AlienFTM

At Tankfest 2009 a friend of mine, ex-3RTR (Armoured Farmers) had a stand where he sold paintings (originals and prints) and copies of his book and took commissions for new work. He told us all later that he was intially put out that he could have sold any item with a Balkenkreuz many times over and they were in far greater demand than his British Army stuff. Still it convinced him he could go full time and took on the chin the fact that he would have to roll out Tiger and Panther pics in much greater numbers. http://www.malcyart.co.uk/

That pic is SO evocative. If not Lionheart (1984) it could be any divisional or bigger FTX of the 70s or 80s. I'd assume it was an FTX, since they have allowed the RE to build a bridge / ferry and let the troops cross. But then again I suppose it could be any RE exercise and they have let their own vehicles across. Not the custom windscreen made of three pieces of perspex mounted on a simple bracket attached to whatever mounting was available and edged and the joints sealed with "Black Nasty" duct tape (or masking tape as we called it). No idea about the unit. It's B Sqn / Coy / Bty / whatever (square). In 15/19H we painted our squadron tac signs battleship grey (maybe yellow in the early years) but they were done by stencil and IIRC we never bothered to fill in the stencil holes. That pic and the miserable weather outside take me back 30 years in a flash. Thanks for that.

It's a long time ago now. We had Mark 2 with Three-Oh Brownings in NI and Cyprus and Mark 1 with ditto in BAOR. All between 1976 and 1982. Memory tells me every one of them still had the Bren fittings but we never had a Bren to put in it. As another poster said, we just used to sling the SMGs inside wherever was convenient. In fact in 15/19H I cannot really remember a time when any personal weapon was placed in its mount on any vehicle be it FSC, CVR(T), Saracen, Land Rover, 4-tonner etc etc. If the weapon was signed out it was with us at all times and racking / unracking on mounting / dismounting was a waste of valuable time.

Late at night. Bloke climbs the stairs on the Routmaster and as he gets near the top, he sees the conductor. "'Scuse me mate, is it okay if I bring me curry up here?" "Go ahead." "BLEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURGH."

It was basically a Fox without a turret but the body was designed to maximise the space inside to cater for passengers.

There's a picture somewhere of EVERYBODY in that position!

ISTR reading on the ARRSE RAC Forum that when in the mid-80s the army realised what (IIRC) Iranians and Iraqis were doing to one-another's tanks, including Chieftains and T72s, the heavy side of the RAC suddenly became very uneasy about the invulnerability of Chieftain in the face of soviet armour. Stillbrew was not as well received (because of the problems that came with it) as CR1 was.

I have just been on ARRSE discussing boots. When I did my Scorpion gunner's course in 1976, I noticed a LG CoH was wearing unusual boots. He told me they were prototypes of something to replace DMS. In 1983, after the Falklands trench foot fiasco, it was rushed into service (after 14 years' development FFS) and when I left the army in 1989 there were rumours of a new Mark 2 boot because Boots, CH were so poor.

I learned recently that one of best friends and Army buddies has got himself a job at Bovvy and apparently spent Sunday doing work inside the Tiger turret. things must have changed. In my day, "working inside the turret" was a euphemism for "sleeping off a hangover". 1. Nobody will find you. 2. If anyone thinks to look inside the turret for you, you stand a chance of hearing them and looking busy. 3. If you don't hear them, when they look inside the hatch, all they'll see is the top of your head and can reasonably assume you are checking out the gunner's / commander's (delete as appropriate) sight. Just don't snore. SUCH a giveaway. Catnapping in the turret. Mmm yes that takes me back.

Until (very) recently 1RTR formed the Army contribution to the Joint CBRN Regiment. I understand in the last few days from ARRSE that the RAF have withdrawn from this and now 1RTR have dropped the word Joint from their role. According to wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Armoured_Corps ): The information is at least a year old, since this list appears under "Future Deployments" and lists QDG as being in Osnabruck, which closed a year ago. But you get the drift.

I don't know? Am I? This was about ten years ago. Next time I visited WHL, no such UN-marked vehicles caught my attention, and since then I have used other means significantly reduce the walk from public transport to ground.

And UN markings. I remember passing it once while walking from Seven Sisters underground to White Hart Lane. Bit of a surprise and a memory jerk.

Wow only three after mine (33BA81): nice.

Two goldfish in a tank. One says, "How do you fire the gun in this thing?"

They transferred the freedom over from 13/18H, parents of the Light Dragoons. This parade that Bazz was at was to transfer the freedom of Newcastle from 15/19H (our former regiment and Light Dragoons' other parent) to Light Dragoons. And to welcome them back from Op Panther's Claw.

I always thought it looked a good colour scheme if I am honest.

When we collected our command Troop Saracen ACVs from the vehicle depot at Moenchenstrapback in 1978, I was aware of a long line of Ferrets painted sand with green cam over the top and stencilled BAOR OVERLOAD. Never did work out exactly what it was about, but the implication was that there was an excess of FSCs. Come to think of it, I think they were Mark 2s and as discussed recently, maybe they had been withdrawn from the battlegroup recce troops to be replaced by CVR(T)s from the divisional Armd Recce Regt.

That had me in a bit of a sweat. My last rebro Ferret was 33BA81 and I reckoned it was the oldest vehicle in Alanbrooke Bks, Paderborn in 1981

I continued to come across red / white painted nuts on Ferrets in particular late into the 1970s. I can particularly picture them on the UNFICYP Ferrets in 1976-7.

I had on-the-job Ferret driver training in NI on arrival from Basic Training. A couple of months back in Tidworth then a 6-month UN tour of Cyprus, for which it was mandated that any designated Ferret driver without formal training get formal training, so for a couple of days in August 1976, we sat around in the sun and listened to a RNZAC Staff Sergeant on exchange as he covered the maintenance aspect of D&M, then we took a Group B driving test. The only thing that stays with me after all this time was he said what has been said here. It is quite legitimate to activate the GCP for a downshift with the throttle down. Think about it. You are bombing uphill and losing speed, needing to change down. You are going to smack the GCP which will do all the gearchanging in the blink of an eye and the fluid flywheel is going to guarantee a smooth change. Why lift your foot off before smacking the GCP? All that is going to happen is you are going to lose revs and road speed. Obviously same style of gearbox in Saracen, but the greater weight means you are more likely to lose revs uphill and have to change down. As oily says, be firm with the GCP. Only ever kick it hard and release immediately or you'll risk a false neutral. It is truly squaddie-proof. Particularly with Saracen. False neutral in a Saracen and you will knee yourself in the face whilst trying to get a free-wheeling steel monster back under control. I cannot really remember driving Saracen. Again, my role made a Saracen qualification worthwhile since we used them as ACVs. Did a Group B test (again). Apart from one Endex returning from the railhead at Paderborn Nord doing 50kph round the ringroad past the high school that was just coming out and all the "sixth formers" were heading for same pub ("Uncle Tom's Cabin") that we would be after a hot bath to get a week's CPX out of the system. Must have been Ex Summer Sales, probably 1979. I remember that at speed, the easiest way to maintain a straight course was actually to rock the steering wheel within the limits of the feedback through the steering wheel from the power steering. Sorry if that sounds nonsensical - it's easier to do than describe. So I don't really remember the gearchange on Saracen. On Ferret ISTR that 1st gear was gated anyway so that you could not select it unless you really thought you needed it, because you pulled away in second. One other driving SOP that springs to mind. The routine of the gearchange was to select gear, smack GCP, rev up, select next gear up, so that the next gear was always pre-selected (hence the name), then when you got into top, pre-select the next gear down immediately after the change. It becomes second nature. Pointless having a pre-selective gearbox and no gear pre-selected.

Well I bow to Steve's superior knowledge as it is a subject I haven't looked at in 30 years and my memory is full of lots of other useless stuff now.

When I use the term simplified, I was 1. thinking of less rubber that could not be imported and 2. as touched upon, the layout was simplified so that if a centre inside wheel needed to be replaced, it was not necessary to remove almost the whole suspension from that side.

It occurs to me that you haven't specified that your Ferret is a Mark 1? After the advent of CVR(T), the Mark 2/x Ferret disappeared from the RAC BAOR Orbat. This suggests to me that if your Ferret is in fact a Mark 2, it must have belonged to Recce Troop, in which case I'd expect the crew to be wearing denims as explained above. With the advent of CVR(T), battlegroup recce for the two divisional armoured regiments and three mechanised infantry battalions was provided by the divisional Armd Recce Regt Close Recce Squadron in Scimitars. I suspect this happened in 1976 when brigades were replaced by task forces. 15/19H were not in BAOR at that time. Parkas were issued on G1098 ("G10" for short) temporary loan rather than 1157 standard kit issue and were like rocking horse droppings. In the absence of a parka, I wore a 3/4-length cut-down parka. The shortened parka made getting in and out of a Ferret much easier. I also wore my (black civilian) motorcycle gauntlets as Gloves, Combat - similar to Gloves, NI - did not come out until later. Out of camp, almost any black boots were tolerated (and better than DMS in the cold and wet) apart from Doc Martens. I personally wore US issue boots (but did not get on with them because I could not get a pair wide enough for my feet) before inheriting a pair of Bundeswehr Panzerstiefel: fur-lined jackboots for tank crews. I swapped them for my Ferret commander's helicopter pilot boots but our feet were a half size different and we swapped back the next day. I cannot remember anyone wearing Boots NI, but again QRIH were exempted from Op Banner. I can still remember the CO seeing me on stag around our battlegroup HQ in six inches of snow wearing greatcoat, jackboots and gauntlets and laughing as he suggested I looked like something out of Op Barbarossa. But I was warm.

We had one QRIH in our intake at the RAC Training Centre, Cambrai Bks, Catterick in 1975. I cannot honestly remember him not wearing a navy beret, so I have to concur. Note that 5 Innis DG were an entirely different regiment. In 1975 we were only issued with 2 times khaki flannel (KF) shirts and two times shirts, Number 2 Dress. There was an Airtex Shirt OG was issued to us for our tour of Cyprus in 1976 - 77 but it was not standard RAC issue. We continued to wear those issued in Cyprus on our return until they disintegrated, unless the dress order specified something else. The green Shirt GS was still not on issue in 1985. Working very close to the QM's Clothing Store, I was assured that so long as there were KF shirts piled up in depots, the QMG had no intention of ever releasing GS shirts. Obviously eventually they did. In 15/19H we supplemented our No 2 Dress Shirts with NAAFI khaki shirts which looked the same but had pockets and epaulettes (unlike No 2 Dress shirts until the early 80s) so they could be worn in shirt-sleeve order. NAAFI shirts could always be worn in lieu if No 2 Dress but not always vice versa. We kept (at least one of) our No 2 Dress shirts for best and otherwise always wore No 2 Dress or NAAFI clone shirts. Note that in 15/19H we also wore (self-funded from the PRI) a blue terry towel neckscarf much of the time. Sometimes an RSM might ban the wearing of No 2 Dress shirts for guard duty and demand KF. Since wearing the scarf was obligatory on guard, most of the itchiness from the KF shirt (around the collar) was alleviated. As stated, lightweights, combat jacket (for the early 70s you really want the original DPM version as the next did not come out until about 1975), DMS boots and puttees are entirely valid, with Jersey HW (in wool without epaulettes: the later, more polyester with epaulettes is after the period you are looking for). Note that vehicle crews tended to live in "Baggy Green Skins" - Coveralls, Man's, Lightweight, Olive Drab for QRIH. Unless you portray a Command Troop Ferret, which is most likely what yours was. In Command Troop 15/19H, only the Sultan (and before that Saracen) drivers wore denims (which is RAC-speak for overalls, whereas elsewhere denims is army-speak for lightweight trousers). Rank badges tended to be carried on an olive brassard (some poseurs bought DPM brassards). In the early 70s, rank badges were the traditional chevrons as worn on No 2 Dress and wolly pullies. If someone had come back from Op Banner (which would not be QRIH as a regiment, but I suppose they could volunteer for ERE as individuals), rank badges might be blacked out to make them less of a target (hence the camouflage rank badges which came out toward the end of the decade.) When wearing denims, it was normal to wear the combat jacket over the top. And if it was cold enough for a combat jacket, in Paderborn it would be cold enough for an olive drab parka. Underneath the denims, in summer we tended to wear only underpants and socks, much to the annoyance of the RMO who would forever warn of the carcinogenic properties of some of the oils we used so watch out for testicular cancer - which I have done ever since, but not being primarily a driver, I tended not to swim in the stuff like some, eh Bazz? In a mid-1970s RAC regiment there were the following Ferrets: RSM (Command Troop) - callsign 95 Troop Sergeant (Rebro Ferret) (Command Troop) - callsign 98 Second Rebro Ferret (commanded by a Lance Corporal - me) (Command Troop) - callsign 98A LO Ferret (Command Troop) (dunno the callsign - probably 92 - ours only ever deployed once in five years on Ex Spearpoint as an umpire where we used ad hoc callsigns like 4 Hotel 6 - me) One Ferret per sabre squadron (SSM) (in the late 70s Armd Recce Regt, AFAIK the Close Recce Sqn SSM did not get a Ferret but I could be wrong and it's outside the scope of your interest anyway). ISTR QRIH were still in Barker Barracks, Paderborn when 15/19H deployed to Alanbrook Barracks, Paderborn in October 1977, but I do remember that this was a period of significant Arms Plot movement as 3 Armd Div came online. I am sure QRIH and The Royal Hussars moved out and 3RTR moved in shortly after we did. I have 4/7RDG in my mind too, but they had been in Tidworth alongside us in 1976 to be replaced by 3RTR so my memory may be playing tricks. Like Peter says, best bet is to contact QRH. The person you really want is the PRI (President of the Regimental Institute) who runs a regimental shop - or institute. He might be able to advise whether QRIH had a neckscarf like ours (but probably in green rather than blue like ours). Actually I vaguely recall seeing people take an army issue olive drab hand towel, cutting it lengthways making it incredibly like the navy scarf in all but colour. We also had people who cut their navy scarves right down to only a couple of inches wide and barely long enough to go around the neck as the full scarf was quite cumbersome. The scarf was worn inside the shirt. Again, feel free to ask.

Tucked away in Bovvy is a Panther F Schmalturm. A refresher. Panther A, B and C were pre-production. Panther D was the first service version. When they worked on the next Ausfuehrung, somebody misheard E (pronounced eh in German) and heard it as ah - A, and the second iteration of Panther was therefore, not-logically, Panther A. The final production Panther was the G. "So what happened to F?" I hear you ask. Panther F was a major redesign featuring among other things simpler road wheels (which became standard on late Tiger 1s) and layout and a longer, narrow turret or Schmalturm. It became known as Panther II before eventually being reworked again and becoming Tiger II. The RAC were mortified when they realised that one of the hard targets at Lulworth was in fact the only known remaining Panther II Schmaltrum. It was recovered to Bovvy and tidied up as far as possible (which wasn't much) and put on display to demonstrate the effects of armour-defeating rounds.