AlienFTM

British: Guards Armoured Division.

Corrected that for you. It was also fitted to the M60A1E2 (redesignated M60A2 in 1971). Google is your friend. Look for M60A1E2.

You'll have noticed the kangaroos on the bonnet. I'd bet a month's wages this vehicle was with AustCivPol (Australian civilian Police) in Nicosia with UNFICYP.

So you went back to two 353s? I always felt this was right for CVR(T) and putting a manpack in in place of one of them was too much compromise and just plain wrong.

In a recce regiment we rarely came across lightweights. In Tidworth 1976-7 callsign 29 Golf was an echelon vehicle. Was it A1, A2 or B echelon? I cannot remember. What did A1, A2 and B echelon mean? I cannot remember. If memory serves, I suspect the Squadron Quartermaster sergeant's A echelon (29 Delta) worked up to regiment while B echelon (29 Golf) worked down to the sabre troops. Since you ask, I don't remember there ever being a 29 Echo on the net and I think 29 Foxtrot was the squadron ambulance (which I happened to be commanding on my last ever exercise as recce at the moment the Union flag flew over Stanley). My only ever other meeting with a lightweight was in UNFICYP where we had one issued to each sabre troop deployed to out-stations along the green line. One Sunday the troop leader decided he wanted to travel from Larnaca to Episkopi to see his mukker (they were both fresh out of Sandhurst) and he asked our assigned MT driver to take him and anybody else who fancied a cabby out to see our mukkers in C Squadron, doing 18 months as Cyprus Armoured Car Squadron in the two Sovereign Bases. When Bomber "sent him away" at the high port (expression sanitised to protect the pure in mind) because Troopy didn't have the authority to sign such a journey off on the work ticket, rommel turned to me, his driver, and asked if I fancied a cabby. Me, I'd drive anything. Catch was, because Rommel couldn't account for the mileage that would be clocked up, he had out attached REEM disconnect the speedo, so I did Larnaca to Epi guessing my speed. No problems. Actually, come to think of it I think that was one of the few 3/4 tonners we had, not a lightweight. but hey. I dod remember one of the MT drivers went out on a job in Nicosia one evening and managed to roll it (it being, IIRC, a lightweight). The duty operator promptly broadcast the classic radio message. "Hello all stations this is 2. Somebody rolled a Rover over. Over." You had to be there. The civvy police tried to prosecute him, having estimated his speed at the time of the crash at 125mph. Yeah, right. I also remember the Guard-UN (our squadron newspaper, B Sqn 15/19H having the nickname with the regiment The Guards) carrying an article about MT matters and commenting that despite having disconnected the speedo, we'd still had to top up the petrol after our cabby and it meant that this particular Land Rover did not have a very good return of miles per gallon that month. Sorry what was the question?

The pineapple pic you posted looks sort of right (it's 25 years today - 28 years since I transferred out of recce - that I left BAOR for the last time and got a job as a shiny-bottomed mainframe programmer and the memory isn't what it was). I really cannot remember anything else about it. Sorry. I do also remember the 20W amplifier for the 351/2. We had a couple of 351/2s in the Signals Store, but never needed to issue them cos the Cold-War-turned-hot was to be a high-intensity mobile armoured battle and recce troops had no intention of dismounting unnecessarily to use manpacks when the Scorpions had two times 353 fitted.

I used to maintain that these programmes demeaned British Television and thought back to the great light entertainment we had in my youth. then I concluded that the difference between (say) Saturday Night at the London Palladium and X Factor is basically down to professionalism or not. If it entertains the hoi-polloi, that's fine. I'll be next door slaughtering aliens. She Who Must Be Obeyed is watching what she wants, put out on the whim of a broadcaster; I am watching what I want to watch, but I am dictating what happens on the screen. First time I explained this to her, she stopped getting shirty about me playing games on the computer.

If memory serves, 1W, 4W, 16W, 50W. A 20W adaptor was available to mount at the top of an 8m or 12m mast to boost the output. (Obviously running at 50W would fry the 20W adaptor. Was the adaptor an amplifier? Probably. Where did the years go?)

A snippet from Tank Times, From the Editor, October 2010.

Shock! Are you telling me the side bin and wheel are not attached to emergency exits like Ferret? I always assumed they were. In fact I have a vague memory of seeing into a Fox in Tidworth in 1976, looking in through an emergency exit. I must be wrong.

That's an entirely valid point. Bazz had already pointed out that 15/19H went through Holland in Cromwells: my point was that a troop from 15/19H was 11 Armd Div's sole contribution to Market Garden. I refused to count rivets when watching Band of Brothers. In my book, they went as far as they could trying to make it look authentic. I could mention a long list of films that didn't go to so much trouble. Ralphy Thompson is a damn good mukker, having been my troop sergeant in Omagh a lifetime ago. If you look for a picture of a troop sergeant in glasses inspecting a lance corporal in overalls with the Alanbrooke Barracks, Paderborn Sergeants' Mess in the background, I am pretty sure the back of the lance corporal's head is mine, from 1982, but it was a long time ago and I have never seen the back of my head in the flesh anyway. ;o)

In the official history of 11 Armd Div, Market Garden get a mere footnote. It points out as Baz states that 11 Armd Div played no part in Market Garden except that 3 Tp A Sqn 15/19H were attached US 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment. I have seen a website that claims the Brits portrayed in Band of Brothers were from 26 Hussars ... or 23 Dragoons ... or one of the other old high-number cavalry regiments restored for the duration of the war. But if you watch the DVD and freeze it with the tank commander's head filling the screen, clear as you like through his goggles is what looks remarkably like a 15/19H officer-pattern sewn-on beret badge. And if you look and the pictures on the sleeve, you'll see a Sherman bearing a British A Sqn triangle.

1 Armoured Division's Field Training Exercise in 1983 was Exercise Eternal Triangle, so called because a team went round BAOR and two other theatres (which now escape me) evaluating a formation in a three-yearly cycle. It took place late-October into early November (therefore overlapping Ex Able Archer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 but we didn't know this). According to the radio log book instructions, exercise radio messages were supposed to be prefixed with the exercise name, though in eight years as an operator I had never done this or seen it done. This exercise was universally known as exercise ET. One afternoon at the start of the second week, a message came in on the HF Divisional Logistics Net (that the Main REME Group of 12 Armoured Workshop REME listened to) from the QM (OC Rear Party) that the OC was to contact him by land line (signals euphemism for telephone: find a call box) about a non-exercise matter back at our base location at his convenience. Since the MRG HQ was the OC's radio truck, in theory all radio traffic was addressed to him. So I logged: 1635 To 8 From 8A* ET phone home. It raised a chuckle from all who read it. This was my first FTX with 12 Armd Wksp and I hadn't yet learned to work permanent nights on radio stag to save being woken up to help with the frequency and code changes at midnight anyway. I realised that here we were, cammed up and bored rigid in a farmyard on the east bank of the Weser and I was stuck listening to HF noise on Halloween. I came up with what quickly turned into a cunning plan, "as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University." There was a lad in Stores Platoon who had a heart of gold but was terminally clumsy. So clumsy was he that he spent his every working hour on exercise manning Stores Platoon's sentry point. No doubt it was explained to him that his soldiering skills were too strong to be wasted stacking blankets. For the sake of the story, let's call him Dave (cos that was his name). I was due off stag at 2000hrs. We were centrally messed by an elaborate field kitchen on trailers (well our Army Catering Corps people were attached to the REME) so that the REME didn't have to waste busy-busy time cooking at a per-vehicle level. Over evening meal, I expressed my idea with some trust-worthies and put a cautious word or two out into appropriate ears. The OC Stores Platoon (who thought so much of himself that the troops called him Sass **) got wind that I was planning something and Dave would be the victim. He warned me off. I didn't care. The hierarchy loved me and we both knew he couldn't really touch me. Besides, it was all bark. I knew it, he knew I knew it, and so long as I didn't spoil it for him, everything would be fine. Come 2000hrs and the Admin Officer took over from me. He was vaguely aware, but I think he was hoping for credible deniability. I handed over to him, picked up my webbing and weapon, turned on the UK/PRC 349 that lived in my kidney pouches and donned the (wombled) Staff-User Headgear over my beret. Young Francis, a Craftsman clerk came with me. I exited the radio truck and immediately gave a radio check. "Hello Zero this is 34 Charlie radio check over." "Zero okay over." "Okay out." Each knew that the other could hear him fine. I started around the sentry points, arranged around the HQ like covered wagons in a cowboy film. I made it clear to each if them that all they had to do was react to my messages. No brains required. Last sentry position (deliberately) was 6 (Stores) Platoon. As I had known would be the case, Dave and A. N. Other were on stag. We approached silently from behind, as was my wont: silent movement in the dark was a given in my recent recce role. We came up behind Dave. "Right Dave. Are you happy about what is going on?" Only I knew exactly what was going on, but however tight the security, word had percolated down to Dave. "Yeah, sure Alien, no problem." "Okay. You have the live rounds you were issued?" On FTX the only ten live rounds carried were in a single 9mm Browning magazine for a pistol held in a safe in the radio truck along with the codes. We only had that in case Lefty wierdos (anti-cold War was getting big in West Germany) decided to do something stupid. "Yes, sure." That did surprise me. I went nose to nose with him in the dark. (I could see him fine in the pitch black - all the years in recce, but I wanted him to see my face and feel my exercise breath on his. If you've ever been on ex, you'll know all about exercise breath.) "Let's see. For inspection ports arms." Needless to say, his magazine wasn't even on his SLR, never mind primed with 20 live rounds. "Dave, you aren't taking this seriously. Whatever this creature is reported out there, it's going to kill somebody. Painfully. Now get a grip. Keep your eyes peeled while I go back and get you some." Francis and I started back in the direction of the HQ truck. I swear I heard Dave's mate biting his fist to suppress a laugh, and Dave telling him to take it seriously. Whatever this creature was, reported out there, it was going to kill somebody. Painfully. On the soft ground and in the palpable black (the moon was just past third quarter and wouldn't rise until just after midnight), about twenty paces was enough, before we soundlessly went around to our left, round in front of the position about 100m in front of them. The clouds parted and the ground was suddenly lit up like day from the ambient star light. I couldn't help thinking how well my old Scorpion's image-intensifying sight would work in these conditions. "Hello all stations this is 34C. Send SitRep over." "Zero nothing to report over." "1 nothing to report over." Fitters "2 nothing to report over." A&G (3 Platoon was the Forward Recovery Team, FRT, and not located with the MRG on exercise.) "4 nothing to report over." MT (5 Platoon was Workshop HQ: on exercise, manning the radio truck. Not on net.) "6 nothing to report over." "34C roger ou ... (I deliberately kept the pressel held down) what was that? Francis, did you see that? What's that noise? No-o-o-o! Run!" Francis and I started up the hill, running straight at the Stores Platoon sentry position. Francis ran cross-country for the corps and was off like a whippet. Behind, I made some animal noises and shouted, "For pity's sake help me Francis, it's got me!" When Dave saw Francis coming, his SLR went one way, his webbing the other and he was off, arms and legs pumping, trying to keep up with Francis as he roared past. I stopped with the other sentry. "Hang on to Dave's weapon and webbing for him. We wouldn't want him to get into any trouble, would we?" I saw Francis heading off down the road, Dave in hot pursuit. "Wait for me, you barsteward!" I walked off after them. The road was metalled. There were trees on my left, other side of a shallow trench down the side of the road. Off to my right was a tree line a couple of hundred metres away and beyond that, out of sight, was the Weser. It couldn't be that far, because we could see the mist starting to rise and come up through the trees. I was never going to catch them. Then I realised that they were walking back up the road toward me. I was off the road and under a big tree in a flash. What starlight there was was enough to bury me in deep shade and they walked right past me, not ten yards away. Dave was berating Francis for running off. Francis was also stifling a laugh. As soon as they were past, I crept back to the road and jumped, landing two-footed with a satisfying THUMP on the tarmac. I let out a wolf-like roar. Francis turned to look at me. Dave was off again. A German farmer in his Merc was coming toward us. Dave flagged him down. He was screaming at the farmer to let him in. The farmer floored it (probably thinking, "Verdammt crazy Englische Truppen." Either that or, "There's a man with a seriously big rifle (Francis) there: not a good night to be hijacked."). Dave turned instead toward the farmhouse and banged on the door. I shouted after Francis, who was trying to stop him cos it was getting silly now, to get a hold of him and calm him down. Not easy. Francis was a skinny young racing snake; Dave was a big lad. Zero came up on the air and told me to relay that Dave and Francis were to report to the radio truck for debrief. Now bear in mind that at this point, as far as I knew, nobody could see anything, so how HQ knew to call them in impressed me. I bimbled off in the general direction of the radio truck. By the time I got there, the debrief was over and the whole of HQ were crammed in the back of the truck, all apparently crying. "What happened?" I asked of nobody in particular. It transpired that Dave had gone up the stairs two at a time, banged on the door and, being invited in, stepped inside and produced his best salute ever for the OC. He had explained how Craftsman L******** (Francis) had gone running off terrified by some beast and he (Dave) had gone after him. Everybody had bitten his fist to supress his laughter. The OC had complimented him on a job well done and he might return to duty. Dave had thrown up another immaculate salute, stepped out through the door and fallen down the steps in the dark. "You want to know what really happened?" It turned out that Stores Platoon had a number of infantry night sights and most of the MRG had been stood in the Stores Platoon area just out of natural sight from the sentries, fighting over any available night sight. Oh how everybody larfed. Even Dave was happy because the OC Workshop (a major) had complimented him. It was a happy Halloween that year. Happy Halloween to you all. Yes it really was that much fun being in the British Army in West Germany in the 70s/80s. Oh but wait. I forgot to mention. Remember Sass, OC Stores Platoon warned me to leave Dave alone? Next morning at breakfast he saw me and came across. "Corporal Alien." I could tell from his manner that he wasn't on a social visit. I stood up smartly. "Sir." "Last night you were going to play a prank on Private Dave?" "Yes, sir." "And I ordered you not to." "Sir." (Head hung, knowing that however much I despised Sass being a perceived warry officer when I had been in recce for real, not Walter Mitty land, I had disobeyed a direct order from an officer. And there was me, second tape on arm just two months and the REME had tried to block that because I'd had a disagreement with the Workshop 2IC just as it was awarded. Luckily Commander Finance at 1 Armd Div had politely told the Workshop that he promoted and busted his Pay Corps staff, not the unit. The unit were really rather glad cos, like I said, they really thought I could do no wrong. "I am not at all happy with you Corporal Alien." "Sorry, sir." "The reason I ordered you not to was because I had to go away yesterday evening and I wasn't about to see what went on. And my whole platoon have been telling me what a good evening it was. Barsteward." Smack around the head. I let him have that one. In his eyes, I probably deserved it. _____ * It's a long time ago: I cannot remember what the call signs really were. I do remember the new call sign system was in its infancy and 12 MRG pushed HQ REME for a dedicated callsign for a Pay Corps asset. 34D rings a bell. Istr 34C on any net meant CO of the parent unit / formation. ** He once blazed into my Pay Office and grabbed me by the throat demanding something or other. He was more than a little surprised when I held the letter-opener in my right hand to his voice box and started to push gently, saying, "Put me down ... sir."

What most annoyed me is it was the perfect opportunity for me to set up a one-way rebro so that I could let the jammers (who had to stop jamming and listen occasionally to see if it was still working) think they were still jamming us. But I'd left that role nearly two years before. Grrr.

A bigger gun requires a longer round to propel the round downrange. The longer the breech (and the room required for the breech to run out under recoil), the wider the turret ring needs to be if the gun is to be allowed to elevate more than a couple of degrees, the breech to depress below the turret ring and achieve the increased range of the bigger gun.

Astonishly enough I though I might get in here with a tip, but I am too late. I had a Peugeot 309. I discovered (AA man told me) a "feature" of the Peugeot automatic choke that if it stalled in the first two minutes in the cold, it wouldn't start. Pop the bonnet, Allen key the air filter to get at the carb underneath. Poke the Allen key through the closed automatic choke to hold it open. Jump in. Start car (first time, no problems). Jump out, reverse process, keeping revs up using the throttle cable if necessary. Jump in. Drive off. Sorted. Since then I have only owned VWs with electronic ignition and I just turn the key and drive off. Sweet.

Euw!!! Oh sorry, you meant the tent on the back of his vehicle?

Right. Everything is in position. If I turn this wheel, it will turn that wheel, which will cause this to tilt, causing the diver to jump in the bath, knock off the bowling ball and the mousetrap will come down. I win!

The 1970s porno tash went out of favour with the armed forces in the 1990s, sir. Unless you were the second man on the balcony ...

That's ironic. In BAOR, we were proscribed from using 50W on the UK/VRC353 (as we knew it) because the Bundespost felt it would damage their infrastructure. Since 50W would also blow the 20W adaptor on the mastheads, we were never tempted in RHQ or FHQ. No, not true. One exercise in 1982 we were the first troops ever to exercise in the Harz Mountains National Park. We were under the nose of the Soviet Brocken listening station so it was the only time we ever didn't set our output to 16W. Until a signals unit, deployed onto the exercise with us, went into ESM mode to give us all a feel for operation during jamming. I had to physically remove the squadron leader's hand from the power switch to keep him off 50W, because I at least valued the 20W adaptor. Of course it didn't mean the sabre troops in OPs, without masts and on the wrong side of the slope to talk to FHQ, didn't ever feel tempted to switch to 50W to get round local difficult working conditions. Bazz?

If the firing point is 3 Ks or so down to the left and Scotland behind the camera, quite possibly. Thirty three years of being duty target have not been kind to it though.

Bear in mind too that a Firefly carried a lot fewer rounds than 75 tank, even after ditching the co-pilot to create more ammo stowage, so the Firefly needed the 75 tanks to cover it.

You mean like this (my current ARRSE avatar)? http://www.arrse.co.uk/members/alienftm-albums-alienftm-picture34171-drive-me-closer.html

What he said. Far more aesthetically pleasing to those who served on AFVs to see them how they were in use, not straight out of the factory.

Took nipper to Bovvy a couple of weeks ago. He did codes and cyphers as an optional module on his MMATH degree, so he entirely understood my ten-minute lecture on Slidex using only the pad and sliders visible in a display cabinet. Not paperwork, but here you go. Slidex dates back to the Second World War (1944 rings a little bell: maybe a date I once saw on a card?). A Slidex pack consists of a wallet containing Slidex cards and horizontal and a vertical slider. The cards must have been about 15-18 boxes (I forget) wide and down. The sliders were graduated so that each line on the slider matched a box on the card. Each slider had IIRC 24 boxes. Spare cards went into a pocket in the wallet. Encoding the sliders involved reading today's Slidex code from the signals instructions and writing the 24 letters (no India or Quebec if memory serves) into the boxes in the order given. 24 letters across the page and 24 letters down the page. The code also gave a number sequence for each slider. These were inserted into a corner of the first half-dozen or however many boxes. I think ten digits were issued and the first six boxes had spaces for the numbers. The extra numbers went into doubling the numbers available for the first boxes. So that if the number sequence, horizontal or vertical, was 0857634219, the numbers went in that order into boxes 1234561234. So that encoding the slider at 0 was identical to encoding it as 4, 8 as 2, 5 as 1 and 7 as 9. If memory serves. But because anyone without the codes couldn't tell which box a number represented, he couldn't make use of the fact anyway. The sliders were then installed into runners, one across the top, one down the left-hand side. Encoding a message started by randomly moving the sliders left/right and up/down so that the letters above col 1 and beside row 1 varied from message to message. The first encoding was to write down these two numbers (like map reading, codes always worked along the passage and up the stairs). So the number in the horizontal slider was followed by the number in the vertical slider thus, say, 74. The person decoding would then be able to set his own Slidex pack to the one-time code by aligning his own sliders to match. A Slidex message always started on Slidex Card 1 (there were IIRC about 100 cards, all with different information and it was possible to encode for example, Go To Card 91 in not many bigrams), because Card 1 was the obvious place to start. After 30-odd years, very few people had more than Card 1 and those who did have a few more didn't the same few as anybody else, so messages rarely moved off Card 1, which was a general purpose card anyway. Encoding the body of the message involved finding a word, phrase, letter or number and taking the letter bigram (one from the top and one from the side) that identified that box. So a Slidex message would be constructed like: 74 SU ND ER LA ND AF CF TM The code was written on the sliders in chinagraph pencil, to be rubbed off at 2359 and replaced before 0001 with tomorrow's codes. I could quote a certain TV celebrity meerkat, but I feel it's been overdone. Basically all the various codes worked along these lines to create an uncrackable one-time coded message (provided the code strings did not fall into enemy hands, in which case new codes were to be issued by hand). The cards were IIRC restricted, but like I said, more were lost than remained by the end of Slidex's life and you can guarantee that the Commies knew the contents of every card. But this was useless without the daily codes. The codes used included Griddle (taught on my radio course in 1975), Universal Griddle (that enhanced Griddle - taught in 1976) and Mapco (that replaced Universal Griddle in the late 70s). ISTR that Batco (that replaced Slidex in the 80s below formation level) worked along similar lines but was somehow a two-stage encode / decode. Despite being the last code I learned and used, Batco is the one I cannot clearly remember. The Griddles and Mapco were purely for sending map references in code. Mapco and Slidex allowed fully-coded messages, though good practice stated that only the part(s) of the message that needed encoding got encoded. I think they are all redundant now as everyone on ops uses Bowman. So much so that I was recently told that IKTUGWEFA can be reintroduced, since the value of IKTUGWEFA to us will be far more than to an enemy who won't be able to pick out IKTUGWEFA from a coded message anyway. Since you ask. Back in the day, everyone used a similar callsign structure, so that when different units combined in a combat team or battle group, there might be B Coy of one infantry battalion, B Coy of another, B Sqn of an armoured regiment, Swingfire from B Coy of one RA regt, field arty from B Coy another RA regt, etc. Every one of these might reasonably have say a callsign 21. To tell them apart, call signs were prefixed with an arm indicator. In order of precedence on a cmbined units net: India = Infantry Kilo = Infantry alternate Tango = Armour (tanks) Uniform = Armour alternate (but invariably used by umpires) Golf = Artillery (guns) Whiskey = Arty alternate Echo = Engineers Foxtrot = Engineers alternate Alpha = Air Corps Bravo = airborne or special forces, hence Bravo Two Zero - even though arm indicators were dropped in 1982. Thereafter arm indicators answered up in alphabetical order. This system was known as IKTUGEFA, until the need for an arty alternate, W, saw it renamed IKTUGWEFA. In 1982 the OpSec cost of using IKTUGWEFA outweighed the value to friendly forces, so during a rewrite of Voice Procedure, fixed arm indicators were replaced by daily-changing issued within the formation, along with a total standardisation of what call signs were actually to be used so that the identification of a particular callsign unique to, say a recce regiment, did not identify that callsign to the enemy allowing them to determine what sort of net this was. There were eight vehicles in a recce regt close recce troop in 1982. The presence of a callsign 6xG (x indicates which troop of the close recce squadron) would tell you that this was probably a combat team command net. If the Commies were good and identified a battle group command net including call signs 2 and 3, this could well be 15/19H BG, because A Sqn was Close Recce and took call sign 6. This was a breech of OpSec, because the book said that C Sqn was to be close recce, and the medium recce squadrons were to be call signs 2 and 3. Actually giving them IKTUGWEFA made identifying what was on a particular net a no-brainer, hence its scrapping. Now that operational nets are scrambled, IKTUGWEFA can work for us not against us again. It's been many decades. This is how memory serves. If I am mistaken, I apologise in advance.