AlienFTM

Oh look, silver birch. When 15/19H received our first stolen pictures of T64 so that we could study the enemy and learn to recognise and identify correctly (see the other thread), they had been taken by an Intelligence Corps soldier who had penetrated a tank hide in a copse of silver birches. For years, on recognition tests, any picture came up of the T64, the shout from the front row was "T64!" and the retort from the back row was "Silver birch!" It was a standing joke. An awful lot of recce troops would have got these pics wrong at first glance. ;o)

I agree that the NVA never got T64, because T64 and T72 were parallel projects for different markets, the "Rolls Royce" T64 for the first echelon Russian field armies and the T72 for export. This is what 15/19H were taught as 3 Armd Div Recce Regt in BAOR in the late 70s and our role demanded that we got it right, because mis-identifying the one as the other and passing it up the chain of command could give Division ALL the wrong ideas about what enemy forces we were up against. So when 3 Shock Army got brand new T64s for the tank regiments of their tank divisions, they cascaded the old T62s down to the tank battalions of their Motor Rifle Regiments. This in turn released T55s to cascade further down the line to the second echelon and foreign armies. So I query whether the NVA never had T62. We were always led to expect to see T62s in the hands of, for example, the NVA, but it was immaterial because we knew that lined up on the other side of the halfway line were 3 Shock Army. What passed me by for decades was that when Brezhnev took Afghanistan ("Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" Pink Floyd), he took T72s and stories started coming out of one-armed ex-T72 gunners begging on the streets of Moscow because the T72 autoloader mistook limbs for APDS rounds. My conclusion is that by the time Russia started producing T64s, they were struggling to afford any surplus, so that while 3 Shock Army had them, the expeditionary force that rolled on Kabul was equipped with the inferior T72. Of course, we only had the intelligence that we had. It may have been wrong. But that's what the eyes on the ground were trained to look out for.

What a lot of people don't realise is that if you look at ballistics tables for the 75mm L70 and 88mm (L56?), once you get up to ranges in excess of ... erm I think 1600m - it's been 40 years since I read them. Were they called Bellona Prints? They may still be buried somewhere at the back of a cupboard. Where was I? Oh yes. Certainly by 2000m the 75mm L70 started to outpenetrate the 88m L56 as the greater air resistance took more effect. The 88mm L56 was designed to throw shell up not shot out.

You want to take paint OFF a military Land Rover? Shirley there musht be shome mishtake? It looks authentic as it is. REME inspection coming up? Slap another layer of fresh paint on over the top and it'll be fine. Always worked for us.

Remember when the turret is on you need to turn it through thirteen rotations to the right to secure it. Well on my first day in Omagh they told me that if I turned it to the left thirteen times it would come off ...

Thinking back to the IntSum on the afternoon of our arrival at RAF Nicosia, UNFICYP in September 1976, memory suggests that there were two armoured vehicles we needed to be on the lookout for and spotting one would draw the usual prize to the crew of a crate of beer. One was a T34 in the hands of the Turks in the north and the other was I believe a Marmon Herrington armoured car of the Greek Cypriots in the south. But it was a long time ago and AFAIK, even though we were a recce regt by trade and spotting was our business, nobody in the squadron won a crate throughout the tour. Bazz? Thoughts?

Gerrit doonyer marra.

Anybody care to confirm that it was filmed at RAF Spadeadam on the Northmberland / Cumbria border? I am sure I detected a local accent on the bloke at the back doing the countdown, and it's only a couple of years since somebody built a reconstrcution of the Houses of Parliament at RAF Spadeadam and blew them up in Guy Fawkes stylee, so it doesn't take much extrapolation to jump to this conclusion.

If you visit the Army Rumour Service RAC forum and search, you'll find pictures of Royal Scots Dragoon Guards on KAPE tour with CR2, the CR2s having 45-gallon drums of Irn Bru mounted on the rear engine decks in the style of T72 etc.

I cannot read the scrolls. Lion atop crown atop scroll "Fide et Fiducia" will be RAPC, either cap badge, beret badge or collar dogs (in descending order of size. Collar dogs have a backing plate; cap and beret badges slide into a slit in the beret. Lion atop crown atop scroll "Merebimur" are 15th/19th the King's Royal Hussars collar dogs.

Normal working dress in the RAC during the period was coveralls (green for cavalry, black for RTR), aka denims (note that in other arms "denims" referred to green jeans: in the cavalry it referred to coveralls). Each RAC regiment had its accoutrements to distinguish it. For example, in the field 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars wore navy terry scarves. (Take a hand towel, cut it in half lengthways and bingo: one regimental scarf as sold by the PRI. Note that this creates a quite bulky scarf. A number of soldiers would cut this in half or more, reducing the scarf to little more than a necktie.) In a sabre troop in the field (bear in mind that recce troops converted to CVR(T) in the mid-70s) I'd expect denims always to be worn. In the RAC following the introduction of CVR(T), Ferrets became the domain of Squadron and Regimental Sergeants Major, rebroadcast Ferrets and liaison officers, but these were always Mark 1s. The Mark 2 remained in sabre squadron service with the Cyprus Armoured Car Squadron based across the two Sovereign Base Areas. This squadron was an 18-month independent squadron tour filled from a usually UK-based regiment and soldiers wore their normal regimental accoutrements. ISTR these Ferrets were NATO olive / black. The UNFICYP Force Reserve Squadron (a six-month tour based in Nicosia) also used Mark 2 Ferrets, but were painted gloss white and soldiers wore UN accoutrements (sky blue beret and silk scarf and UN badge on the arm). 15/19H provided both these armoured car squadrons between 1975 and 1977, C Sqn out of the SBAs, B then A with UNFICYP. Drivers were expected always to wear coveralls while on vehicles. The rank and role of Ferret commanders meant that they often did not wear denims. In this case the correct dress was Shirt KF, green wooly pully, combat jacket (well washed and faded), lightweight trousers DMS Boots and puttees. However, outside of camp, uniform was not rigorously enforced (in 15/19H certainly). Listed in no particular order are common variations : The KF shirt was never popular. Soldiers normally acquired spare No 2 Dress shirts (either from QM or look-alikees from NAAFI). We were issued OG shirts in Cyprus which were not unlike the later GS Shirts (outside your stated scope) and made of Aertex IIRC. Worn in the field until they fell off our backs - and we were issued lots because Cyprus could be hot even in winter. Lightweight trousers. NEVER combat trousers in the RAC: they were for guard duty only. In Cyprus we were issued Trousers OG, similar to lightweights but heavier material and with button flies and an unusual fastening mechanism where two straps crossed over (one passing through a hole in the other) and buckled at the sides. Again, these were retained at EOT and worn to destruction. Boots. Command Troop 15/19H all looked at US combat boots (higher leg saved having to wear puttees). I didn't personally because it was not possible to get boots wide enough for my feet. Boots NI which had been issued for a recent tour (just like DMS but with higher leg: no puttees). Helicopter pilot boots. I personally wore Bundeswehr Panzerstiefel: sheepskin-lined jackboots as issued to Leopard crews. Basically anything black and comfortable, but Doc Martens were frowned upon. Gloves. NI gloves were retained after tours. Gloves combat (very similar) were introduced in the very late 70s. Again, anything in black leather was tolerated. The PRI sold ski gloves: I rode a motor bike and wore giant civvy black motorcycle gaunlets. Looking back at this post, if you want to show a Mark 2 Ferret, your best bet is pre-DPM combats (fatigues as the Americans would say), since the 1970s options for the Mark 2 Ferret are limited.

It is my understanding that the army now use a single fuel - diesel. Since the Scimitars have been converted it must be assumed that any (if any) Samsons still in service would be diesel-powered. WRT Fox with a GM plate, it sounds unusual to me. Scorpions were all 02FD (or was it 01FD? we had this discussion a month or two back) through 04FD. Scimitars were 04FD through about 07FD IIRC. Spartans tended to be xxFF; all the Sultans I have ever seen were 00GE. Basically a batch of vehicles would be ordered and yes they did come pretty much in sequence. The evidence of your Fox contradicts stuff that I thought I knew and I'd love to know how come it has a 00GM plate.

If you check out (ISTR) UN Resolutions 50-54, an act of war upon a sovereign state is an implicit declaration of war and as such no formal declaration of war is necessary for a state of war to exist. It's political correctness gone mad,

Are you aware that in a February 1982 debate on the new Trident (two months before the Argies made their move), ISTR it was Lord Carrington stood up and stated that without a credible nuclear deterrent, any tinpot dictatorship could walk into one of our dependencies. With this statement in mind and not believing that dear Maggie II (for Maggie I, Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret was Colonel-in-Chief of 15th/19th The Kinh's Royal Hussars) could pull off a task force outing to the South Atlantic without it ending in another Suez, I really, really expected a bucket of sunshine to be visited upon Buenos Aires. As it happens I now know through a colleague whose brother in law served on a boomer at the time that the Falklands War was the only period in history when our entire nuclear deterrent was tied up alongside at Faslane so that Soviet satellites could see and verify that we were NOT in fact about to bestow many millions of pounds'worth of improvements on Buenos Aires.

Off-topic. Pull up a sandbag. About 1979, 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars held an Old Comrades Weekend in Paderborn. I was invited to set up a PA set overlooking the sports field where various potted sports were to be held. I was invited to pipe music through the system. My choice of music. I really didn't think Rock and Metal would go down terribly well so I dragged out a few of my older cassettes (anyone remember cassettes?). I simply held the mike to my ghetto blaster and music boomed out over the sports field. But there was a catch. The PTI Warrant Officer was timekeeper on the sports and controlling a handful of games at once, if not actively refereeing them. He asked me if I could call time on all games simultaneously. I explained to him how feedback worked and we agreed that that would stop all games simultaneously. So come the afternoon, popular music booming over the barracks, PTI tips me the wink, mike gets buried inside the speaker and it all goes off. Result. Every 10 minutes of whatever and the games all stopped without question. Except on one occasion a very heavily-pregnant wife-of stopped in front of the four tonner I was operating from. I pointed out what I was about to do to give her a chance to move before I induced her baby on the spot. End of the sports afternoon and I simply secured the four tonner to return the PA system on the Monday and I walked the couple of miles into town to my usual haunt (and beer tab). I greeted the landlord whose reply was, "There has been an awful noise from up your way all afternoon. Any idea who or what it was?" As usual I denied all knowledge.

I think he was talking about a dent in the Land Rover, marra.

I think it may have been over the weekend I got an error which I think was a 509, reporting that the site's bandwidth had been exceeded. I went and did something else and now it's back.

Shows how important it is to get the date of what you are representing right. And how things can change even within the same unit in the space of a couple of years.

I stand corrected. But I must express my surprise since I cannot imagine why as a member of NATO Canada does not use NATO standard bridge classification plates and why as a member of the commonwealth it uses commonwealth tac signs that look like tac signs. Point taken.

A couple of years ago I started on the Flashman series. I did enjoy them but had grown fed up before I completed them (sadly, cos GMF was a superb storyteller: check out The Complete MacAuslan and Quartered Safe Out Here). My nephew must have got what smacks to me of being an obscene bonus payment (working for one or other of the major European banks) because his Christmas present was exceptional beyond words, in the form of a Waterstones voucher. I converted my share into starting on the Matthew Hervey series by Brigadier Allan Mallinson (former CO of 13th/18th Hussars who amalgamated with my own former regiment 15th/19th Hussars in 1992 to become The Light Dragoons). Mallinson's first work was indeed a history of the four then two regiments which amalgamated twice to become The Light Dragoons. The series centres on a young cornet in a fictional 6th Light Dragoons who seem to have been to all the same battles as 13th, 15th, 18th and 19th Light Dragoons (who all restyled as Hussars in the 19th century before amalgamating as 13th/18th Hussars and 15th/19th Hussars in 1922) even though history shows for example that 15 LD were the only regiment awarded the battle honour Sahagun because they were the only regiment to turn up. (Wikipedia tells us that the Tinny Tenth, 10 Hussars, commanded by Black Jack Slade were at Sahagun but that stretches the truth a little. To quote Wiki: " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_John_Slade,_1st_Baronet Basically 15 LD were still taking up position as backstop to await 10H to push French cavalry out of the town, but were spotted by the French who were slipping out through the back door having realised that the Tenth were pratting about at the front door. The French, assuming them to be Spanish, stood their ground and waited to repel the charge only to learn their mistake when 15 LD slaughtered them. Stuff it. Read it yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sahag%C3%BAn ) Anyhoo. The series starts with 6 LD breaking out of the Pyrennees and advancing on Toulouse, Napoleon surrenders, the regiment heads off to Ireland (lucky not to be disbanded as part of the peace dividend) only to be recalled to fight at Waterloo. The series gives an astonishingly vivid account of life in a cavalry regiment in the post-Napoleonic period, much of it spent in India. I have read comments that consider the series to compare the post-Napoleonic British Army in India with the post-WW2 British Army in Germany in which the author served. I'll be buying the next two books in the series very soon (and all-too-soon they'll be finished. Warning it's more bodice-ripper than war porn. Don't expect Napoleonic Sven Hassel. By the same token it isn't Mills & Boon either. What it is is historically flawless fiction.

Back on topic. The Mark 2 Ferret was uparmoured in the factory as Mark 2/3. Earlier Ferrets were retrofitted to the same spec and designated Mark 2/4. I am sure at some point in my career I found myself in a Mark 2/4 (so it must have been in UNFICYP cos I'd not have noticed the difference in NI when I was New In Green) that had square driver's side windows (indicating the first tranche of Ferrets off the production line). I stand to be corrected. If anyone can show me a Mark 2/4 with square windows, I'll know I didn't dream it.

Indeed. By the mid-70s the Five Oh was obsolete as an infantry weapon and its only use was as a ranging gun on Chieftain, to be superseded (in the early 80s?) by Barr & Stroud laser rangefinders. The reason they used the Five Oh was because its trajectory closely matched that of the main armament (and indeed I understand that the propellant contents were tweaked to better match, so that ranging ammo was subtly different from infantry ammo. Not least because ranging ammo was all trace, whereas infantry ammo was four ball one trace. The 7.62 link of the Scorpion's coaxial GPMG was a compromise because it was both a ranging gun and an anti-infantry weapon, so it was limked as one ball one trace to satisfy the Geneva Convention whilst still being fit for ranging). It also had the range to range out further toward ranges achievable by the 120mm. When it all kicked off in the sandpits, I was more than a little surprised to find this obsolete weapon back in service a generation after it had been laid to rest.

This vehicle, 04 FD 27 and the tac sign 3/61 cropped up in a thread on this forum just a week or two back. I am sure there will be people interested in this pic. Wrt track guards. I think they may have come fitted post-Op Scorpole (refit, refurbish and bring up to latest spec by applying all outstanding mods), but if they were, I am quite sure we must have removed them and put them away until needed for inspection. They were fibre-glass (or a meringue?) and withstood no contact at all with the West German flora while out reconnoitring. They may have aided the flow of water over the tracks when swimming but with no rivers in West Germany suitable for Scorpions to swim in (and since the detritus coming out of the guns during firing did the float screens no favours anyway - this was why there was a cover over the front half of the float screen while in the normal down position - and again the risk of damage by the flora whilst navigating through woods) the float screens served no useful purpose and were themselves removed some time about 1980.

As a former Ferret driver (and commander) I'd never dream of going on the road in a Ferret (or indeed I cannot think of any other armoured vehicle) without a competent commander in the top seat to give informed information on my blind spots. Going forward is fine but I'd never dream of pulling out of any junction that wasn't a simple straight T or reversing it without another pair of eyes.

I have also just realised that one Ferret has the early-tranche square side driver's windows while the other has the later sloped windows.