AlienFTM

I googled and found this: Here: http://www.arrse.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic/t=35433/postdays=0/postorder=asc/start=60.html About 2/3 of the way down. Luckily the apparent typo (references to both Radway Green and Radwell Green) didn't get in the way. Obviously not a definitive answer.

Funny you should say that: I used to wear mine when I was out of the bike. Coupled with the jackboots I wore, all I needed was an SS badge on the left sleeve. What's that on my left sleeve? The Provost Sergeant once stopped and gave me some very friendly advice (unusual for a Provost Sergeant) and pointed out that any badge incorporating a swastika would be illegal in Germany. I removed the SS badge.

We had a troop leader whose party trick was to take a run at the front decks of our Scorpion. Luckily it was the dry summer of 76: driver and I used to take bets on whether he'd catch his leading foot and lose his teeth. He never did.

I drove great distances on German roads and never suffered wind-up or excessive wear, including Moenchengladbach to Paderborn and numerous long moves on exercises. On Ex Summer Sales (an annual Command Post Exercise - CPX - involving all the control elements of 1 (Br) Corps) we would drive quite a way east from Paderborn and overall it was more usual to drive the Ferrets onto exercise than to load them onto trains. I only clearly remember us loading Ferrets onto trains to go to Hohne Ranges. Apart from 1981 and the summer of 1976 I was always close to at least one Ferret in the troop (Squadron HQ, otherwise four Ferrets in a sabre troop in Cyprus and four in Command Troop) between 1976 and 1982. I only saw one set of tyres changed, on 01EC28 in UNFICYP. Basically what I am saying is that despite the permanent four-wheel drive, there is only a theoretical risk of transmission wind and the wear on your tyres will be negligible on a single long run. Certainly Ferret was never intended to disconnect the drive to any axle and I strongly urge you not to.

Just buy a large sheet of sandpaper. Simple. ;o)

Don't be surprised if you end up confused by different designs of flak jacket. The story goes that when it kicked off, HMG asked the USA if they could provide flak jackets and the first people found themselves on the street wearing flak jackets with bullet holes in and with the blood of the previous owner still dried in. (I think it's discussed in A Long, Long War.) In 1976 we had at least three different patterns of flak jacket in our troop.

If it helps, I bought a green combat jacket from an Army Surplus store in Sunderland sometime around 1970 for 50p. It must have been between 1971 and 1974 cos we didn't decimalise until 1971 and I joined the army in January 1975. Put into perspective 50p was nearly two gallons of petrol in 1973. Maybe a tenner in modern money. Hmmm still cheap.

ISTR the Israelis were the last people to use PzKpfw 4s in combat on the Golan Heights in 1967 or 1973 but they were deployed statically in berms as blockhouses and non-mobile. Maybe they simply used up all the running PzKpfw 4s in various wars between Arabs and Israelis?

Bazz. We did follow 1RTR on the Arms Plot, but we followed "A" Squadron The Life Guards to UNFICYP (which is why we had to change all the signs from SCM to SSM and SQMC to SQMS) because everything didn't divide exactly. ISTR 1RTR took the last Recce posting in Hong Kong and the posting was pulled from the Arms Plot just as we (B Sqn 15/19H) were intended to go. I was told at Catterick in late 75 by the late Major Simmonds that HK was on, but by the time we finished Omagh the following year it was off. To the OP, I am quite sure the vehicle I quoted (01CA69?) was the troop sergeant's FSC 4 Tp, B Sqn, 15/19H, UNFICYP Force Reserve Squadron September 1976 - March 1977 (and it would have been handed over / taken over by successive squadrons). I can name the crew but I have to consider their PerSec. (Bazz, it was Jock McK and Ted C) Edit: I go back and realise my memory of the number was wrong. I remember 01CA69 but it isn't on your list. Sorry)

This rings a bell. Is there any indication it was in Cyprus with the UN in 76-77?

I take the point. But a knife edge by its very name suggests a drop on the far side, otherwise it would be a step. The knife edge I was trained on in the dust bowl at Tidworth was just that: about six feet up and another six feet straight down on the other side.

No reason why not. Whilst not being a D&M bigot, one thing I do remember from my Scorpion D&M course was that there was a PVRV on the cooling system.

And think of the damage you'll do when the unsuspended idler / sprocket (delete as appropriate) smacks into the ground. I was taught to crawl over a knife edge in Scorpion. I say crawl - there has to be a compromise because while the nose is in the air, the soft underbelly is beautifully exposed. Bottom gear, up as quick as you like, find the balance point, roll forward until you engage the reverse slope then floor it.

Looks like the tips of rockets in the tubes which would tend to confirm my initial thought, "Calliope" (think Sherman T34) or MLRS if you prefer. I assume the tubes are over-calibre to provide clearance for the fins.

Wear the trunnions. I still remember on my Control Signaller course at Bovvy 1978. For some reason we had an afternoon off, one of the lads ran toward the Sherman Firefly (IIRC) and ran up the glacis plate, holding the barrel as he went, making noises like Oddball, who demonstrated the technique in Kelly's Heroes. Until then I had never ever seen anyone in authority in the museum, but a voice bellowed at him to stop.

Everybody does this. In the autocorrect help for MS-Word 4, it used the word "the" and the mistype "teh" as the example.

Is it on the spare wheel side? As a Ferret crewman I'd very quickly get jacked off if I had to remove the D10 reel every time I wanted to get into the side bin.

Try Alt/PrtScrn to copy just the active window. If you shrink a Google map to just the area you want, this will make for a screen dump with less margin to edit out.

I bet there isn't four feet of movement in the axles without catching that bodywork. Anybody catch the first episode of the latest series of Chris Barrie's Great British Inventions or whatever (on Discovery?), about the 1920s? I never realised the Pioneer went all the way back to 1927.

Isnt the Spartan fuel filler recessed into the top of the hull? ISTR we always had problem with Spartans collecting crud on the roof which made its way into the filler and with the best will in the world, the filter didn't and we'd need the fuel system cleaned out again.

I wonder with the drawdown of troops in BAOR how many times a day these days a squaddy runs across the dam, arms outstretched roaring the Dambusters theme.

The British were upset when the Russians displayed IS-3 at the Berlin parade becaue we thought we'd been clever keeping Centurion quiet, only to get trumped. However poor IS-3 was, we were very quick to develop Conqueror to keep apace.

I was sure there was something very similar for mounting a UK/PRC352 on, but we only had a couple (of 352s) in the regiment, they stayed permanently locked in my RSO Signals Store and only after I left did the radio fit for CVR(T) change from 2 times UK/VRC353 to 1 times 353 and 1 times 351/2. Probably wrong - I usually am.

My best friend from pre-army days saw how I enjoyed the RAC and promptly joined the R Signals. He spent a long time with 3 Armd Div Signals and HQ Regt (IIRC) in Soest. At the end of his tour they asked him where he'd like to go. " UK posting please." They sent him to Benbecula. He wasn't amused eben if, technically, Benbecula was a UK posting (as indeed was Op Banner), finished his 9 nine years' commitment and went to work on the oil rigs.

In March 1982, 15/19H were admin regiment for Vogelsang Training Area in the Schnee Eiffel on the German / Belgian border in the Ardennes. It actually probably only took a squadron to run the place, so by taking the whole regiment (less A Sqn - Close Recce and permanently detached to their battlegroups), most of us were able to spend time making use of the facilities. One day I found myself on duty operator. Most of the traffic concerned infantry range statuses. Then up popped a NoDuff. Noduff was a message telling the net that this was a real, not an exercise message (and no DF-ing of the traffic was allowed because it was cheating - hence Noduff). The use of Noduff was not common and it resulted in everyong sitting up, taking notice and minimising traffic to give priority to Noduff traffic. Basically it transpired that on the LAW range, an RAOC had fired off his 66 (M72?) with the weapon not properly locked open. (I never got to play with a 66, but basically AIUI, you opened it up, locked it, fired it and threw it away - after stamping on it to crush it to stop the empty weapon being put to any malicious use by anyone passing by later.) The result was that his arm was now hanging by a thread and might they have medical assistance please? Well it all kicked off. Soon it was lunchtime. Had I not been manning the command net, I'd have been in the back of the one-tonner with the rest of the FHQ corporals delivering lunches around all the ranges our regiment was using. Good job I wasn't. The driver lost it on a tight bend on a steep track down to a range. It rolled, several times and behaved like a dice-beaker, the hay boxes being the dice. I missed out on one of several broken bones. Picking up a Noduff message for the vehicle I might have been in was quite sobering.