AlienFTM

I got this from Baz overnight: I promptly went to my regular 1000 hrs meeting. I arrived five minutes early. (I didn't need a CTR because it's my regular 1000 hrs meeting.) Eventually the project manager fronted up and asked us to natter among werselves while he carried out his admin. I started reading from the above to entertain the troops. They all agreed I had no mates. ;o)

I am having a deja vu moment here. I have suddenly had this image of you and me heading up to the Smoke from Tidders and stopping at the UJC to watch this at or immediately after the premiere and killing werselves laughing at the Leopards.

Seeing that pic reminds me of an advert on telly last night. It's for the latest Hollywood spy / terrorism thriller type thingy - went completely over my head. Took me about five minutes or rewinding and replaying the Sky+ box but eventually I could confirm my eyes were not deceived: there must have been a single frame of a Sterling Small Metal Gun, with an explosion as backdrop - no mistaking it once you actually caught the single frame.

In 1973 I applied to RCB. Having passed PV, I was invited to the RAC Training Regiment at Catterick (Scots DG IIRC) for a spot of pre-RCB training. We were given a walk around the hangars. I was practically wetting myself at the prospect of meeting a Chieftain, but the first thing we were shown was little bigger than a LWB Land Rover in each of the three dimensions, aluminium-armoured and powered by the engine out of a Jaguar XK420 sports car. I was entirely unimpressed. Little did I know that when eventually I did join the Royal Armoured Corps, my regiment would have forsaken tanks for the foreseeable future and I would spend seven years in an armoured recce regiment equipped with Scorpions.

If you had been in the UK I'd have called you a wimp for wanting a heater in a Ferret, but I know how cold Denmark gets. I spent a good few German winters getting very cold in Ferrets. About 1980-81 I was the coldest man in Europe - documented fact. Guard duty tended to come around once or twice a month weeknights and once a month weekends. One night the guard commander, on the advice of the orderly officer, jigged the stags because of the cold. Normally each two-hour stag saw one man on the gate and two prowlers. This night, the prowlers were dispensed with because it was deemed too cold for anyone to break into camp. Rather than risk the gate guard being found frozen stiff after two hours, the three men on stag rotated in 20-minute intervals on the gate through their stag with 40 minutes to thaw, then four hours off as normal. Hot drinks were forthcoming. Following morning BFBS radio informed us that a massive anticyclone was centred over Sennelager, the temperature had dropped to minus 40 (where Fahrenheit and Centigrade converge) and Paderborn was thus the coldest place in Europe. I had stagged on four times overnight. I claim my prize. Mao suits were in their infancy. Our Command Troop somehow managed to acquire some and I found myself the proud owner. Best it never made it onto a form 1033 or 1157, and it remained with me long after I transferred to the reserve. I also managed to acquire a pair of Panzerstiefel - Bundeswehr fleece-lined Jack boots for tank crews. Then there was the cut-off 3/4 length greatcoat because there were not enough parkas to go around after the officers had had first pic: Trooper Alien was a long way down the queue. I also wore my fleece-lined motorcycle gauntlets up to the elbow. I might have looked "like a refugee from the trenches of the Great War" but the cold whilst driving the Ferret was bearable.

Cardigan had also once been a 15H, but was discharged in disgrace over a scandal in Ireland some years after Waterloo, some say due to his jealousy at not having been at Waterloo. He is recorded as galloping out of barracks in Dublin into the night in a storm. He quickly bought himself another commission with a lesser Hussar regiment. The problem with the charge was that viewed from the bluff alongside Raglan, it was perfectly obvious to Nolan which was the valley to charge down, but having disorientated himself by surfing down the cliff face on his horse (as Baz pointed out), Nolan's disdain at being a cavalry legend among lesser cavalrymen allowed him to point up the wrong valley. Oops. Nolan didn't live to regret his error, being one of the first killed at the head of the charge.

I was once leading vehicle (in a Scorpion) covering a reserve demolition in a village in a German valley. We knew our own Cowboy - I mean "A" - Squadron were orange forces and according to the pink, they would be coming over the following morning. I knew the locals would not appreciate us firing a blank in the middle of their village at Dark o'clock in the morning even if it wouldn't put out every window in the street, so I reminded my driver that when I shouted "FIRE!" he was to flash his headlights in the accepted standard method of simulating firing the 76. We got our vehicle into a derelict site a couple of hundred metres from the bridge. Nothing could get over the bridge without me taking it out. (ISTR a 16/5L Scorpion was credited with a T55 kill with the 76 in GW1: we were facing a recce echelon "in BMPs.") My section commander was a short distance further back and the other section was hull down along the top of the ridge in support. Cometh the hour and the lead Scimitar - I mean BMP - appeared on the bridge. On I/C,"ACTION!" On the combat team command net, "Hello 24 this is 24C contact wait out." Back to I/C, "HESH BMP on loaded fire!" From the driver (unusually - obviously - it's normally the gunner): "Firing now!" FLASHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Four Scimitars raced through the village, flashing their headlights back and waving enthusiastically. Like I said before, cowboys.

TSR-2 (there was a link to something like thunger-and-lightnings.co.uk in a recent thread about the EE Lightning videos). The septics refused to allow something to go into service that was better than what they had. They threw teddy bears out of prams and threatened to stop arms shipments to us if we built it. Ultimately they forced the government of the day to trash the entire project - airframes, documents, photographs, the lot. The fact that the project could have bankrupted the government of the day even if it had not been begging to the IMF like a Third World nation at the time was neither here nor there. It might be argued to have been British aircraft design's zenith and not until the Tornado came along (built by a multi-national consortium) did we have something to compare with TSR-2 in the same way the US had nothing to compare with the F104 until the F22 Raptor came along and, despite 40 years more development, F22's specs are not that much better than those of the Starfighter (not much faster, not much higher ceiling, etc). The Germans and Italians cried when they had to retire their F104s a handful of years ago because they had promised to take the Eurofighter when it came into service.

The only hard I can remember ... pull up a sandbag: it's a long one. Swing the lamp. On the Monday, GW Troop converted Swingfires into smoking holes. On the Tuesday morning, upon returning to the range, we found the holes still smoking. Range staff were not happy. We all jumped into the four tonner and, followed by ATO (required by Range Safety rules to deal with misfires and blinds) in his smart Safari hard-top Land Rover with blues and twos, we drove the ten kilometres round range roads to get to the back end of the target area 4km away. All morning we stomped on the glowing leading edge of the fire as it burned across the range. One of the guys called out. As he stomped the leading edge of the fire, he noticed we were getting closer and closer to a mortar round embedded in the peaty turf. ATO came across and declared it a blind and set to work dealing with it. One of the vehicle commanders had been attached to ATO on our tour of Omagh which had finished a year earlier. He had made the mistake of mentioning this to ATO previously, and he found himself volunteered to help. He wasn't exactly chuffed. ATO threw his Land Rover keys at me and told me to leg it back to the firing point and collect his "toolbox" (full of dets, etc) from the firing point where he'd left it, not expecting to be doing his day job down this end of the range. I floored it back to the firing point, experimenting with blues and twos as I went, which came in useful when a flock of sheep walked onto the road in front of me. On my return, ATO got to work. He had examined the round and he decided to move to into a nearby target tank to destroy it there. The fire was now very secondary to the more immediate thrills of blowing things up (which is what we were here for anyway). ATO set a 30 second fuze. I had my Kodak Pocket Instamatic to hand, ready to catch the moment, but of course I didn't get it. The photo came out a blur because of course I jumped. Which was a pity because the dynamics of the explosion were quite impressive. He had placed the mortar round on top of the breech, so that when it went off, the explosion forced the breech down, causing the barrel to erect itself in a phallic motion, before slowly going limp again as it settled back. The hatch had been rusted part-open, but the shock of the explosion smacked it back and it rebounded shut just as the explosion ballooned the turret for a split second. Instead of the turret hatch smacking into the recessed lip and stopping, it passed clean through because the lip had expanded enough that it didn't stop the hatch. There was a shower of rust everywhere and a curtain of flame out through the turret ring. When we went back and examined the wreck, the commander's hatch cover was now INSIDE the turret. Impressed? Certainly, except that now we had to revert to putting out the peat fires. As for "What was the target tank?" An M47.

ISTR that the detergent effect of OMD has an effect on seals and that having once used OMD in an engine, you had to continue using it or the seals would burst. But it was a long time ago (so long that we were using OMD75). I am sure there are others who can explain better.

Suppositories are useless. You might as well shove up ... Silence Pike

I looked at the pic and wondered if I might know him. Bearing in mind that Saladin (which is what I presume we are looking at) was before my time), the face did remind me of a younger Ted C [third person identification suppressed for PerSec reasons], who became my my troop sergeant in Tidworth / Cyprus 76 - 77. Opinions, Baz?

The range I was thinking of predated Milan. In July 1977 GW Troop B Sqn 15/19H fired Swingfire from their Mark 5 Ferrets at an ATGM range at Otterburn. It was flagged as the last firing of Swingfire by the Royal Armoured Corps as control of ATGMs passed to the Royal Artillery (it may or may not have subsequently passed back, though throughout my time in BAOR, our battlegroup took its ATGM capability from J Battery (3 Regt I think) RHA). When I saw these pics, my immediate reaction was to wonder whether they show the range control vehicle used in 1977. Because of the volatile nature of a Swingfire ATGM (which carried fuel to keep the engine burning through a 4000m flight before command wire expiration IIRC), range safety demanded that everything on the firing point happen under armour. ATGMs were fired from inside the launch vehicle (even though remote operation was a feature) and range control was undertaken from inside a vehicle which, according to legend, had been Monty's desert command vehicle which I thought was an AEC but was never sure. When I read mention of Marmon Herrington I stopped reading. However, if the range was made over for Milan and the control vehicle(s) became redundant, it might well have ended up on the range.

Puttees, mans, short. I cleared out my chest of drawers last month and found mine, still with the elastic bands to go with them. Probably last worn on a Basic Fitness Test at Worthy Down in the summer of 89. (DMS and puttees: much lighter and easier to run in than Boots, CH.) I bet the elastic bands aren't very elastic now ...

Otterburn Training Area? Clearly not on the ATGW range we used. Wouldn't have been a lot left even if hit by a PRAC round!

In a Recce Regt we often found that good, new, CVR(T) kit quickly found its way onto the Command Troop Ferrets. Not by stealing, you understand, more by creative accounting along the lines of, "Look at these two BVs. They each broke in half. Can you replace them both, please?" It was by such creative methods that my driver and I shared a four-man Chieftain bivvy instead of the usual three-man CVR(T) bivvy (or the ... er, there is no bivvy on the Ferret CES). Though TBH I cannot honestly remember using a BV. Like Baz says, we were slick at making brews with a private purchase camping gas stove (much cleaner than the issued petrol cooker and less tactically LOUD AND BRIGHT!!!) I do remember once we were heading out of area for the annual FTX (field training exercise) and my driver thoughtfully made up an issue Thermos of coffee. We cabbied on round the ring road to the Paderborn North railway station and sidings and proceeded to entrain. This was usually at early o'clock, long before Sparrows' Fart so as not to gridlock Paderborn in the rush hour. We got our rebro Ferret loaded and chocked, then I broke out the Thermos for a swift coffee to brace us for the train journey ... only to drop it. Bugger.

A training round which enables automatic function without the need of a blank-firing adaptor to force gases through the working parts and push the spring back? When the round fires, the piston extends, pushing against the face of the breech creating the impulse to recock the weapon. Perhaps?

I only just got here. A couple of weeks ago I linked a picture somewhere on HMVF of myself in 1988 in the Honour Guard for the visit of the Adjutant General to open his new Computer Centre next door to the old one at Worthy Down north of Winchester. It had everything, including cooling towers to cool the water-cooled mainframes. Many years ago I read that mainframes had wiped out the ecology of San Francisco Sound because they were pumping 95 million tons of hot water from cooling mainframes into the sound every day, while the sound is naturally cold, being fed by the Humboldt Current. IBM sometime thereafter started air-cooling their mainframes and in 1997 I started working on mainframes with IBM at Hursley, just the other side of Winchester. If I sit in D West and peer over the dividing screen, out of the window and squint through the trees, I can the machine wing of D Block which, according to our Lab Director, contains half of the MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second) of IBM EMEA. Whereas as soon as I left the RAPC in 1989 they replaced their mainframes with distributed systems, rendering the cooling towers obsolete.

Noooo!!! Anything tracked where you are sat in the back and facing sideways with no outside view will do it. I am particularly thinking Sultan, sat in the back as a control signaller. The movement, particularly the wayit dips and rises as it brakes and accelerates did it for me every time. I was glad I only did one season in the back between driving a Ferret and commanding a Ferret. Ferret. Mmmmmmm

Urban myth. See link from the horse's mouth: http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/teamnews/index.cfm?storyid=66845B01-1143-EC82-2E376B2F89D95041

Chav Corsa on our estate?

Do you remember Titch? Driver in IIRC 1st Troop? Cabbying down the road in his enigmatic style when his commander (Paul M) gave him some verbal. Titch's hand comes out of the driver's hatch ... waving a pair of sticks. Cue commander throwing a fit and ordering him to stop. Then Tich reminded him he had a customised pair of orange 432 sticks fitted to the Scorpion: he only carried the originals so that he could replace them in a hurry should anybody want to examine the vehicle. Paul M was supposed to have a good eye for launching a Larkspur mike over the top of the mantlet and smacking the driver on the head, then winding it back in without ever touching the vehicle. Until one day he threw it a bit hard and the driver had one of them new-fangled bonedomes on and the mike was scattered over Salisbury Plain. Come to think of it, were they in 3rd with you?

I once read a book about the final solution in which it was discussed how the oven loaders considered their task to be an art, ensuring that immediately above the flames was a layer of female corpses whose higher ratio of fat to muscle ensured that the pyre burnt more efficiently and consumed the bodies more fully. A bit like cooking burgers on the BBQ before sausage. euw

According to Jane's husband, the submariner ... As you can see, the hull of the Oberon Class is neither of the traditional shapes for a submarine, ship-shiped to ride on the surface or giant cigar to enable a nuke to motor at speed underwater. Apparently the hull (and conning tower offset) was designed thus to counter the torque of the screw and make it easier to steer in a straight line. What a waste of everybody's time this thread was. Reminds me of one Sergeants Mess Games Night. I found myself rubber-dicked into running anchor on the Boat Race. This, apparently was a Dutch Boat Race which involved more than a relay of simply downing a pint and putting the empty glass on your head. Oh, no. Each team member still had to down his pint (this toward the end of a long evening ...) then rest his forehead on a broom handle and rotate about the broom handle three times, then run to the far wall of the bar and back. Being anchor, I watched everyone before me run at the wall, but travel 45 degrees off to the right because his balance was thrown. It really was funny. Nobody thought it the least bit funny though, when I set off on my run, pointing 45 degrees the other way, running toward my outstrtched hand and hitting the far wall square on, repeating for the return journey and winning the race comfortab;y.

Yes. I did it for seven years. A set in the left ear, B set and I/C in the right. Listen to the engine revs AND detect a Scimitar changing from high to low ratio a mile away. Our FIVE main weapons are ... I'll come in again.