AlienFTM

I'd also like to pass on my compliments far a hard job beautifully done. Couple of questions. 1. Blue paint on the floor? Is that right? I never saw blue paint on the floor of any of my vehicles, but then all I ever saw was mud ... Or was that some sort of primer (I once used that shade of Hammerite on my Cavalier ... ), later covered with silver? 2. I noticed the early model Clansman bonedome and now my brain hurts. Maybe the same picture commented that there was an early pattern missile control box (or some such if I remember). Are these two items compatible with the late model spoked idlers (which I didn't even know existed before I visited this forum)? Not that I see it as a criticism: if it's all you can source, better an incorrect-pattern idler than a VOR vehicle. Likewise the red fire extinguisher. If it's what you have to fit to get it on the road, it's what you've got to fit. I don't often pass comment on other people's restorations, because I don't feel worthy. But yours is awesome. Heartiest congratulations.

Bazz the same pic is knocking around on arrse with some discussion taking place. http://www.arrse.co.uk/rac/162380-hybrid-spartan-scimitar.html

Well it's only about six weeks to Tankfest. Last year nipper and I managed to get a sit inside the turret of a Chieftain (not for long - there was a big queue). The two gadgies were upset when I commented on how spacious the turret was. Well I was comparing it with my memories of Scorpion. Truth be told, they all seem smaller now than I remember. Or is it me that's grown ... ?

Where Radio Deception = ESM, Electronic Support Measures? ESM was the third EW measure as I recall it.

I don't remember any of my Ferrets having seat belts 1976 - 1980, but that proves nothing. In the same period I remember all (then new) CVR(T)s had seat belts, but nobody ever wore them: they just got tangled up and in the way.

Not by my regiment. Day 1, I wore combats and realised I was alone. Rest of the tour, like everyone else, I wore lightweights. On my NIRRT course (Northern Ireland Reinforcement Training Team) in-theatre in 1976, I was not alone wearing lightweights and nobody on the DS expressed any sort of opinion. I am quite sure if there were any sort of ruling on that score, it would have been brought up.

Whereas with UN white ... I once had the misfortune to stand looking down on a colleague's upside-down Ferret where he had slipped off the track and rolled it in the Troudos Mountains.* I can state with certainty that UN white paint did not reach those parts that were not easily reached. And when I came to slap another layer onto mine the day before the End-of-tour medal parade, I did nothing to extend the white beyond the set precedent. _____ * No scout car drivers or commanders were harmed during the process.

I occasionally take my granddaughter to Manor Farm Country Park ( http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hampshire-countryside/manorfarm.htm ). I was there last month. Pretty sure there was an example of this tractor on display there. But I could be wrong. Granddaughter was more interested in feeding the birds (50p a bag - how's that's inflation?)

Late 1977 we had to collect Saracen ACVs and Rebro Ferrets from Moenchenstrapback. Whilst there I saw a line of Mark 2 Ferrets painted in a scheme remarkably similar to this. On the upper hull was stencilled "BAOR OVERLOAD". Always intrigued me cos BAOR didn't use this scheme, I cannot imagine they would paint them like this before mag-to-gridding* them and have long wondered whose paint scheme this was. _____ * Mag to grid, get rid: a standard aide-memoire for remembering how to correct a map bearing to a magnetic bearing (for the compass). Mag to grid: when changing a magnetic (e.g. observed using a compass) bearing to plot on a map, subtract the magnetic variation displayed on the bottom corner of the map. Obviously, the aide-memoire was particular to BAOR at that time: I can imagine that in some other part of the world at some other geological time, the aide-memoire might not hold true.

Good job I noticed reference to Atonement. In the misty second pic, the sergeant on the right looks remarkably like a young Uncle Rob, who joined Northumberland Hussars in September 1939, posted to A Sqn, who promptly converted to Light Triple-A and he drove a Bofors tractor up three invasion beaches in Sicily, Messina and Normandy. (TBH I don't think Rob reached the rank of sergeant anyway.)

The cut wasn't improved in the 1975 ( ? ) pattern: it was only when the 1984/5 pattern came out that you could wear a pair of combat trousers comfortably without braces. Lucky that for most of my career we wore lightweights de rigeur.

You may wish to check your broadband router to see whether it has a USB socket. That being the case, you can hard-wire the printer direct to the router and access the printer via your PC's wireless to the router and on via USB to the printer. If you don't have a USB socket on the router, you could buy a printer with an Ethernet connector (my preferred solution but it costs more) and use Ethernet instead of USB. Basically your dongle on your PC connects you to your home network and anything attached to it, however it is attached. Anything on the network to which you are connected will be visible. I recently discovered a nice little function on my Windows 7 Network Connections icon in what used to be called (and I still do) the system tray on the end of the Windows taskbar. Open it (double-click or right-click - I cannot remember I am sat on my XP work machine) and it will display you a graphic of everything that's on your network.

You'd need to verify that Tyneham was open before visiting because it's smack in the middle of the battle run. Well it was in 1977 when they reopened the battle run after however many years and B Sqn 15/19 Hussars were the first people to use it. As OC's driver, we travelled down the run behind every troop in turn with the canvas off the back of the rover and a wodge of high profile guests and Instructors, Gunnery (IGs) standing watching rounds going down. First troop down (which wasn't necessarily First Troop lol ), Jimmers spotted a field full of mushrooms that hadn't been disturbed for years. He had me leap out (behind the firing Scorpions I hasten to point out) and harvest some for him. They were the size of dinner plates. Trouble was, slung in the back, they were trodden on by the passengers and spoiled. ISTR the road past Lulworth runs right behind one of the firing points (I vaguely remember in the 90s going down to Lulworth for the day and managing to take this route while Scimitars were firing). A quick Google search for lulworth ranges firing times found me an MOD website: http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/WhatWeDo/DefenceEstateandEnvironment/AccessRecreation/SouthWest/LulworthRanges.htm with a telephone number to find out when the ranges were in use. You may be more or less interested in whether the ranges are in use or not depending on what you tell your Zero Alpha on the Domestic Command Net.

Sadly I do not deliver to Australia and 1.50 ? would also not cover the postage. (I had to use Google to check that Versand meant postage as I assumed.)

One of my best Buddies from my time just retired from Garrison Sergeant Major at Gutersloh (John Mac, since you ask Bazz). He told me that 80% of his work was sorting out Logistics Corps problems and it wasn't the job he signed up for 40 years ago. I am afraid that after following this series I can see why.

Of course if you really want extra under-cover space, "acquire" (that's that word we usually used) a Chieftain lean-to bivouac tent to attach to the side. In our recce regt, there were no bivvies issued with the Saracens, but having recently been armoured, Command Troop had buckshees (everybody had buckshees of one sort or another) that had come with them from Fallingbostel via Omagh and Tidworth. Then we got issued brand spanking new still-smelling-of-new-paint Sultans with a dozen miles on the clock. They came with a standard CVR(T) bivvy, also new and waterproof and good for the usual three-man CVR(T) crew. These however were frankly a bit of a squeeze as (for example on Bravo) Regimental Signals Officer, commander, control signaller and driver had to hot-bed). The good news was that the Chieftain bivvies cascaded down to the Rebro Ferret crews just as guess who became a Rebro Ferret commander. Sweet. Four-man Chieftain bivvy for two. On Ex Spearpoint 80 Davy J and I would erect the bivvy facing away from from the Ferret so that we could have our scratchers at opposite ends of the bivvy with two folding chairs and a coffee table in between. Great way to watch the sun set with a bottle in hand. Sadly this was not normally possible because of the operational exigencies. But a whole lot more comfortable than the two-man bivvy I seem to recall from my time previously as a Rebro Ferret driver.

What you have in the pictures looks complete to me. The extras beyond what is obviously penthouse are probably (it's well over 30 years ago) sheeting so that when two, three or four ACVs back onto one another (back-to-back, T or X), the joins can be covered up to keep the light from getting out, creating a single penthouse for the entire FHQ. As Command Troop (RHQ) of a Recce Regiment we had three Saracen ACVs, two (Alpha and Bravo) were alternate HQ vehicles and the third (Charlie) was the Intelligence and NBC cell. In a location, it was normal for Alpha and Bravo to back up and link penthouses abd work as one, but it was usually impossible to get Charlie in position without undue compromise (like for instance the West Germans didn't like us cutting their trees down: it was illegal even to hammer a nail into their trees). During a move, either Alpha or Bravo would step up while the other retained control. When the step-up assumed control, main would close down and move to rejoin. Under the battlegroup system of the 70s and 80s, the only extra ACV we might acquire would belong to an artillery battery, but it never happened on our watch. Recce Squadron FHQs had two ACVs, Alpha and Bravo: no Int & NBC cell. Again I never saw the combat team system of the time give us a third ACV. I only recently learned that Armoured FHQs didn't actually get ACVs: the OC had a choice between a tank or a rover (which would be a Ferret on paper, but always swapped with the SSM's Land Rover) but no ACV. Higher formation HQs (with a lot of ACVs) would be the most likely to arrange ACVs in cruciforms, but my understanding is they invariably had FV432 ACVs.

Would you believe I think I may have just read an account of this action in the acclaimed "The Black Bull From Normandy to the Baltic with the 11th Armoured Division" by Patrick Delaforce which coincidentally I bought at Bovvy a couple of weeks ago. http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=2501 Actually come to think of it, it may have been another action about the same time involving my old regiment 15th/19th Hussars who were also 11 Armd Div, but because I am at work I cannot verify either way.

"You were only supposed to blow the bladdy doors off!"

Certainly at the time I remember when 131 put a conrod through the cylinder head first time it was put under load, they said they'd got a replacement engine from a Tiger 2. Never occurred to me they'd taken it from their own Tiger 2

Surely on the right arm that's a rank badge (post about 1978, certainly before I got my first in 1980)? I cannot imagine why anyone would decide to put the DZ patch smack on where everybody else puts his rank badge.

In my fourteen years we never had the ammo to spare to be that profligate. (It didn't help after the Falklands, when all our war stocks went down south leaving BAOR even shorter than it had been under the recent government, that the Belgian manufacturers wouldn't release more and we had to buy "interesting" 9mm from the sub-continent, but that's scope for another thread). The only tip I ever got (at odds with Bazz even though we spent many years in the same squadron) regarding firing SMG on auto was to hook the left arm over the barrel to stop it climbing. I didn't personally fancy this, since as it was my SMG firing stance saw my left hand extremely close to the guard at the muzzle end and range staff used to have kittens, convinced I was about to shoot my own index finger off. But further down the barrel the left hand is, less the muzzle end is likely to wander. Still got ten fingers, along with trophies for SMG shooting, so there cannot have been that much wrong. My guess is Bazz, being a Junior Leader, got fun days like "Firing SMG on automatic" courtesy thereof.

Ah you see my time in BAOR was in either Command Troop or a Medium Recce Squadron of an Armd Recce Regt. Regiment less the Close Recce Squadron (plus some attachments) formed a Recce Battlegroup. Recce BGs didn't go to BATUS because we weren't restricted in BAOR the way Tanks were, so there was nothing to gain. The powers that were could declare a temporary 443 Area for us practically anywhere and that's where we exercised. It meant about 1980 we were the first NATO unit into the Harz Mountains after the war and I remember a lot of the locals were less than happy to see armour swanning through what to them was something like a National Park. Had a few walking sticks waved at me personally. Being recce, we were always there first, so I guess we always caught the locals by surprise. So we never saw smoke grenades. We did get to lob 76mm Smoke shells about on Hohne Ranges though.

When Scorpion was sunset (issues with the 76mm gun flooding the turret with carbon monoxide during the recoil / ejection cycle when firing) in the mid-90s, it led to a shortage of Scimitars. Sabre was a stopgap created by mating a redundant Fox CVR(W) 30mm turret to a redundant Scorpion hull, creating an exact functional equivalent to Scimitar. I doubt Sabre was ever considered a long term solution.

Smoke grenades for a Ferret?!?!? I drove and commanded Ferret on and off for most of my seven years (75 - 82) and never saw a smoke grenade! Didn't you see the 30-year Rule disclosures a couple of years ago that we only had bullets for about two days, never mind smoke grenades!