AlienFTM

I have vivid memories of working Salisbury Plain in the mid-70s with a C13 A set. We always, but always used a frequency somewhere in the 2MHz band toward the bottom of the range, tripping over shipping in the Channel which all seemed to use the same frequency. It was abysmal for a Recce squardon command net if I am honest and to this day I can hear the Squadron 2IC trying to raise his voice to castrato to try and make himself audible to RHQ. Now that I stop to think, I believe that later we found it easier to work at night at the other end of the HF spectrum (C13 went up to 30MHz). ISTR that Clansman HF sets (I am thinking UK/VRC321: manpacks may have had restrictions to save weight) worked the same frequency range: 1.5 - 30MHz - albeit with narrower channel spacing, thereby increasing the number of frequencies available - which actually butted right up against the bottom of the Clansman VHF range (again, thinking UK/PRC353: same caveats about manpacks) which covered 30 - 76MHz without the Larkspur coverage gap (1.5 - 30 HF; 36 - 60 VHF). Logic says that the lower the frequency (i.e. the further it is away from VHF), the less affect the polarity of the antenna will have on the signal, so that over long or very long ranges, logically low frequencies are better. This allows the use of sloping wire and dipole antennae to incease the airwave / skywave components of the transmitted signal (even if the latter requires an Ionosphere that starts to break up at sunset as solar radiation stops ionising the upper atmosphere). But it is still not really suitable for the short - medium ranges of a Recce squadron. We could fit adaptors to out HF antennae so that the rods sloped to improve the airwave component, but they naturally aligned with the direction of travel of the vehicle which was invariably the wrong way, favouring our transmissions to the enemy instead. VHF and higher-frequency signals are more sensitive to polarisation of the antennae. Accepted practice is to align said antenna vertically, since it would be impossible to know a horizontal bearing on which to align all antennae, especially on the move.. You may find you get a better mobile phone signal if you align the antenna vertically with the mast (but do you know in a modern digital phone which way the internal UHF antenna is aligned? I remember one occasion 15/19H in Paderborn, 13/18H in the UK and the 15/19H-affiliated frigate HMS Arrow, in Hong Kong, decided to play about with our HF and see if we could communicate efficiently. ISTR we were able to talk quiate happily with 13/18H but got not a peep out of Arrow. I think we may have sat there most of the night in case somebody had got Arrow's time zone wrong (even though we all always worked Zulu time on the radio unless the exercise was particularly trivial). We tried moving the droopy dipole up and down the regimental footbal pitch to get signal reflection off either HQ Squadron accommodation at one end or the QM Stores at the other without success. We tried aligning the dipole in the horizontal plane to maximise the signal in the direction of Hong Kong but to no avail.

Could you not simply disconnect the antenna from the back of the set? I would be amazed if the set could transmit any further than is permitted with, for example, Bluetooth devices. I think the law changed last year to allow something like 10m. But like I said in my last post on another thread somewhere, I am too idle to back up my statements with weblinks, so I could be wrong. Nobody would be able to detect anything without getting behind the sets and in my experience it's hard enough when you WANT to.

Crossed keys also symbolise 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, whose commander was Sepp Deitrich whose surname apparently translated as lockpick or something. Early in the war the symbol was a single key in a shield, which was changed later to feature two keys. (I think the oak leaves may have been added later too, to coincide with the general's oak leaves award to his Ritterkreuz. But I could be wrong. I really cannot be bothered to go and Google anything to support my case.) Absolutely no relation to this pic though, obviously.

IMO the whole raison d'etre of combats is not to be distinctive. (No opinions as to right or wrong in this post.)

Mine (my uncle's) is in better nick so nyer ner ner ner ner. But not better enough to crow about. Oops - I already did lol.

Not surprised. I have an image of watching Evita in a theatre somewhere - either Mayflower, Southampton or somewhere in the West End. I am sure it was a funeral (maybe Juan's? in 1956?), they showed contemporary newsreel film and I clocked a column of Shermans. As usual I could be completely wrong and talking utter rowlocks.

The term Canal Defence Light was a cover (like the name tank) so as not to give any clues as to purpose to a spy. What intrigues me is that it is on an M3 Medium Chassis. I am struggling here, but my memory is screaming CHURCHILL and a little voice is also whispering "Matilda ... Valentine ...". M3 was not my first guess. I read somewhere not so long ago (cannot remember where - sorry) about the practical application of a troop of CDLs whereby they could be spread apart at certain distances behind the sabre troops and (maybe by flashing the CDLs in phase) they could make the sabre troops disappear even though the CDLs would expect to be giving the enemy their silhouettes on a plate. I could of course be completely wrong.

Alan Whicker met Clark at the bridge to film him "breaking out" when Whicker was coming back, having already been into Rome.

Also to remember the D-Day Dodgers who liberated Rome on 4 June 1944.

... and my late uncle, encamped on the very land where I now sit at Hursley near Winchester as he and 25 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA prepared for their drive up an invasion beach in a year (on 10 July 1943 they landed on the south coast of Sicily; on 3 September the crossed the Straits of Medina to land at Regio Calabria; his battery (82 Bty) sailed from Southampton on 5 June 1944 to support the initial landings.

lol - a little trivia for you (sorry if some feel it's off-topic). ME163 built by Messerschmitt ME262 built by Messerschmitt JU87 built by Junkers JU88 built by Junkers DO17 built by Dornier FW190 built by Focke-Wulf etc, etc, ad nauseam ... ... but Bf109 and Bf110 - why?

WRT badges of rank. The Queen's Commission and the Queen's Warrant (as held by commissioned and warrant officers respectively) are granted by the Queen (read as King as appropriate). I once knew a man who bought a very good condition officer pattern raincoat from an Army Surplus Store which retained the Captain's pips on the shoulders. He was approached by the younger of two policemen who spotted him dressed this way (it seems the senior constable had given his junior the task) and asked if he were a Captain in the Army. When he replied in the negative, the policeman wanted to charge him under the uniforms act, only for my friend to ask if he LOOKED like he was impersonating a policeman (hair so far past the shoulder it was beyond the pale even for a cavalry officer). The policeman had to concede so my friend put him (and his colleague who had by now joined) in his place and walked off. It is my understanding that officer / warrant officer rank badges bearing the Queen's crown, Tate&Lyle, etc are somewhat more severely looked upon that mere NCO chevrons.

Interesting just this morning I once again received the following apocryphal tale: A great story - why let the facts get in the way? Only the latitude of the location on the A1 varies from telling to telling. It's full of more holes than you could shake a stick at (no doubt including the occasional typo during my manual transcription from a JPEG - though thank goodness for Firefox's spell checker).

It also worked the other way (though I am thinking Shermans here). Crews would paint OUT the white stars because they made an excellent, and more immediate, aiming mark for German tank and anti-tank crews sitting watching patiently in the hedgerows, whereas the risk of being accidentally hit by a fighter bomber flying at hundreds of miles an hour was not greatly mitigated by a white star when the vehicle is coated in dust and the engine decks are covered with bivvy, sleeping bags, etc anyway.

An ambulance driver will carry his personal weapon, whatever it might be. Any NCO would carry an SMG. In the RAC, Regimental Medical Assistants regardless of rank would carry an SMG, as would any other member of the regiment apart from assault troops (SLR) and senior officers (Browning 9mm pistol). A RMA serving in an infantry company in the rank of Pte (Rfn, etc) might carry an SLR. It would be an unusual set of circumstances where anybody might validly pull you up for incorrectly carrying an SMG as an ambulance crewman (unless perhaps you were carrying it with the muzzle to the shoulder and pointing the butt at the target). Furthermore, in 1982 I commanded a Samaritan as a one-off. Because my personal weapon was an SMG, it's what I carried. Had I been in Surveillance Troop and normally carried an SLR, I'd have crewed the Samaritan with an SLR. That's just how it is.

As stated previously it is commonly referred to as a 27 foot mast, used with Larkspur radios. When 15/19H took delivery of Clansman about 1979, our 27' masts were replaced by a selection of 8- and 12m metre masts. The friction locking rings on the 27' mast could be a bitch. ISTR 8- and 12m masts both had positive locking bolts which went through the mast, making it impossible to collapse accidentally. To collapse a 27' mast in a hurry, it was possible to undo the bottom locking ring and allow the whole thing to telescope under gravity, unrestrained. As each section closed, the smack was enough to release the next section and the whole collapsed in seconds. It did not do the mast any favours and it was a very messy process with cables going everywhere and fingers getting trapped if you did not step away. Either or both of the 8- and 12m masts were designed so that as each section collapsed, it soft-landed due to air trapped inside it. It was a shock being awoken by a self-collapsing 27' mast in the middle of the night, ALWAYS in inclement weather and in the dark.

At 12 Armd Wksp in the mid-80s, 'Ackers and Grinders made six bunks (three high, six feet long, either side of a central aisle) from an extruded (?) steel frame and canvas bedding of a similar shape to an issue camp bed. This all fitted inside the back of a bog-standard 4-tonner that was used as HQ's TCV. Worked very well. The beds were closed off by a canvas flap. The remainder of the space was used to stow webbing etc. By hot-bunking, everybody got a good night's sleep (except me: I did permanent nights on radio stag - but I did get a good day's sleep).

Move to Paderborn was October 1977, activating with 3 Armd Div on 1 Jan 78.

Then I find your post - I was going to refer to you in my reply to Baz. Yes mate, it was July 1977, the week after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone (we drove our wheels the length of the country on the Friday and queued forever while the crowds poured in for First Qualifying). Ex Trident. Did you get caught? I remember driving into Otterburn Camp where they (you) were being held, jumped out, saw a mukker and yelled, "How, Rickets! Yer aaaaaaaaaaalreet marra?" I got shushed by somebody because they supposedly did not even know which country they had dropped on and we weren't meant to give them any clues. I wonder how many NATO Special Forces soldiers were able to translate that sentence. Couple of years later in BAOR we got tasked to act as Goons at the RAF E&E School at Oberammergau. There we got a proper brief which included, "The only time you are allowed to speak to the prisoner is if he makes a break for it. The razor wire is brand new and will damage a very expensive pilot / special forces soldier. You are to shout, 'Watch out for the wire.'"

I suspect the revenue men are an urban myth mate. I was driving Jimmers, we were VERY close to the drops (we were Recce after all. Besides the drops were from unfeasibly low and if we hadn't got in close we simply would not have seen the drops) and we saw none of that nonsense. But why spoil a good story lol? ISTR the SAS on the exercise were TA. But hey, they were supposed to be as good as regulars. There again, we sent Surveillance Troop to the Boselager NATO Recce Competition every year and only ever made mid-table despite being the only regulars in NATO after the US debacle in Vietnam. Then a couple of years later I discovered that in the rest of the world "Recce" ("Recon" if yer american) is a euphemism for "Special Forces". What scared me more was that Surveillance Troop actually outperformed half of NATO's Special Forces.

Ground pressure of a CVR(T) ISTR is remarkably low, in the region of 15psi (as you can see above, not significantly greater than a human being) because it was designed to be light. That said, there is always some daft tw ... person who will, on being told a CVR(T)'s ground pressure is not greatly in excess of a human, will allow a CVR(T) to drive over his foot and wonder why it's crushed. When 15/19H deployed to BAOR with 3 Armd Div in late 1977, we collected Saracen ACVs because Sultan was still being built. For two years we were spoilt, being allowed to park RHQ and FHQs in barns. Then we got our Sultans and suddenly German farmers did not like us. "Keine Ketten" - "No tracks" was their universal cry. Then the RSM started taking German Colloquialist Tpr Alien on his pre-exercise recces where I'd explain to said farmers about the Niedriger Bodendrueck (low ground pressure) of the Aufklaerungspanzer (CVR(T)). The fact that somebody bothered to explain it to them in technical terms in their own language did the trick. Trouble was I was cursed thereafter with carrying out pre-exercise recces. If I ever find my one remaining batch of service photos, I must show you one I took at Lulworth Ranges in 1977. As Squadron Leader's driver, I drove into the squadron leaguer after everyone was settled, following the tracks of the Saracen ACV. The Scorpions hadly left a mark on the boggy ground we had been allocated, while the Saracen dug in to a depth of about six inches.

What everybody else said. We received our first issue of IRR paint in Paderborn about 1981 IIRC (IIRC is an unfortunate term when used in a sentence using IRR, eh?). I remember having to get the CVR(T)s spotlessly clean then sanding down the old paint and having something in the region of one spray gun per squadron. That application of paint was beautiful. On no other occasion did I ever see paint applied with a spray gun. ISTR our brand new, delivery mileage only Sultans arrived in 1979 already brush-painted black over the green base - but I could be wrong. In the German winter, start of 1981, I got my first spell in a long time the turret of a Scorpion, Commanding 22C. It was the only time I ever saw: 1. Winter whitewash cam paint; 2. Winter cam net. The whitewash was meant to cover 1/2 of the green base, leaving the vehicle green / black / white in equal proportions. ISTR the white cam net amounted to a couple of square feet per vehicle, about enough to break up the shape of the Scorpion mantlet.

Sadly I cannot think of a Ferret configuration that would make a 321 a good idea. "Why a 321?" I hear you ask. Set to AM, down in the low frequencies offered by the military HF waveband, you ought to be able to tune in to one or two MW broadcasts (though of course these days MW is a dirty word). With UNFICYP, not having enough VHF C42s to go round, half the Squadron wired up C13 A sets to provide I/C and B47 B sets to provide comms. As Troop Leader's driver I had C42 / B47, but when I crushed a finger under the Canadian antenna base we used when patrolling BritCon East, I had a week in the turret excused driving while the Troop Lance Corporal recovered from "falling and breaking his nose a la Mick McCarthy." First day out patrolling AusCon, I climbed into 24C (Two Four Charlie), donned Larkspur headset and found my driver had tuned the C13 into The Voice of Peace, Lebabon's answer to Radio Caroline broadcasting to the Eastern Mediterranean. "What's the point of having the C13 on for no reason other than to provide I/C and listening to white noise?" This was a Saturday morning. I couldn't help as the section climbed round the outside of a quarry near the border with Northern Cyprus but think of previous Saturday morning when I had listened to Radio 1 before heading off to Roker Park for the football and who would Sunderland be playing today. I was sat listening to ABBA's latest hit (Dancing Queen?) and for the only time in my career I felt homesick. I'd have been fine listening to the Troop Leader and monitoring the Squadron Command Net. Shortly after we returned from UNFICYP, 15/19H minus (minus A Sqn who had replaced us in UNFICYP and C Sqn, Cyprus Sovereign Base Armoured Car Squadron) travelled to Otterburn Training Area for Ex Trident, where we played Orange Forces for a Special Forces exercise in Kielder Forest (now the bottom of Kielder Reservoir - they were building the dam around us). After a week's exercise, the regiment set off back for Tidworth less B Sqn GW Troop and a few extras, including myself and the Squadron Leader's Land Rover. As soon as the rest had gone, we all piled into the Land Rover and headed home (recruiting area being Northumberland, Durham and the new-fangled Tyne & Wear) dropping people off as we passed their houses. Last man, the Bedford driver, took the fully kitted Series 3 FFR and parked it in the TA Centre near his home in Hartlepool. It was my Land Rover, so I tuned the C13 (normally Squadron Command Net) in to Radio 1 on 247 metres which was very close to the bottom of the C13's band: 1.5 - 30 MHz and we had music. Needless to say, every time we passed a car containing a blonde, we transmitted and said hello over the top of Radio 1 with just enough power to attract her attention. Some puzzled looks. Naughty boys. I was also possible with VHF. In Oct - Nov 1979, having conducted our own 3 Armd Div FTX at the start of October, we deployed as Orange Forces for 1 Armd Div FTX. Middle Saturday there was no movement of tracks or heavies (de rigeur to preserve the peace and calm of the German weekend). I woke up late and hit the power button on my ghetto blaster and found the local BFBS radio transmitter. Hardly had I settled back when I heard the familiar voice of the Adjutant sounding like he was talking on the Divisional Command Net. It turned out that was exactly what he was doing: we were sleeping in a barn right next to the 27' mast that was carrying our signals. We were nowhere near the BFBS frequency; ISTR we might have been smack on a harmonic thereof. A good reminder always to observe good Voice Procedure because you never knew who was listening.

I thought it looked like a Ferret / Saracen panel. But all the vehicles listed are 'A' vehicles. Which 'B' vehicles did it fit?

Copyright of Allan Mallinson recognised. From "Light Dragoons The Making of a Regiment" Nigel Hamilton sums up the day from the viewpoint of Maj-Gen B.L. Montgomery, GOC 3rd Division, in his book, Monty - The Making of a General 1887-1942: After "the biggest disaster in the regiment's history", 15th/19th Hussars had ceased to exist as an independent unit.