Ivor Ramsden

In the M4A2 workshop manual it recommends that tanks are repainted every 12 months with enamel paint. I seem to recall somebody once asking on this forum what the original paint type was, and there's the answer. Ref the tracks, these were replaced on each of the three records. 83 links on each. Looking at pictures of M4s, that appears to be a full set of links, 83 each side.

If you're a member of the 101 club you can get a pump from the club spares shop. 101clubshop.org They have a good range of spares but they are only for club members, however the low prices make it well worth joining. They have members worldwide so I'm sure they'll ship to you. Alternatively you could fit a remote pump.

I collected a large crate full of treasure for the museum today. It used to belong to a Staff Sgt in REME, based at London Passenger Transport Board's works at Acton. It included very motheaten uniforms, but a set of decent webbing and workshop manuals for Centaur, Cruiser Tank Mk V and M4A2, plus three completed Tracked Vehicle Inspection Reports like this one. I haven't seen one before. The three relate to M4A4s T150193, T228580 and T150405.

Probably means the hubs are now empty!

I've recently bought four deactivated SMLEs which were delivered, much to my surprise, by the postman. Three were packed together in a big shapeless lump but one came on its own in the most obviously rifle-shaped parcel I've ever seen but nobody batted an eyelid.

Have a look here, Bill: http://aecsociety.com/board/viewforum.php?f=2

The Division's light anti-aircraft unit might have used Fords as its towing vehicles for Bofors guns as an alternative to Bedfords. I haven't found concrete information for the D-Day period but by October 1944 the regiment would have had one troop of six self-propelled guns on Morris 4x4 chassis. These vehicles didn't have winches so each troop had two 4x4 LAA tractors because they were fitted with winches and could drag the Morrises out of the mire. So you would be right in marking up your Ford as a vehicle of the Division's LAA Regiment, which was 92 LAA Regiment, RA. It will carry the divisional sign and the LAA arm of service marking which is number 47 in white on a red/blue square. It will also carry an individual vehicle identification marking. On the gun tractors and SP guns it's a battery marking (blue square with one quarter red, the position of the quarter signifies the battery), the troop letter or number, and the vehicle number, which would be 1 to 6. I assume that the extra Fords would have been marked in a similar way, possibly with a number above 6. The photo shows one of 92LAA's SP Bofors vehicles of F Troop early in 1945 and the markings are just about visible. The divisional mark is faintly visible on the left hand stowage box. The white F4 shows that it's vehicle number 4 of F Troop, and it belongs to the Regiment's second battery - (with a bit of faith you can see that the bottom right hand quarter of the square behind the white F4 is darker than the rest, so this is the red bit. 92LAA's second battery was 318 Bty.) Simples, as they say.... I can't remember where the photo came from but it appears on several websites. If there is any copyright problem I will happily remove it or acknowledge source.

I guess the Humber might have been chopped just for the film, possibly to make the characters inside it more visible. After all they converted the Katy to 4x4 so they were able to modify vehicles. I agree that the body would have been very flimsy without the roof but the b and c posts were probably given some additional internal support so that the body survived the filming. If one of the Forum's Humber owners can have a close look at the film maybe they'll spot some modifications inside.

So far as I know the 101 wheel is unique. It might have been fitted to a couple of oddball prototype Land-Rovers but it wasn't fitted to any other mainstream types. I've never seen any reference to it being fitted to any other make of vehicle either, which is a bit surprising because a lot of Land-Rover stuff in the 70s came from the same parts bin as other British Leyland group vehicles. Actually, to be more accurate, in the 70s it was mainly Range Rover bits that came from the Leyland parts bin because most of the bits on Land Rovers were the same as had been fitted since before Rover became part of BL! Such was the desperate lack of product development at the time. The 101 shared many of its engine and transmission bits with Range Rover and other bits were LR series 3, but not the steering wheel. If you need a wheel, they turn up on ebay occasionally.

The vehicles' positions suggest to me that the most likely explanation is for the GMC to have been on the wrong side and the bus tried to pull over into the opposite lane to avoid it. Regarding skid marks, remember that driving in the 40s was a completely different experience to modern driving. It's hard to imagine but 30mph was a good, even high, speed for local traffic back then. These vehicles would probably not have been moving anywhere near as fast as average traffic these days, so it's possible their brakes didn't lock up. Actually, do GMC's have brakes which are good enough to leave black marks? I can't imagine our Morris's brakes locking up, certainly not on a dry road, and I'm sure the bus's brakes would hardly be capable of locking up.

Land-Rover track rod ends fixed by almost-rusted-through hose clips.

You really are bringing this lovely little vehicle back from the dead, Tom. Well done. Your work is an inspiration - I must do more work on the CDSW.

Ted, your experiment with matt varnish has just about persuaded me! I never thought to try this on any of our museum's gloss brown wartime ammunition boxes. Many thanks!

Confusion isn't restricted to AMOs. I've got bits from one of the Royal Navy's first Land Rovers (1950). The Rover factory despatch book says they were yellow but there is no doubt that this vehicle was painted deep orange by the Rover Company.

Ted, I've seen other people say that Service Brown and SCC2 are the same but to my eye wartime colour photos of vehicles in SCC2 don't seem to show the same rich dark brown as SB. I'm still looking for a colour picture of a vehicle painted in SCC2, carrying ammunition boxes in Service Brown. That should give a fairly definitive answer even after considering the shade differences that Wally refers to. It may be that the difference is caused by the matt or gloss finish as you say. It's quite amazing that there's no definitive answer when you consider how many thousands of vehicles must have been painted in SCC2. When I was working on the C9B I thought I'd found an area of SCC2 but it turned out to be Finnigan's dark brown anti-rust paint - wasn't it called Brown Velvet at one time? And finally, why can I no longer do separate paragraphs in posts on here?

This is a bit of a guess because my references aren't clear. The two-coloured arm of service square is, judging by the contrast between the two colours, probably the white over blue of the Royal Signals. the numbers 50 and 60 would be red, to contrast with the white and blue. The 50 and 60 I'm not certain about but I think the 50 signifies Armoured Brigade HQ and the 60 signifies Infantry Bde HQ. So the Jeeps belong to Royal Signals attached to the Armoured and Infantry Brigade HQ's of 6th Armd Div. I've done too much supposing here so somebody please confirm or disagree!

The only MW kit I know of in 1/35 is made by Lead Sled but it's a late version with a full screen. It's available from Scale Link http://www.scalelink.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

Matt, most of the mechanical parts are the same as on a standard civilian spec Series 2 and 3 vehicles but the bodywork is unique to the lightweight. When you get it, post a few pictures and we'll tell you more than you could ever want to know!

The IWM have got a colour photo of a Fordson N from about 1942-43 here: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205207807 The colour is a bit vague; it's not Fordson green but it could be dark green, khaki green or even SCC2 brown. Some people think it closely matches the dark green areas of the Spitfire behind it but I think it's more of a khaki green colour. Search the IWM collections site for RAF tractors and you'll find several photos in black and white which give an idea of the markings which were on the tractors. Start here: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections-research

Wally, I don't possess any original documents relating to vehicle arm of service markings so I have to rely on other people's research. I used to use Peter Hodges' book (referred to in post 10 above) but now my main source is Dick Taylor's 4-volume work "Warpaint: Colours and Markings of British Military Vehicles 1903-2003". I do have some original documents covering vehicle colours and markings and cross-referencing Dick's books with these and with captioned photographs shows that his work is commendably accurate so I have every confidence in using it. He gives a very comprehensive bibliography in his work and many of the publications listed are original War Office ones. There might be a few minor mistakes in his books ( although I haven't spotted any) but, limiting our discussion to what a Corps Troops' HQ vehicle's arm of service mark should be, he (and Peter Hodges) says it's 17 on a black square and this is confirmed by a number of IWM photos which show high ranking Corps HQ officers with Jeeps which carry those exact markings. Admittedly they are b/w photos so maybe, just maybe, the squares could be blue but I don't think that these officers can all have been ferried around in Jeeps of RE Field Squadrons. I still can't see what the relevance is to this thread of a publication dated Nov 62.

That is a page from "Staff Duties in the Field", dated 23rd November 1962. It has no relevance whatsoever to vehicle markings in 1944-45.

My references say Corps HQ marking is 17 on a black square with white line on top. There's a Jeep of 30 Corps marked like this in IWM photo B5469. It isn't available online but it's in Gavin Birch's book "The Wartime Jeep in British Service". It's a very scruffily painted sign too, which makes it more interesting.

Having just spent many hours working on a replica PIAT to make it actually look like a PIAT for display in our museum I must confess to a slight tinge of envy here. What a great find!

I left our engine in blue because I didn't remove it and repainting it in place would have been difficult. I did a bit of research but failed to find a colour code or name. The original colour is quite a deep green, much darker then the colour that was used on later BMC engines like on the Mini. It's almost a bottle green, not quite as dark as deep bronze green (Land-Rover green) and it's a bit more blue. Sorry I can't be more specific! I can't remember who was restoring this C8 GS but this photo came from this forum and the engine colour is right. Sorry about the solid block of text but something's stopping me from doing paragraphs.

I previously asked this in the MV Chatter section but didn't get any replies. Maybe it would be better here: I'm in the process of rebuilding the steering box on the Morris C9B and I've come across some black paint under later coats of green. Would the steering box & column assembly have been painted black originally? If so, would it have stayed black until the vehicle was repainted in service, or would the whole vehicle have been sprayed in Olive Drab after assembly? What happens in British vehicles of other make? My only in-depth knowledge on this subect is connected with Land Rovers, where most sub-assemblies (steering, axles etc) were supplied to final assembly in black and stayed black, but that was what happened several years post-war so it's a different situation altogether. I shall probably go for OD but the originality anorak in me is twitching a bit. Can anybody help?