AlienFTM

Alien

 

What colour would the brassard be would it be OG or DPM?

 

Jak

 

 

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Take your pick mate. You were buying this as a private deal between you and the regimental tailor (seamstress) or maybe the PRI* - it was over 30 years ago. The grown ups would tell you what was and was not allowed on uniforms in the individual unit: green or DPM, camouflage or No2 dress tapes. However, the tailor / seamstress had a living to make and sold whatever sold. When attached personnel were posted in (atts and dets were normally on trickle postings and didn't tend to move around on the Arms Plot that dictated which regiments went where, as a body, so they literally trickled into and out of the unit) we might sometimes see camouflage tapes or DPM brassards. Whether their arms were twisted into buying our unit's brassards depended on whether they could keep out of the grown-ups' bad books. If a VM was posted in from an RTR regiment, he could be expected to exchange his black overalls for green for free, but since the brassard was self-purchased, there was good cause for them to hold back from buying new. The legend that was JC, my last cavalry RSM, now sadly RIP, made sure he saw everybody by the simple expedient of introducing an RSM's parade every Wednesday.

Since in a cavalry regiment we had camouflage tapes on our combat jackets anyway (brassard not to be worn on combats for guard duty), the function of our brassards was to allow us not to have to send our (green) overalls off to the dhobi with tapes on and get someone else's back without. We might reasonably expect to get our own overalls back, but this could prove optimistic. Hence all NCOs wore brassards with No2 rank badges on the right arm with overalls (it wasn't unknown for troopers to wear them without rank badges, to give them an extra pocket and some pen holes).

This book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/15th-19th-Kings-Royal-Hussars/dp/1855630044

(written by my first troop leader, unusually a staff sergeant, later curator of the 15/19H museum within Newcastle's Discovery Museum, now retired) contains a picture of what I am certain is the back of my head while the front of me was being inspected by my troop sergeant. It should, if memory serves, give a good shot of such a brassard. Zero Alpha on my Domestic Command Net (the household's senior control station, aka my wife) stumbled across the book at a huge discount at a Southampton Balloon Festival a good few years ago but I haven't seen it in a long time. It must be knocking around somewhere: it isn't something that would go in the annual clearout to the Bovington Christmas Fayre.

_____

*PRI President of the Regimental Institute. Strictly speaking the PRI was the crusty old staff sergeant who ran the PRI's Shop, where you could buy:

• accoutrements to be worn with uniform including:
  • regimental blue scarf worn with combats and on exercise

  • regimental belt worn with No2s and by duty personnel with barrack dress

  • stable belt worn by others in barrack dress (later replaced by an issued nasty plastic green web belt)

  • brass cap badge

  • red felt to sit behind the beret badge (or cut the shape out of the cover of the Regimental Journal in an emergency)

   

   

  [*]Regimental journal (if you lost the one they made you buy anyway and you really wanted another)

  [*]Regimental books (Ralphy Thompson's book above would be a classic example but it was only published three years prior to amalgamation to become the Light Dragoons)

  [*]Anything with a regimental badge on

  [*]civvy kit approved for wear with uniform, for example a nasty bright-green waterproof (later thankfully replaced by DPM, then issued

  [*]anything else where the regiment felt it could separate squaddie from his beer tokens.

   

[ATTACH=CONFIG]89193[/ATTACH]I don't see a QOY connection on this Merlin Report.

Also intrigued that the first Merlin date is 1988. This vehicle will have been around for the best part of 15 years by then. It cannot surely have been QRIH ever since its build. I am sure QRIH moved out of Paderborn in 1978, leaving their Chieftains to 3RTR, but I could be wrong.

Just a week or two back I was talking with some ex-3RTR WOT buddies and telling them that the M36 Jackson tank destroyer was the chavvy council estate cousin to the M18 Greyhound tank destroyer, like chav tankies were to cavalry. Yes, they bit big time, though as one did concede, harsh but fair.

Hi,

 

Can anyone tell me what equipment would be carried by a platoon signaller in addition to CEFO?

 

and

 

What kind of rank and trade badges would be on the combat jacket and jumper?

 

Regards,

Bob covers it in the first reply.

My two penn'orth.

If you really really want something different, for Ex Spearpoint 80, all Colloquial and above German-speakers (that would be me, the Linguist, then) where issued a strip of six Bundeswehr roundel cockades, meant for their forage caps but worn by us on the left sleeve a stated distance from the shoulder. I forget now, but it meant that on a Combat Jacket it ended up sat on top of the upper arm pocket. It was mounted square, not diamond like the Bundeswehr.

This allowed the public to identify people who could give them any sort of answer. There was never an instruction to remove the badges: I wore mine on combats right up until the day I left in 1989. I still have an 85-pattern that bears the last one.

In the late 70s we started to get rank badges in black on green squares to be worn on combats. Some, who bought brassards with rank badges, wore combat rank badges on the brassard. Others wore No2 style. I always wore the latter with overalls. Which badges to wear on brassards (and whether brassards were allowed) came down to unit policy.

In NI prior to the issue of combat rank badges, No2 badges were worn on combats and normally blacked (or blued if that was the only ink you could get from the NAAFI) out. Newly-promoted Lance Jacks might leave their chevrons clean to emphasise to the Troopers that they were now in an elevated position (I had a troop Lance Jack like that). In the field, if you had No2 style rank badges, there was no compunction in our regiment to change them, but if you were promoted or replaced your clothing, you put your kit into the regimental tailor and it came back in accordance with policy.

In units where I served (15/19H, 12 Armd Wksp and RAPC Computer Centre) locally-made rank badges for shirt sleeves came in white, probably made up from condemned bedsheets. The chevrons on the shirt in the pic may have been approriatein the Light Infantry or light infantry or other units as per local custom.

Well, I will be damned! I just read the wikipedia link and it is actually 105mm. In the army we always referred to them as 106's. Now I know they were called 106's instead of 105's so as not to cause confusion. Well there you go. Im less confused now.

It may just be to do with the rifling. I remember reading (don't ask me where) that Americans measure the calibre (caliber?) of a weapon trough to trough, whereas the imperial measurement of calibre is ridge to ridge. Or maybe it was like the gun on the Comet tank, which was referred to as a 77mm even though it was 76.2mm, so as not to confuse it with the 76.2mm gun on the late Shermans.

Does it not mean literally what it says? Reading Charger in the classic military sense of Steed?

So the mounts of Commanders of Troops or Batteries.

I would assume this. By my time, the term used on the orbat was "rover" (note no capital, though the CO's rover, callsign 9 - something else after 1 July 82 - was usually a Land Rover).Confusion because, although the orbat said that the CO's rover was a Mark 1 Ferret, the CO would bag one of the Command Troop Land Rovers and consign the RSM (possibly the only man in the regiment with more time in than the CO) to a Mark 1 Ferret.

Ditto Squadron OC and his SSM.

Bear in mind that Chieftains only came off the production line and into the orbat as Mark 2, Mark 3 and Mark 5. Mark 1 was the prototype, two times Mark 4 were built and evaluated. ISTR in a book for which I still have a review to write for Army Rumour Service that one ended up as a gate guardian somewhere (over 30 years ago) and the other ended up as a hard target at Kirkudbricht but I am working from memory.

Once the Mark 5 run was complete, existing Chieftains were cycled out of service, rebuilt, modified and updated in a programme known as Op Totem Pole (in a previous post on HMVF I mistakenly referred to this as Op Barge Pole).

So at some point the Mark 10 would have been a 2, a 3 or a 5 with possibly another mark in between. But as has been said, it will have always retained the same VRN.

The VRNs (I use the term loosely) were generally issued in sequence and in tranches. If you identify when the VRN in question was issued (as I believe has already been done in this thread) you can determine what mark was being built at that time and assume that this vehicle was built as this mark.

Attending a Light Dragoons Regimental Association weekend a handful of years ago, I am sure I remember being told that the tranche of new Scimitar (1)s they were taking with them on their upcoming Herrick tour had only just been converted to Bowman, as had the crews. I have a handful of Light Dragoon Regimental Journals handy, but there are a few of them and I have to at least pretend to be working.

I think that was about 2009 but I really cannot remember. They say it's the memory that goes first. Just remind me, who were they? I forget.

... she advised him to trim off the edges of his moustache.

Nothing whatever to do then, with primitive gas masks of unknown efficacy leading both sides to instruct soldiers that if they had to wear a moustache, it must be trimmed so in order not to compromise the gas seal. Or it being a badge of honour among German soldiers from an army "unbeaten in the field", "betrayed by the Jews".

Glad that's cleared up.

No standard DPM, but no para of the era would have been seen dead in anything but L/W trousers - with sewn creases

There used to be Trousers OG, similar to Lightweights but fuller cut, cross-over and buckle fastening (iirc) instead of a simple button. Button fly and heavier weight than Lightweights. Functionally they were identical to Lightweights. We were issued two pairs each when we arrived in Nicosia as UNFICYP Force Reserve Squadron (Ferret Scout Cars) in 1976. In many, many units, combat trousers are sneered on. In the 70s and 80s they also cost a lot more (total cost od ownership) than Lightweights etc. Combat jacket and "Lightweights" were de rigeur in these regiments, including 15th/19th Hussars.

An issue of two pairs of OGs along with our Lightweights times 2 on our 1157 gave us enough pairs trousers to have one clean, one on and two in the centralised laundry (aka "the dhobi"). Likewise we got five times Shirt OG (aertex) to compliment any of our own KFs or No 2 or private purchase shirts.

Sewn in creases were brilliant. Until they came back from the dhobi, pressed and starched ... with the dhobi crease an inch distant from the one sewn in, so you had to re-iron them.

I understood that Paras preferred / were issued with OGs as opposed to Lightweights but I could be wrong.

I have the IR detector mast and all the internal boxes (no cables) for this system if anyone needs them!

 

Chris

Wouldn't get too excited. I am currently reading a Chieftain book for Army Rumour Service review. It discusses the IR mast and the author (ex 4/7 RDG apparently) posits that they were so much effort to calibrate at dusk and kept giving false positives all night that this was another of the many items of kit that never left the troop stores.

Something most of us will have to decide as support for XP ends in 48 days time!

 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/endofsupport.aspx

 

I have W7 on one machine & don't like it. XP was more straightforward. But I find things like multifunction mice aren't supported on W7 so when the crunch comes I suppose it will be W8. To go for W7 would mean the support plug gets pulled that much sooner. :-(

Well that's interesting. 11 months ago I started getting pestered because I had a server on my desk running XP and Distiller 5 to create PDFs of Program Directories (installation instructions) for the software we produce.

Corporate standards demanded that we ditch XP on this server (for our personal machines the corporate standard is RHEL for anyone in any significant position to reduce the threat of malware) for Win7 before 31 Dec 13. We found we couldn't use Distiller with Win7 (it was also out of service but nobody had ever bothered us) so we sought an alternative solution. I raised a work item and by early Dec 13 there was much panic and sweating because things were not working. Last day before Christmas I switched off the server and ceremonially ripped the ethernet cable out. It's now in doorstop mode at the end of the desk with a sign NOT to connect to the network.

First day back, the guy I work closely with on issues such as these showed me a link to Microsoft which stated that XP had been extended to 2015. Oh how we both laughed long and loud (but we left the machine off because it would have to go sometime and we had a solution in place.

Interesting to see that Microsoft have moved their goalposts yet again.

Anyway back to the topic in hand.

In these days of broadband coming out of a router, the Network Address Translation function of the router makes for a de facto hardware firewall. Last time I looked, the only route to/from the world from a system behind an NAT firewall was outgoing. So your free firewall software, which protects outgoing traffic, is all you need. Your AV software requirements are basically similar. You do not need bloated AV software and I am firmly pointing my finger at Norton here. Because it's what we are provided at work, I used it at home, until I realised that every year my licence renewal was precessing because they'd demand the licence renewal a month in advance, make the computer essentially unusable on the web until you renewed, then they start your new year's licence immediately, forfeiting your last month's licence from the previous year. The complaint I wrote to Norton was savage. they ignored it. I ripped Norton off my machine and have ever since absolutely refused to allow anyone to pass favourable comment.

Btw, having RHEL on our ThinkPads, we have Norton for Linux running. That's a corporate licence thing and I have no control. Actually a decade or so back we dropped Norton because they made a change and rendered their software unsuitable for our corporate use. A couple of years later, they sorted it and we are back (but now, as I say, those of us who matter are all on Linux, RHEL by default).

At home I have used AVG AV and Zone Alarm firewall (which the corporation used in the Norton gap years). They both do the job to my satisfaction.

BUT.

Be aware that products like Zone Alarm and Adobe Reader will try and force you to accept one-month free trials of paid-for software (Adobe try to force AVG upon you; Zone Alarm will take over your home page and search engine unless you can find the devious small print that stops it). You do NOT need to accept any of these offers but they will but every obstacle in your way to make you do so.

The 18 pdr Limber at Fort Nelson is a well made replica, one of two made for the film Michael Collins.

 

 

 

Rob..................rnixartillery.

every day is a training day

I had a detachable hood throughout my career (75-89). In fact at some point in the first seven years I found myself with two. I always had one fitted (even to the 85-pattern jacket by the simple expedient of adding a button from the outgoing jacket the the back of the neck on the 85-pattern) except when on guard duty and might expect a grown-up to inspect me.

The second one, I found I could JUST use it to cover to cover my steel helmet and hold in place by pulling the drawcord tight. Scrim net over the top, job's good.

I took my granddaughter to Fort Nelson, near Portsmouth, last month. At 5 years, she is plenty old enough to learn about what her granddad did during the (Cold) War and she loved the 1 o'clock guns.

We mooched in the long, tent-like shed next to the arena and I saw a limber which looked like a 25pdr limber but wasn't (sadly I cannot remember what it was: I suspect it was either a 13pdr or an 18pdr limber. Fort Nelson is free. Maybe worth a look?

 

Why walk, when you can ride?

Or "Why carry your weapon into battle when you can let your weapon carry you."

Thought I should update this thread......

 

...Good news.

 

..... V5 Registration Document and a Tax Disc dropped through my letterbox last Saturday.... (21st Dec) !!!

 

Sabre now registered..... UOA 581L

It would be highly appropriate if any of the documentation lists a UIN A0124A, since that would make it at some point a 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars vehicle and 21 December is the anniversary of the battle of Sahagun, where 15th Light Dragoons (Hussars) alone charged and destroyed a French cavalry brigade just prior to the start of the retreat to Corunna.

Since 15/19H are now The Light Dragoons, post 1992 the UIN would need to be that of The Light Dragoons (for whom Sahagun remains the primary battle honour). Sadly after my time and I have no idea.

It's been a long time since I watched so correct me if I am wrong, but my memory tells me that there were Cromwells on 432 chassis (along with StuG and maybe something else).

Does this help? Is the film any on here?

 

http://www.imcdb.org/vehicles.php?make=Daimler&model=Ferret+Scout+Car&modelMatch=1&modelInclModel=on

Sadly not. I suspect because the FSC appeared in a newsreel film within the feature film, the connection hasn't been made.

Has anyone ever seen, heard of, or used their ferret mk2 turret to crane the spare or the wheels from their hubs? Just thought it may have been tried as a field fix? Also, ever notice how a toilet plunger mounted where the gun protrudes makes them look like a really mean, four wheeled DALEK? (DR Who 50th anniv after all.)

Cheers, Drew

Changed five tyres by hand on 01EC28 probably September - October 1976 (Nicosia, UNFICYP Force Reserve Squadron) and it was a bitch.

I am sure we have had this discussion before. About 1979 at the Barker Barracks, Paderborn Globe SKC Cinema I saw a film about a group of people put into nuclear bunkers to run a world racing toward apocalypse. Among the various montages of unrest and military intervention was footage of 01EC28 which was obviously memorable to me. Did you ever manage to find out what the film was called?

I was always led to believe that the CVRT was designed to be driven in the water by 'paddle wheels' attached to the final drive sprockets, which allowed some steering as well as given better propulsion.

 

I must say I'm amazed that anyone would risk their vehicle (and crew) by floating it untested, and set up in a manner dictated by a film company.

Two more penn'orth.

I cannot for certain agree that CVR(T) was designed to be driven in the water by 'paddle wheels' attached to the final drive sprockets. Whether it was designed to, then they found they didn't make that much difference, or they developed later, too late to be of use, I don't know.

When I swam one at Ludgershall in 1977 those paddles were not available to us. They were not on the CES at any time between 76 and 82 (the years I served in armoured recce on CVR(T)) - or if they were on the CES, there were never any in stock or on issue - and neither did I see them issued to the armoured recce regiments who would be the people expected to swim them. They were propelled purely by the turning of the tracks in what I imagine to be drive generated in loosely the same way as the fluid flywheel.

By 1982 the float screens had been removed and binned, so the existence of the paddle wheels becomes academic.

I was at the time vaguely aware that CVR(T) had had paddle wheels developed, just as they had had fibreglass track skirts developed, which were also not fitted in the line, since first time they knocked a tree, they'd break. More effort for run of the mill service than they were worth.

Wondering if there's any plans, to bring any of the rare outside rusty hulks under cover ? Ie Sherman BARV or the Churchill 3" gun carrier etc etc.

 

regards

stuart

I was at Bovvy weekend before last, passing on (mainly) ex-review books (for Arrse) for sale at the upcoming Christmas Fayre. Before having the pleasure of 131 passing six feet from me as I left, I couldn't help but notice that the waste ground between the car park and the army-side hangars, that has been jam packed with derelicts for years, is now looking decidedly bare. I suspect they are already moving stuff under cover.

Or a meringue?

I know it's just business as usual, but it was an amusing coincidence to be behind a Challenger 2 driving through Bovington yesterday and then a Bulldog through Bordon this morning!

 

Andy

Funnily enough something similar happened to me yesterday. I was at Bovvy to pass on a couple of boxes of ex-review books (Courtesy Army Rumour Service) to be sold at Bovvy's Christmas Fair in a couple of weeks.

The deed done, I drove off. Zero Alpha pointed and said, "Tank." My immediate reaction was, "This is the Tank Museum." Then I realised it was 131. Like the two cars in front of me, I pulled over. Then I got out, whipped out camera and snapped a dozen pics as it passed about six feet away. Like you say, business as usual, but Zero Alpha got excited and that's good enough for me.

Is it really a DD Scorpion with a drive train to a propeller, giving two different drives (ie Duplex Drive) or is it just a Scorpion with a float screen that predates them being removed about 1980 when BAOR realised there were no rivers in the Corps Area that were suitable for floating Scorpions? Like the ones our squadron floated at Ludgershall in 1977?

I just finished a book on Tiger I and Tiger II Images of War by Pen & Sword or something for an Arrse review. There are a few paragraphs on paint (though more the tins of cam paint to go on top of the Dunkelgelb base in the last couple of years of the war - the book debunks the idea that there was still regular production of tanks in Panzergrau once the Dunkelgelb colour was adopted mid-war).

It passed comment that as issued (I had also read this elsewhere previously) a tin of green, one of red-brown and potentially others with new tanks so that crews might cam up their own tanks as required, the paint was extremely thick and needed to be diluted. Petrol was good but in short supply. Water worked, but the paint was not permanent and washed off. The amount of thinner added significantly affected the shade of the paint, such that olive green could appear almost black.

A lot of information in a couple of paragraphs.

If you are a Panzer lover (I fear HMVF would not tolerate the term I'd rather have used, "lover of Panzer [rhymes with shorn]"), it is an interesting book that goes a long way to debunk the many myths about Tiger and all its variants.

I have been looking through my vehicle record card (101 GS) and trying to find what/who out a few entries relate to:

 

in 1988 the vehicle served with "42 AM CDO". Could that be 42 Commando?

 

The other two are "1 KOB", and that entry is for 1987, straight after it was with KOSB. Is KOB part of Kings Own Scottish Borders? I doubt if its Kings Own Borderers.

 

And finally, "MOD Aston Down"...is that just where it was stored before being sold off?

 

Thanks,

 

Mick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Own_Scottish_Borderers

For a period it was known as Semphill's Regiment of Foot, the name under which it fought at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. When the British infantry were allocated numerical positions in the 'line' of Infantry the regiment was numbered 25th Foot (based on its formation date) in 1751. The Regiment fought at the Battle of Minden on 1 August 1759 with five other regiments; this battle honour was celebrated by the Regiment each year on 1 August. The 25th was the county regiment of Sussex from 1782 to 1805, before its recruiting area was moved to the Scottish Borders region. From then it was known as the King's Own Borderers, becoming the King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1887.

Assuming that there is a typo in wiki and King's Own Borderers became the King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1987, it adds up.

Though TBH I thought the Kosbies were around before 1987. Unless KOB had a 101 GS in 1887 ... or 1 KOB was a TA unit paying a nod to the former regular regiment. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

The thlot pickens.