Noel7

45 minutes ago, SimonBrown said:

That aside, it is curious India Office spec motorcycles are present. 

I don't know if it is relevant, but there were Indian Army units involved in both the Western Desert and East African campaigns, from about September 1940.

I was rather curious about the diagonal marking, because it seems to fade towards the lower left. The sun is clearly to the right of the picture, so is the diagonal possibly a shadow, which becomes less well defined as it appears further from whatever is casting it, possibly part of the windscreen frame? Also, the 3 seems distorted at first glance, but may have a small darker shape in the middle, which may again be a shadow. If so, the plate may be plain white with some partial shadow.

The people in the background seem all to be civilians, apart from a possible naval officer(?), with everyone apparently completely relaxed and cheerful, perhaps just after the war's end?

48 minutes ago, Pzkpfw-e said:

The company is still registered as being active.

And is likely to remain so, for the moment, at least. If the directors decide to wind a company up voluntarily, or a court decides it must be wound up, then its status will eventually be changed, but these are slow processes, and the use of Kewans https://www.easolent.org.uk/members/member/company/kewans-limited/ possibly suggests that no final decisions may yet have been made in this instance.

As a modeller I started some time ago to record sources of info on army VRNs so I could put the right numbers on models, and it escalated somewhat, so I have a note of a thread on the old site, thread 11284, which is now https://hmvf.co.uk/topic/8093-6x4-militant-why/.

19 minutes ago, Samuel Llewelyn said:

also on right hand side of plate looks arabic writing

It is - it reads 66814, presumably for the benefit of locals unfamiliar with western number characters.

There are gaps, and also multiple entries for the same date, which vary in number from two to six, and are commonly by more than one writer. I would think that these listings were made at some central office from data supplied from elsewhere, and dated on the day they were made. The numbers vary from a low of 1 to a high of 225; it therefore seems possible that missing days may be because there was no return on those days, which would also account for the short year ending with day 349.

There is a problem with the change from red to blue ink. The last legible date in red is 18/10, followed by one I can't read, followed by 281, but, unless my addition has gone haywire, 18/10 is day 291, or 292 in a leap year, so is 281 an error which was then carried on??

The wide variation in numbers recorded looks odd as well, with the range from 1 [or possibly 0] to 225; it seems far too variable for any form of vehicle...

You don't state what he intends to do with it there. Is it returning to the UK after a short visit to France, or is he resident in France, so that the vehicle will remain there, or what? Both British and French authorities will certainly expect it to be insured for road use [assuming it is actually road legal in both Britain and France, and the driver has a current license for such a vehicle valid in both countries - if not he won't be able to insure it and will face other problems] but the insurance will very probably need to be arranged differently depending on the actual situation.

No-one is "forced" to use 60+ year old tyres. If replacements are not available, there is always the alternative of taking the bike off the road, which is no doubt unwelcome to the owner, but safer for him and everyone else...

She didn't join the ATS until 1944 either; she was 13 in 1939.

I did wonder if the nearest officer [and possibly the one next to him but largely hidden] in the group of four nearest the camera might be US Army?

I think the crane is a Cowans, Sheldon 35 ton from WW1 or just after, the tank is a Vickers Medium [Mark 1, I think, introduced 1924], and the Scammell is a Pioneer heavy recovery vehicle introduced 1936.

Reynolds Tubes still exists, although not under that name. Their website is https://www.reynoldstechnology.biz/the-history-of-reynolds-technology/, although the history on the site skips WW2 completely... Wikipedia has a brief history of the various name changes and reasons for them. I knew of them, briefly and in a non-technical context, in my long ago employment, when they belonged to Tube Industries.

3 hours ago, 64EK26 said:

I booked to go in 2020, and recently asked if my booking had been deferred. W&P have declined to honour my booking stating that I didn't apply for a deferral in the 12 week window.

I'm no lawyer, and am not affected by this situation, but surely not applying for a deferral means you are still due a refund for the original cancellation? It might be interesting to ask them in writing and see what transpires. If several [or more] people can show a refusal then this may show a pattern which can be used to pursue the matter by whatever route then seems appropriate.

British Military Land Rovers [Taylor & Fletcher] says the first LHD military land rovers known to have been built as such were produced under 1955 contracts, probably a hardtop for a military attache, and a soft top effectively as a prototype for future orders for BAOR.

Looking at the photo, I would have expected the speedo to be on the driver's side, so could this be a conversion from RHD?

854s as built had a fairly large autovac tank under the nearside windscreen and a radiator which projected further forward from the cab.

There were 853 Matadors as well.

From 1/1/49 UK military vehicle identification numbers changed to a new system using plates in the style nnLLnn [n=number, L=letter]; before that the army used a system with a letter indicating the type of vehicle, followed by a serial number. Different pairs of letters were allocated to the three services, and to different types of vehicles. Prior to 1949, rebuilt softskin army vehicles were given a new identity , and initially this continued under the new system. The numbers allocated to such rebuilt vehicles were from 00RA01 onwards, allocated when the contract was let, so 25RA37 is a pre-1949 army softskin vehicle rebuilt under a very early contract.

Hope this helps.

The character fonts and colour of the plate look a bit unusual for a UK military ERM, and both A and Y are characters in Cyrillic alphabets, so perhaps it isn't UK related?

43 minutes ago, redbeard66 said:

Thatʻs what I believe happened to this vehicle and indicated in my comment as I knew hostilities were still ongoing but I am still certain Q4s were purchased by Norway at the start of hostilities.

I don't know with certainty, I admit. My point is that is that vehicles purchased and delivered before April 1940 would have been a Norwegian responsibility, while vehicles purchased at the start of hostilities in Norway would probably never have been delivered. Either way, Norway surrendered after two months of being on the wrong end of what was effectively a blitzkreig by the Germans, with virtually no opportunity for removing their vehicles to the UK and no obvious reason to do so. A lot of recently arrived allied vehicles had to be abandoned.

51 minutes ago, redbeard66 said:

Not sure what you mean by Commer also produced a post-war Q2... They produced a whole range of bonneted Superpoise Q series, based on the pre-war design from the 15cwt Q15 to the 5/6 ton Q5. Iʻve got three post war 25cwt Q25s.

You referred to the confusion produced by the British Army having two generations of Q4. The same is true of the Q2.

Tractors [mostly semi-diesel] were manufactured in Germany from the early 1920s onwards, and petrol-engined cars from before WW1, so useful knowledge for working on tank engines is not impossible, but spare parts and the necessary tools for making repairs might be an interesting problem, especially for the T34...

Incidentally, a T34 would not have been seen in Germany, apart from captured examples for evaluation, until quite late in 1944.

The German occupation of Norway only ceased with their general surrender on 8/5/45, so the vehicle can only have gone there after the war, based on the information on the plate.

Commer also produced a post-war Q2...

And the crane manufacturers are Les Ateliers de Bondy, Seine, who seem to have produced quite a range of machinery, much of it self-propelled. No idea on the chassis, though.

The crane is French, and the chassis looks as though it might have been made for it. It also looks as though it might have been three axle originally, with larger rear wheels, as the solid tyred ones look rather small?

1 hour ago, BillS said:

One more for you - Dunvant, Challenger 1Mk3 of D Squadron 1st Queens Dragoon Guards, 7(?)9KF27, Bosinia 1962  - Photo in Challenger 1 &2 by Walter Bohm and Peter Siebert.

Definitely not 1962. This number series started with KA in 1982, so 1982/3 most likely. The Challenger 1s are in 78KF or 79KF, so 79KF27 would seem to be correct.

I had a Notification this morning. I thought it might be important, but no, it was telling me I have been 'awarded' badges. The whole thing seems very childish. I despised such meaningless "rewards" when I was a child, and my views haven't changed. I would like to prevent any such Notifications from the awards system if I could, but apparently I can't, so I have  to live with the irritation it causes, or leave. 

21 minutes ago, Rootes75 said:

I do have a few photos of wartime Commer 30cwts but they just have the yellow plate without a number on it.

These are probably post-war photographs. After WW2 vehicles based overseas continued to carry numbers on their bridge plates but UK based vehicles carried yellow bridge plates without numbers, as their weights didn't matter in the UK. I don't know the date the instruction was issued; out of curiosity, can anyone tell me, please?