waiting for a reply along the lines use Humbrol 123 etc, which won't mean a lot to me.

Is anyone familiar with No.2 Camouflage Brown? I know that it was around in 1947 & used by the British Army. It is not a BSC, I had guessed it might be a forerunner of Service Brown which I think is what is used on ammo boxes. But that is quite a dark brown. When I did a google on it I got hits mainly about painting planes. I noted RCAF at one stage used Camouflage Special Brown No.2 but is that the same? It must have been fairly light as it had to have patches of dark brown on it. Incidentally I see that disruptive camo painting was abandoned in 1944, probably because it was such a labour intensive exercise there was not enough time to do it. Ah why am I asking? Those black jerrycans for water that should be painted black with white lettering. In 1947 the can should be brown not black, I can't recall having ever seen a restored vehicle of that era having a brown can though.

Yes I have used Nitromors, vast amounts of the stuff!. Ten years ago I used some to strip 7 layers of paint off a vehicle, I had only done less than half of it & I had spent £50. I now use a multitufted wire cup in an angle grinder. But goggles, gloves & thick gloves are needed as the broken wires when they are shed come off at quite a velocity. Although with the Nitromors you need goggles & gloves. You can soon feel the splatter of droplets burning into the skin! It was strange to use, some paint would bubble off, a bit of agitation with a scraper helps then you would have bits that seem impenentrable. Nitomors needs to be washed off with water, but 20 years ago there wasn't a water version it had to be dispersed with white spirit, so that was even more mesyy & expensive. I would do what you can with the grinder & use the Nitromors for awkward little crevices. I don't know how this would work on thin metal, but on armour I use a Bosch chisel thing, with the wide attachment you can uplift thick paint quite well. There are no running costs, the attachments are pretty durable.

Yes CC is more Salidin, I have an awful feeling someone must have thought the DAC was a Salidin!

Richard Your Dingo whats it's mil reg? I am always looking to see if I can come across any exRUC ones, they had at least 35. I know where 14 of them are, rotting away unfortunately. Went to the group of 5 military museums at Winchester on friday. (That was treat No.1, W&G was No.2) They have got a Daimler Armoured Car parked out side. The reg is CC which doesn't seem right that's more of a Ferret grouping, I would expect something like a ZR. I did say but they just looked blank:(

Richard No nothing new or secret, its the RUC pig. Last year it was painted Light Admiralty Grey as it was in 1962. Then records show in 1963 all the RUC Pigs were painted "Drab Olive". Now I don't know whether that is really the colour or whether it was a description that was used to describe an army sort of green. I know from records that by 1969 the Pigs, Shorlands & most of the Commers were painted the same green. My Shorland is exRUC but attempts to get the layers of UDR DBG paint off to get a reasonable patch of layers of paint have been difficult. Anyway I have managed to peel a piece about 3inches square to reveal this satin green paint. It looks like a sort of NATO Green but with Brunswick Green overtones, I have a fair amount of both. Ah but people will say NATO Green is matt, not necessarily only if it is IRR. I don't mind mixing paint. The Light Admiralty Grey, I made from French Blue, Dark Admiralty Grey & White. When dry it was indistinguishable from genuine Light Admiralty Grey which is obsolete. The current stuff on it is pretty awful surplus stuff I had for years I bought very cheaply. I wanted to use it up & to demonstrate that it was not NATO Green or DBG, just to distinguish it from an Army Pig. Last years grey colour seemed to confuse people to such a degree, it didn't get looked at much. I remember being at Denmead next to a Mk2. A member of the public didn't give mine a second glance, but was all over the Mk2 saying "Oh this is a Belfast one". I felt like saying why don't you read my notice board & where the hell do you think a vehicle with a registration 2996 OI was registered (OI = Belfast 1958) I'm getting emotional, I must go!

I am restoring a vehicle that was originally painted in a satin (not matt) finish. Not only is it a rather peculiar colour, but I am a mean old sold & don't like buying expensive paint. Most I can mix by buying up cheap colours that nobody wants to use. Eventually I arrive at the colour by trial & error blending with reasonable results The problem is the paints that I have that I am sure I can blend to get a good colour for this project are all high gloss. The question is how can I bring that down to satin? I recollect being told you can add chalk. But would that need an awful lot & would it detract from the strength of the paint? Any ideas?

Deep Bronze Green BSC No.24 for AFVs, Army & RM MT transport. Dark Blue BSC No.7 for RN RAF Blue, Grey, BSC No.33 for RAF It makes no reference for anything different for staff cars, plant etc, but does say for Services requiring a grey semi-gloss finish then use Dark Battleship Grey BSC No.32. So in what circumstances that would be used I don't know. There were quite a variety of colours for interiors which are bit diffrent fom now. I see this FV Spec 2012 supercedes one issued on 6th Feb 1945, so it is possible that DBG was introduced from that date, I don't know. DBG of course has been around for a lot longer it appears in the 1931 "British Standard for ready mixed paints".

It seems to have been promulgated on 1st January 1948 in the "MOS FVDD FV Specification 2012 Painting of Fighting & Mechanical Transport Vehicles, Tracked & Wheeled". This laid down specs for painting of all service vehicles including top coats, undercoats. primers and markings.

"Tanking the Pig to france" was that a Freudian slip? I like your sense of perspective. Pig with a "P" & frrance with a "f", The problem is with armoured vehicles I believe.

These are mine: 1953 FV1601B Humber 1-Ton GS Truck 1957 Trailer, Cypher Office, Light, 1-Ton, Signals 2-Wh 1956 FV1609A Pig prototype (I believe oldest Pig in world) 1958 FV1612A Mk1 Pig (there were no Pigs prior to 1958 other than FV1609) 1962 FV2505G Trailer, Cabin, Simulator, Radar Target, No.2 Mk1 (Yellow River?) 1963 FV1620 Hornet/Malkara Missile Launcher 1965 Shorland Armoured Patrol Car Mk1 (only one of two HMG owned that survive) 1968 Shorts SB301 Armoured Personnel Vehicle prototype 1997 Truck Ultility Light (High Specification) = Wolf Land Rover

This is also interesting : http://www.subbrit.org.uk/ I know of two MV enthusiasts who each have ex Royal Observer Corps underground Observation Posts, sure beats are garden shed!

Pauls pig is very special as it is the only known Mk 1 that is a flying pig ie having fold out screens each side & on the roof. I first saw it in an ordnance dealers yard 15+ years ago. His rear doors each have about of the top 7inches fold down. You can see evidence that there were two rows of seats one behind the other, that go from side to side ie the troops faced backwards. This is revealed by the old weld marks where RSJ was fitted. Debussing would have been difficult. Presumably why it was discontinued. My other pig 28 BK 08 had the same weld marks & the drop down flaps on each rear door. But on mine the flaps have been welded up to return it to normal "Mk 1" appearance. Both our pigs had barracade rams characteristics people would say of a Mk2. But even not all Mk2s had rams. This mods are characteristic of NI mods early 1970s. My pig & Pauls were part of the batch of 200 repurchased from scrapyards by MOD in 1972. They were pushed into service so the rest of the fleet could be uparmoured in 1973. So that would date the mods to 1972-73.

Richard Yes saw the film. It was spoilt at times by a gurgling/babbling child, I mean grown ups are trying to enjoy the film & man behind had a gaseous problem, whether he was a cleric I didn't ascertain. Clive

Richard Well I have got a Stinking Dog at my feet, its's been rolling in sumat peculiar. That's enough excitement without having to envolve the clergy. Clive

Oh sorry, I misunderstood. I agree that would give an overview of who's got what for general interest. I construed it was to be used for then contacting an individual for help. Being a bit touchy I suppose but I get lots of emails & phone calls which is about all I can cater for at the moment. But perhaps I will feel less paranoid when I have come back from seeing Wallace & Grommet tonight. BTW did you get Tabby article no3, although it is only the 2nd one I have sent you (confusing as Tabby no.2 is still being worked on)