AlienFTM

Seriously impressed by the crew's camouflage drills!!!

I was a German Linguist and I was a member of Command Troop of a recce regiment in BAOR. The combination had its good and bad points. For instance, I might get volunteered to drive the RSM on a pre-exercise recce in a Landrover. On the hand, it gave me the opportunity to drive the RSM on pre-exercises in a Landrover. We converted from Saracen ACVs to Sultans. Suddenly farmers started to get iffy about us parking our Panzers in their barns. "Keine Ketten in der Scheune!" No tracked vehicles in the barn. First time I explained to Farmer Erich that the ground pressure of a CVR(T) was less than the ground pressure of a Saracen with the words "niedrige Bodendrueck" the effect was as a magic key. Open Sesame! I used it over and over and we were never again prohibited from setting up Battlegroup Headquarters in barns. Stationed in Tidworth, we carried out our annual firing camp down the road at Lulworth Ranges. We'd leaguer up the squadron in a field as per SOP with the squadron's Field Headquarters (FHQ) in the middle, surrounded by sabre troops. Just out of procedure, not because we expected 3 Shock Army to come over the hill, you understand. In my seven years in 15/19H I took countless photos. They were lost when my mother moved house and my brother didn't realise the significance. I have one reel of film showing military hardware left. It is from the time of our firing camp at Lulworth in 1977. I never noticed it at the time, nor three years later in BAOR when we converted to Sultan, but the picture I have of our Saracen ACV in that leaguer showed it sunk almost to its axles in the mud, whereas all the Scorpions around it were floating on top of the mud.

No bigger than they could get away with. 1. A couple of years ago (must have been a decade or more when I had little hope of my nipper outgrowing me) I read an article about size. If nobody grew taller than (hmmm IIRC: all figures are pulled out of thin air cos the article was so long ago, but they are, I believe, in the ballpark) about 5'6", the CO2 output from exhalation of the human race would be reduced by enough to counter CO2-induces global warming at a stroke because smaller people need less air. The amount of material in a pair of trousers would be reduced by 1/3 and the devastation caused to cotton-growing land (the growth of cotton destroys the land it is grown on) would be similarly reduced. Cars and BMPs could be built smaller, saving metal. 2. The Soviets used spherical command modules on their Vostok and Voshkhod space craft. The last of the Voshkhods, carrying five cosmonauts, were only about six inches wider in diameter than the first Vostok that carried Gagarin into the history books. They just packed them better, stripped out meteor shields when they realised the risk was insignificant and so on. And Gagarin was only about 5'5" tall. When he appeared on Hero of the Soviet Union parades, they stood him on a box.

I wear a black leather overcoat in the winter to keep out the cold (ever seen a cow shiver?). In the summer I would go coatless, but: 1. I need some pockets to carry stuff in; 2. I wear the bergen for my ThinkPad high on my back and tight so that my walk to and from the car is as good for my posture as possible (unlike my days in the cavalry when webbing was worn low-slung like the cowboys we were): I decided something light and throw-awayable would prevent the rubbing of the bergen straps as I hoist it twice daily from wearing out my shirts. My 1985 pattern Combat Jacket does this supremely well. No lining, pockets everywhere and free, courtesy of having been a Military Accountant whom the QM's clothing storemen always wanted to stay in with. I'd walk into the clothing store waving two socks: "I have lost one sock from each of these two pairs of socks. Can I exchange them please?" I got into the '85 pattern combats early because I figured that by the time they became commonplace, mine would have been washed and faded and I wouldn't look like a member of the cast of Soldier, Soldier who always wore brand new combats. For Ex Spearpoint in 1980, all German Colloquialists and above (I am a Linguist) were given a set of the Bundeswehr roundel cockades they wore on their side hats and we were to display them on the left sleeve above the pen pocket so that civvies could pick out the German-speakers among us. This order was never rescinded (an oversight I am sure) so that whenever I replaced a combat jacket, I transferred the name tape on the left breast and the German badge on the left arm from old to new. Rank badges were chargeable to the regimental tailor, so I got them done for nowt. Over the years, numerous Orderly Officers tried to pick holes in my Guard Commander uniform. "What is that badge doing on your arm, Sergeant Alien?" I'd quote the Defence Council Instruction which had put it there and they never had an answer for it. When I left, I held on to as much kit as I could. (I could have retained my best DMS boots because I had two pairs of Boots, CH to hand in. I didn't want DMS boots, I wanted CH, but they were new and special and there was no way the QM would let me hang on to my brand new never-been-worn size 9 CHs, still with string holding them together. I still have one pair of DMS boots for use in the garden etc.) The '85 pattern Combat Jacket may not be the greatest Combat Jacket ever produced but it's a great lightweight summer jacket (even though we only had temperate combats in the 80s: no sandpits on the horizon). So for years I have worn my beautiful '85 pattern Guard Commander's Combat Jacket complete with all badges exactly as they were on the day I left a couple of decades ago. (It seemed to shrink a bit in the wash though.) Sadly last winter, it finally started to disintegrate. Pleased to report, a couple of months ago with Spring springing I walked into the Army Surplus Shop just opposite West Quay in Southampton and picked up a virtually new '85 pattern Combat Jacket for ten of your English Pounds. Transferred the insignia to retain the uniqueness of the jacket and nobody has clicked that it isn't the same Combat Jacket and "Why did you bother transferring the badges?"

I was specifically thinking 1979 and the invasion of Afghanistan. I am guessing (see above) that this was such a huge logistical job, they left the finite number of T64s squared up against NATO and made do and mended with equipment in 'Stan. Which presumably meant T72. And all their "elite" tank troops would remain in DDR, with the expeditionary force largely made of of even fresher conscripts. With their huge expansion (they sent 1,200,00 troops into 'Stan: our entire army only comprised about 110,000 ...) I am guessing they gave up on a T64-only armoured corps and began using the T72s. But I have absolutely nothing to back this up. It is a theory that explains what we saw. All tank crews WERE Ronnie Corbetts (compact, not humorous). I have always had this image of a Red Army intake of conscripts on parade on Day 1. Sergeant Major: "Shortest on the right, tallest on the left, in single rank ... SIZE!" at which point 100,000 conscripts sort themselves by height. "From the right .... NUMBER!" "1" "2" "3" ... (Two miles down the parade ground:) "One hundred thousand. Last man SIR!" Selection then apparently went like this: "Numbers one through 50,000, you're infantry. Fall out and follow Sergeant Ivanovski." (Infantry got first because they had to squeeze into the back of BMPs. I once took in a display of Soviet armour at Bielefeld. I looked in the back of a BMP. At 5'9" I couldn't even have got in at all without kit, never mind squeeze about 8 men in in full NBC rubber suits. "Numbers 50,001 to 75,000, you're tanks. Fall out and follow Sergeant Petrov." Same reason. For BMP read T62 / T64. After that, the non-combat arms got to pick and choose.

The proper MOD guage? That is a clenched fist between the top of the centre roadwheel and the track, right? It was in my day. You are telling me they had to issue a guage???

When T64 and T72 were the next big thing to hit the Sovier arsenal, somebody (quite possibly Brixmis) went to great lengths to get photographs of these new vehicles so that the troops could identify and report them correctly. When pictures of the T72 became available, it was clear that this agent had found them leaguered up in a silver birch wood. For years, the presence of silver birch in a recognition picture was a primary recognition feature of the T72. So when a slide came up showing a T72, the first player would shout "T72" and the rest of the audience would shout, "silver birch."

Go on, give us a clue. I keep telling you my not much heard of parts of the Cold War. Last few weeks I have been worried that the pig-headedness of messrs Bush and Putin in particular, with the aid of their beloved poodle were about to undo all good things that have happened since I left the front line, the Wall came down and peace broke out (well, we all hoped it had). I have recently been thinking my eight years in the Corps Area had been rendered useless by these two men. When Reagan first whispered (OK SHOUTED) Star Wars, I couldn't believe the Soviets wouldn't accept it. If both sides had a non-nuclear anti-ballistic-missile capability * , the ABM Treaty could be dropped, neither side could ever launch a strike and peace must follow. Now Bush is whispering ABM shield and finally, someone has realised that if both sides have it, the ballistic missile is obsolete. * For those who didn't know. During the Cold War, the only way to to get close enough to down a ballistic missile before it got close enough to earth to prevent nuclear devastation was to fire another nuclear ballistic missile at it and get the former within the latter's blast radius (only a nuclear missile had the blast radius to destroy a ballistic missile at altitude). The deployment of anti-ballistic missiles would have led to the doubling of nuclear missiles and out-of-control proliferation when each side already had enough nuclear ballistic missile to render the planet radioactive molten slag in minutes already. As a result, both sides signed an ABM treaty to prevent escalation of numbers, but as soon as the US whispered, "non-nuclear ABM system," the Soviets screamed "ABM Treaty!" completely out of context and Reagan got shouted down.

Yes. Apparently after their Afghan adventure, the Russians had a lot of one-armed former T72 gunners begging on the streets of Moscow. All very well having an autoloader to save a crewman (and increase the size of your tank forces by 1/3 without having to train a single new conscript) and shrink the turret, but it was the Soviets rather than NATO who played with chemical weapons and I am told the autoloader was a lot slower than a good human loader, which meant that between ejecting an empty case and loading a fresh fresh to restore the obturation, the gun would have been a massive hole in the tank's NBC protection. That said, looking at this video, the NBC seal in the T72 wasn't too hot around the turret ring either. I bet crews loved living in rubber NBC suits for days on end. Thank goodness for non-woven charcoal NBC suits. One thing has always puzzled me. T72 and T64 are fundamentally the same vehicle (externally, T64 has heavy tank roadwheels and return rollers in the style of KV1 and 2, and the IS series while T72 has medium tank roadwheels in the style of T34, T44, T54/55 and T62 and the layout of hull and turret attachments are different - I could never get my head around which one had the searchlight on which side, not helped when the recognition instructor displayed the slide back to front ...) yet much is made of the T72 autoloader, but not that of the T64. Surely if the T64, being the same shape and size, also only had a three-man crew, it would also have an autoloader and gunners' arms would meet the same fate? Or, because the T64 was issued to Russian troops whereas the T72 was exported to WarPac countries, and the better-trained Russian commanders were able to dual-role as loaders in the same way as CVR(T) commanders? Or better-trained gunners knew to keep there arms out of reach of the autoloader? But hang on, It was the Russians who invaded Afghanistan. what were they doing in T72s? Was the entire stock of T64s deployed along the IGB with 3 Shock Army et al waiting to roll through the Bundesrepublik, so all they could deploy to the 'Stan were the lesser T72s? What a can of worms this has opened in my mind!!!

And who could possibly blame you?!?!? lol. I'd have done exactly the same. Though in a high-density civilian-populated area, the view is much better from the turret and the ladies ... I mean civilians ... get to see something of the commander. Best thing about Scorpion driver training was the days we went out to Stonehenge and the ladies ... I mean civilians ... all looked up admiringly at the turret crew. Ah halcyon days.

Absolutely: the Soviets were still using ZSU23/4s until ... have they got rid of them yet? Typical NATO solution: go for high tech rather... come to think of the USN were still using CIWS to produce a wall of lead in front of their warships in ... do they still use CIWS? Typical British solution: go high tech. I have to say that in the summer of 77 we all went onto Salisbury Plain somewhere (the squadron leader knew where he was going: I only drove the Rover over over) and had a cabby at shooting down drones with the LMGs we were issued to mount on the gun rings of our Saracen ACVs. At the end of the day, apparently we hit one drone, because it ran out of fuel and was coasting out of arc in a straight line. So when I say "you cannot hit a jet with a machine gun", what I meant was "the MOD decided that ..." ;o)

Rope: yeah I guess. Still would have been a good idea. Ferret: would love to. Maybe when I move off this [expletive deleted]-hole estate in a year or two, if I have managed to reduce my debt burden further, I'd give it some thought. Problem is that SWMBO wouldn't want to command (or drive) it and I would never have a crew when I needed one. And I would be hard put not to get it out on the road every moment of every day. All that benz ... all that maintenance ... Must resist. You know tonight's lottery numbers? Mmmmm Ferret.

I bet you've told him it's dead hard to drive just so that you can continue with the best ride in the world ever.

Kinetic rope ( ? ) on the front of the Ferret? I don't remember seeing kinetic rope on a Ferret's CES 1975 - 82, but it sounds like a shrewd move for an RQMS(T) to womble them (as I have described recently with bivouac tents for Ferrets on another thread). And of course, they may have become a CES item after I'd moved on. I do love Ferrets.

A couple of pics in particular catch my eye. 1. T62 with snorkel erected. Mainstay of the Soviet Tank regiment until the advent of the T64 in Russian tank regiments and its export version brother, the T72 - shown above - in the other WarPac nations' tank regiments. T62 then served as the MBT of the tank batallion of the Motor Rifle Regiment. You see how important it was to get your AFV regognition right? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 15/19H sent the first NATO battlegroup to exercise in Poland. They were shocked to find that the Soviets had landscaped entire rivers to match exactly the shape of, for example, the Weser, which would have been BAOR's main attempt to hold them. Thus they were able to work out exactly how to assault any river before they met it. In BAOR on the other hand, we learned that there wasn't a river in the BRD whose banks would allow us float our vehicles, so we ripped off all the float screens and threw them away, simply giving them up as a bad job. They were, anyway, easily damaged in forests and, on Scorpion at least, the ranges if, for example, fired from hull down, with the gun therefore ay minimum elevation, it didn't extend beyond the front of the hull and the heat and blast did nasty things to the float screens. Waste of money on two counts. T62s such as that shown, would have trained rigorously to drive in, along the bottom and up the other side, barely slowing. 2. There are two pictures of Soviet MICVs. From the front, I wouldn't have spotted the difference. But the former (with green cam painted over the sand base) has only four roadwheels per track and the latter (in plain sand) looks like 6 - hard to tell in the dust. I have dredged the depths of my AFV Instructor memory and decided that the latter is a variant of BTR50. I have to distinguish between BTR50 and BTR60 by remembering that a wheeled APC might have six wheels but never five, so BTR60 must have wheels whereas tracked vehicles like our Scorpions might have 5 road wheels per side, so the BTR50 must be tracked. Even though neither the BTR60 has six wheels (it has eight) nor the BTR50 five per side. What the former is, I have to admit defeat. I'd guess at a WarPac copy and put my money on the Czechs, whose Skoda T35 and T38 tanks were the best in the world before the war when the Germans moved in and they allowed the Germans to re-equip four Light Divisions as Panzer Divisions, including Rommel's 7th, to add to the six existing Panzr Divisions. They became known as PzKpfw 35T (for Tscechisch, "Czech") and PzKpfw 38T. However, sat in the Recce Screen on the Forward Leading-edge of Own Troops (FLOT) well forward of the main force on the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA), we were never allowed the luxury of using roadwheels as primary recognition features. When they're coming toward you (as they would) all you can see are glacis plates and guns (hundreds of them) churning up so much mud or dust and diesel smoke that you wouldn't see them anyway from the sort of range you'd need to make a decision by.

ISTR seeing what might have been called Green Archer on display at Duxford, which may have dated from about 1947. It went on to say that Green Archer took anti-aircraft gun technology about as far as it could but it was already rendered obsolete when it came into service because jets were simply too fast to hit by a man with a gun and the UK thereafter relied on missile technology and radar. But, as usual, I could be wrong.

If you are going to deploy your cam nets (camo is SUCH an American term), maybe a treatise on cam is in order. Some notes from a former cavalryman in a recce regiment (recon is SUCH an American word) where camouflage was everything. The picture attached shows a cam net draped over a vehicle. WRONG. It makes the vehicle look like the vehicle it is, covered by a cam net. In fact late in WW2 the Germans started to paint this sort of pattern straight onto their tanks (I have discussed this scheme elswhere on this forum before now). Particularly commonly seen in newsreel footage of Panthers and Hetzers (and I think I have seen it on Jagdpanzer 4 L/70s). It is only 1/2 the job of camouflage. The cam net ought to lifted entirely clear of the vehicle on poles so that the shape of the cam net is not that of the silhouette of the vehicle. Also, the shadow of the cam net doubles the effect of the cam net itself. The corners of the cam net ought to be pegged down with the net pulled tight so that it doesnt just hang around the pole and look like cam net wrapped around a pole. It ought to be clear of the vehicle so that, if crashed out, you can drive straight out without catching in the net. You ought to be able to access all stowage bins and hatches without disturbing the cam nets. That covers shape and silhouette. Shine and shadow: you want to acquire hessian sacking roll. Attach it above the windscreen and side windows, the light clusters, the underside front plate and along the sides, roll it up and tie it so that, when you arrive in a position, you can untie it to unroll and cover: all glass, including windscreens and all lights (and the clear plastic panel on the back of a Landrover); the suspension. Even through a cam net, the above all remain clearly visible. (One of the main reasons for Mickey Mouse Ear cam in late WW2 was to break up the shape of wheel arches with matt black paint.) In the desert, British tank crews often painted one front road wheel and one rear road wheel on each side black. This single act made the vehicle look like a lorry at any distance and not worthy of engagement, confusing enemy observers. Half the aim of camouflage. Also, at the start of WW2, RAF aircraft undersides were painted half white, half black. Depending on the background, half the aircraft simply disappeared, the human eye didn't recognise it and, because it didn't look like an aircraft, it was ignored. If you can get black hessian, great. We usually got natural (light brown) hessian and slapped matt black paint on it. If it is not realistic to tie the hessian above windscreens, Simply carry a roll to trap in the doors either side and over the windscreen. Be careful getting into and out of the vehicle that the hessian doesn't slip. That's all that springs to mind right now. Input from others more than welcome.

Two things cross my mind but. Probably not relevant but I'll pass them on for you to file away just in case. 1. In Cyprus, probably very early 77, we were patrolling the western end of the Green Line in the DANCON (Danish Contingent) sector when my Ferret suffered a nasty little electrical problem outside one of the Danish OPs. Wouldn't start (didn't seem to be producing full volts to the starter motor). Because we were on a hilltop, we were able to bump start it by rolling it down the hill (but I had to be careful because the track was marked as minefield either side). We got back to our base in Skouriotissa and let our attached REME VMA loose with it. He phoned the LAD back at Force Reserve Squadron base in Nicosia; they recommended a new starter motor and if he started removing the current one now (anyone will tell you that replacing a Ferret starter motor without a pack lift is a BIG job), the replacement they were sending down would be with them long before he'd undone the three bolts through the belly plate. (ISTR this was a 2/4, whereas most of the squadron were 2/3s, and the belly plates were smaller on these rearmoured earlier Mark 2s.) Six hours later the starter motor was out and we set about the six-hour reverse procedure. Didn't fix it. That evening Troop Leader (my commander) had an invite to the Officers Mess, so we push started it, trogged across the mountains and let the LAD play with it while I overnighted in Nicosia. Next morning it was all fixed. One of the batteries was dead because I had hit a rock and the battery securing rods had come undone and shorted it against the battery box. Drove back over the mountains to Skouriotissa and all was well. 2. 1980, Ex Spearpoint aka Crusader. 15/19H (and the whole of 3 Armd Div) were umpires. Command Troop umpired 4 Armd Div's HQ Task Force Hotel. For the only time in my career, I got to carry out the task for which I and my vehicle were intended. The exercise has spread somewhat and there was some distance between us and HQ TFH, so I got sent to a good radio location somewhere halfway between the two, frigged the two UK/VRC353s and announced, "Hello all stations this is Four Hotel Six. This is an automatic rebroadcast net. Out" I had magicked each of the two halves of the net to relay through me to the other half. With the two sets receiving a signal on the one set on one frequency, the harness would trigger a transmit on the other set to rebroadcast it on the other frequency to the other half of the net. The process was pretty much transparent to all users except that having heard my notification that this was a rebroadcast net, they had to remember to exaggerate the PAUSE in PRESS, PAUSE and SPEAK while my Clansman harness triggered all the responses in the two sets. I pulled a paperback out of my map pocket and settled down for the duration. Since we were umpires, I didn't have to deploy my driver on foot patrol. We didn't even have to cam up or site ourselves tactically: I just stopped us on a track in the middle of a field. (Luckily in BAOR, just about all Command Nets were VHF. Rebroadcasting HF would have required that every call be repeated so that, during the first call, I could work out which set was receiving and set the other set to send, before the call was repeated, parties on the other net then heard the repeat call and the message. Then when a reply came, I'd have had to reverse the rebroadcast. Not nice. Luckily HF works over longer distances anyway and by this time HF was revserved for Logistic and Guard nets.) The new Clansman sets had automatic squelch which reduced the amount of noise on top of the voice signal, but frankly it was rather too sensitive to be used in a rebroadcast, because any burst of static would trigger the squelch in the receiving set and initiate a rebroadcast through the other set. When that set stopped transmitting at the end of message, it would then finish with a burst of static in the opposite direction and the whole net could quickly descend into chaos as the two local sets chattered away to each other with nobody else getting a word in. With Larkspur SR/C42s, we'd simply have manually turned down the squelch, slightly reducing the signal element but entirely eliminating the noise. Noise was inherent on HF sets: there was no squelch circuit. This is why rebroadcasting HF had to be done manually. As the batteries ran down, Clansman squelch would get increasingly sensitive and kick off the chatter. This was a good indicator that the driver should start up the vehicle to recharge the batteries. (Didn't apply in a Command Vehicle because they were connected to 500W generators to keep the radio batteries charged. It was still a good idea to run the vehicle batteries at night, though to keep some heat in the engine and ensure there they remained topped up ready for First Light and a potential crash-out. However on this particular occasion, when the squelch chatter started, horror of horrors, the Ferret wouldn't start. Turned out a fault in one of the electrical boxes in the brake circuit meant that the brake lights were permanently on and drawing 2*20W from the one set of batteries. I had to admit defeat on the air and terminate the rebro, but luckily the alternate ACV had just moved and assumed control and I'd have been closing the rebro anyway. ISTR we tried bump starting the Ferret down the slight incline like I had done previously in Cyprus but there wasn't enough slope (and there was only me to push it), so were just setting up for a crank start when the Troop Sergeant in Four Hotel Five happened to pass by and we were able to slave it. Quick trip to a nearby MRG and we were sorted.

Oh, hang on, I just realised, prat that I am, that the Five-Oh apparently mounted over the top is a trick of the camera angle in one particular picture and it isn't really a coaxial RG. Forget that bit.

If that's a Five-Oh ranging gun, the thing must be rather bigger than it looks. And given that the Five-Oh's ballistic signature is similar to the 120mm APDS round out of a Chieftain, there must be one helluva recoil out of that weapon to get it up to (hmmm erm ISTR about 3200 m/s) in that short distance. And the service HE round on the groundsheet ... is it me or is the green a slightly off shade of the Olive with Gold Yellow band used to indicate an HE round? Or am I just naturally suspicious?

Irish bloke, born 14 February, used to sing on telly from a rocking chair whilst wearing memorable woolly jumpers. Surname Doonican. Hope this helps.

If you really care very much, you could visit http://www.arrse.co.uk and check out the RAC forum. A few months ago there was a guy on there who seemed to have a database of every Chieftain, where it went and what units it served with.

ISTR (but stand to be corrected) that Panther (and therefore probably Tiger 1 and 2) torsion bars were leading on one side and trailing on the other so that the torsion bars on either side could extend across the full width of the vehicle without obstructing those on the other side or having the roadwheels differently-distanced down the side of the vehicle. In fact I am pretty sure the same thing applied to the Mark 3 and Mark 4 suspension too.

Cheers, Jack. It just occurs to me that I knew there was something I wanted to post yesterday wrt CVR(T) having seen (IIRC) Sirhc's post. CVR(T) suspension is so soft that I doubt it would survive that sort of treatment. If it didn't snap one or more of the torsion bars, I'd expect it to bottom and still trash either the final drive via the sprocket or the idler.

Actually, thinking about it, ISTR I got yesterday's post wrong and the emblem in the trees (literally) at Vogelsang might have been a Wehrmacht or an SS eagle. I am sat here Googling for the thread that appeared on ARRSE and I eventually found the thread index using the search key: +vogelsang +" ss " +eagle +forest Then when I clicked on the link to ARRSE I remember that I have come on here because ARRSE just went down. Damn.