AlienFTM

I was lucky enough to see Centaur in Army service in 1976. Aliwal Barracks, Tidworth, was the last barracks in the garrison before the Driver Training Area and Salisbury Plain, so everything drove past our vehicle park. Centaur was an unusual sight, but not as unusual, about the same time, as an experimental Chieftain assault gun with turret removed and 120mm gun poking out of the glacis plate.

In a word, no. The driver in question was lucky to get away with that manoeuvre. Consider that a tank's idler and sprocket are in no way suspended. The former has a certain leeway which allows it to be moved to tension the tracks; the latter is on the end of the final drives. They are therefore both sensitive to sharp shocks and must be treated with respect. Failure to do this may cause damage to the final drive or the idler. As it happened, that driver was lucky the tank stayed horizontal and the nose didn't bite the road. He was lucky again that it bounced and cleared the bank on the other side. Either one might have damaged the sprocket (IIRC the sprocket was at the front of the vehicle in question, but I didn't take that much notice). Watch how other vehicles in the clip push down walls rather than smack into them. Same reason. And there were several examples of tanks negotiating knife edges, where the nose of the vehicle rises up until the centre of mass reaches the balance point, then rolls over gently so that the sprocket or idler doesn't smack into the ground at the bottom. This manoeuvre exposes the underbelly to anti-tank fire, so it has to be done quickly, but it is imperative that the nose does not smack down. Smash the final drives and you'll be sat exposed to AT fire for a lot longer than if you roll over edge. Poor skills IMCO.

In March 1982, 15/19H spent two weeks as the administration unit at Vogelsang ("Birdsong") training camp in the Eiffel mountains of the Ardennes, in Germany almost on the Belgian border. This camp was reputed during the war to have been a Lebensborn camp where Aryan SS demigods and fit young Blitzmaedel were to churn out the next generation of Aryan demigods. The truth is rather more prosaic: it was simply an SS training camp. However, even nearly 40 years after the war, there was no doubting the place's SS heritage, even though the SS insignia on the walls had been cunningly removed. Particularly memorable for me were stone corridors so high and wide that columns of marching SS Panzergrenadiere could march past one another. We did get to to play some puddle-jumping games, though, we being recce, it wasn't our primary role and, being admin unit, we were there more to run the show. As a Control Signaller, I did my fair share manning the radio nets. One one particular morning, in quick succession we got two Noduff messages. Noduff (derived from No DF - No Direction Finding) is a prefix to an exercise message which indicates that the contents are urgent, not related to the exercise and therefore not to be used by "enemy forces" for intellince gathering (which once upon a time would simply have amounted to direction finding the transmitter). It came to hold a status very close to a Mayday in military circles. The first involved an RAOC soldier on an anti-tank range being taught to fire the M72 66mm anti-tank rocket launcher. This a folding, single-shot device which flips open and is supposed to lock open. This particular weapon did not lock open and when he pulled the trigger, the diverted backblast took his arm off. Not nice. We'd barely got sttled back after sorting this bloody mess out when we got another NoDuff message, this one much closer to home. We, B Squadron were duty squadron. Had I not been on radio stag, I'd almost certainly have been in the Squadron's rear echelon 1-tonne Landrover, which, accompanied by most of the FHQ NCOs (less me, on radio stag) was taking norwegian containers and Hay Boxes of stew around the ranges and dropping off lunches for the troops. For those of you who don't know, the 1-tonner is shaped like two cubes stuck together, and Hay Boxes are ginat cubes maybe two feet cubed, so when this 1-tonner rolled off a range road, it was like being inside a giant dice beaker as it rolled ... and rolled. Mercifully my colleagues got away with broken legs and ribs. We managed an Escape and Evasion Exercise which involved being dropped off in "crews" (as if our vehicles had been destroyed and we'd been cut off behind enemy lines) and had to E&E some dozens of miles back to camp avoiding a live enemy. E&E is not particularly my seen, simply because I am lazy but, unusually, I had got myself up for this one and was really looking forward to it. Then FHQ found ourselves short of Commanders for the "enemy" vehicles because they'd all been in the back of that 1-tonner and I got bumped from E&E to commanding a 4-tonner. Not my fault they'd all been hurt but somehow the rest of the Squadron's jNCOs were convinced I'd skived off and I took a lot of flak for it. On another day, our Squadron were running an Infantry Batlle Run which involved engaging the enemy, advancing to contact, clearing building and so on. Again not something we usually got to do, being recce, but good fun. But once again I found myself unable to take part. The former RSM was running this range and needed an operator with a manpack to literally run the range with him. Having driven him on numerous occasions when we were in Command Troop together, I was volunteered. Once again I got abuse for simply running up and down the hill beside the RSM while the troops were getting dirty in full kit and webbing. When I pointed out HOW MANY times I'd run up and down the hill, the abuse stopped. On another occasion we got to advance up a hillside under barbed wire while GPMGs fired live rounds at us, over the top of the wire. Well that's what they said, but to be honest, we'd learned in Northern Ireland to detect the source of incoming fire by listening for the crack and thump of a round going down. Crack is the sonic wave as the round goes by; thump is the sound of the round going off in the barrel. Ignore the former, which could come from almost anywhere, and focus on the latter. But on this day, there was plenty of thump coming from the GPMGs but I wasn't hearing any crack. It's my belief that it was all conspiracy to make us think we were on the wrong end of live rounds. Didn't work for me. Anyway, what does all this have to do with Hitler's Forest and swastikas in the trees, I hear you ask. Well as I have explained, we were primarily admin unit and, not being infantry, didn't get to enjoy so many of the things the infantry "loved" about Vogelsang, which 40 years on still bore witness to a tough training regime. One of the ranges we never got to see involved firing GPMG across a lake. I have since learned that the wood on the far side of this lake had similarly been planted with contrasting trees and apparently until quite recently the swastika was clear to see. It was next to impossible to remove because planting new trees in situ would only change the colour of the swastika unless an exact match was made. Also recently (the same thread on the Army Rumour Service website) I learned that Vogelsang has been returned to non-military use. Anyone ever does a Battle of the Bulge trail, it might be worth having a nose around Vogelsang.

Agreed there are plenty of places to visit. When I visited in 1988 there was a military hospital buried in a tunnel system. I imagine that with the explosion in tourisn in the intervening years, these things are all in a much better nick than they were 20 years ago.

Or maybe ADPCON indicated that the record was CONverted to ADP, i.e. transcribed from a paper document. We used to see some wierd and wonderful acronyms and abbreviations on documents we were sent, and that was BEFORE I was posted to the Computer Centre. This was always my favourite, told to me by my boss, Steve, then a Staff Sergeant. He had served both at APO Ashton (the Army Pay Office at Ashton-under-Lyne that handled officers' accounts) and also at HQ AFNORTH (Headquarters Allied Forces Northern Europe) in Norway. The latter was full of Generals and half colonels got the coffee. Steve's experience at APO stood him in good stead. One day a Colonel walked into the Pay Office carrying a copy of the Daily Telegraph. "Sergeant, I have been reading today's newspaper and in the Gazette section it says I have been promoted Brigadier. Be a good chap and do the necessaries so that I can carry my new badges of rank." "But, sir, it doesn't work like that. We have to be notified by APO, then we can publish a Part Two Order and then you can be promoted. I simply don't have the authority to do what you ask." "Sergeant, here's my authority," and the Colonel slammed the Telegraph on his desk. "Get it sorted." Steve phoned APO (not necessarily an easy task from a military exchange in Norway in the late 70s - early 80s) and got through to one of his old mates. He explained the problem. "What should I do?" "Publish the Part Two Order. I'll deal with it this end and you'll be covered. No problem." "But the Part Two Order needs an authority to be quoted. What should I put?" (The authority field on the blank P2O form had enough room for about 5 characters IIRC.) "Put DTEL." "DTEL? What sort of authority is that?" "Daily Telegraph. Good enough for me." Moral of the story. when yer a lowly Trooper you have to jump through hoops just to get youe refunds of food and accommodation which are yours by right when you have been on exercise*; when yer a Brigadier, you just snap yer fingers and it happens. * Apparently on the modern Army they run a PAYD system: Pay As You Dine, which means that today, 1 June, there'll be squaddies having a proper meal for the first time in a week, havinf spent all their beer tokens over the Bank Holiday.

We were also a Recce Regiment. The CVR(T)s came issued with bivouac tents (aka bivvies, not to be confused with that most vital CES item, the boiling vessel, or BV), but people like the Commanding Officer in his Landrover and his Command Troop Ferret section, including RSM, LO and rebroadcast vehicles did not. However, if you research the word Hussar, as in 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars, you find some interesting references and descriptions. One source describes the origin of hussars in the same breath as Croats, erm Crabbates (sp?) and rogues and reports that whereas the word Hussar originates from Hungarian (hence the side-reference to Croats), the word Hussar in Hungarian derives from the Italian Corsari, which gave rise in English to the word Corsair, or pirate. Similarly, if you ever get to read Armour Volume 2, The Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (which is unlikely because its scale of distribution IIRC was - when they were styled Armd Recce Regts, now Formation Recce Regts - probably no more than a handful per Armd Recce Regt), or the History of the Reconnaissance Corps ("Every other bugger behind"), you'll find that to be good Recce troops, you need all the skills of the poacher. Can you see where this is going yet? We had a good collection of QMs and QMs(T) and their respective RQMSs, so their poaching skills ensured that every vehicle (CVR(T) or not) had at least a bivvy. You sometimes saw modified Landrovers or even trailers converted to allow very senior ranks the luxuries of a caravan. My driver and I found our rebroadcast Ferret equipped with a four-man Chieftain bivvy. Arguably not as waterproof as the more modern design of the three-man CVR(T) bivvy, but with room to swing a cat, lay out camp beds, place a coffee table and folding chairs ... oh yes and instead of attaching it to the side of the Mark 1 Ferret, which was actually a little low for a Chieftain bivvy, we'd turn it about and string it between a couple of trees. This allowed us, sat in our gin palace - I mean bivvy - to receive visitors and watch the sun go down through the trees of the Teutoburgerwald or the Harzgebirge or wherever we happened to have set up our homes that week. Very civil it was too. Truth be told, we carried so much kit to make life bearable that our vehicles on the move were often compared with gypsies' caravans. It was a shit job, but somebody had to do it. ;o)

Unless I am VERY MUCH MISTAKEN the first time an article talking about this site ever appeared was on Meridian TV on 1st April, aka April Fool's Day. It's amazing what you can rig up in these internet times. But I could be wrong.

IMHO the "WW2 camera" that took "that picture" must have a phenomenal depth of field. I'd suggest that either (most likely the B17) ought to be a little out of focus - assuming the Jeep to be the subject of "the photo". But very well done nonetheless.

I have to point out here that since Options For Change saw 15/19H and 13/18H merge to become The Light Dragoons just as 13H and 18H merged to become 13/18H after the First World War and 15H and 19H merged to become 15/19H, I am now an alumnus of the same regiment as Lord Baden Powell, 13H, famous of course for his seminal book, Scouting For Boys. I also wish to point out that I do not go and never have gone scouting for boys.

The muzzle brake / bore evacuator at the end of the barrel identifies the first pic as a T55 with (IIRC) a 105mm gun as opposed to (again IIRC) the 85mm gun of the T54. I had hoped to be able to namedrop T44 into my reply: a little-known (and I have never seen a picture) intermediary between T34 and T54, having essentially a T34 hull but for the first time mating it with the inverted frying-pan turret from the Josef Stalin series of heavy tanks (depending how you prefer to spell Josef - JS1, JS2 and JS3 or IS1, IS2 and IS3) which became the norm on all Russian and Soviet tanks until the introduction of Chobham-style armour. But I can't. Oops, I did. ;o)

In August 1978 I attended a 15/19H Junior NCOs Cadre Course. It involved promotion to Local Unpaid Lance Corporal (LULC - neither paid nor counting for seniority) for the duration, since the purpose of the course was to train senior Troopers ready for promotion to Lance Corporal. At the end of the course I wasn't promoted (we all reverted to Troopers as was the norm). I was in Command Troop at the time and frequently in close contact with the RSM. One day I asked him when I might reasonably expect to be promoted to Acting (and thence Substantive) Lance Corporal. "Trooper Alien, you'll get promoted to Lance Corporal the day the hole in your lower alimentary canal heals up." "Thank you very much, sir." Fast-forward to the beginning of 1980. A request had appeared on a Defence Council Instruction for volunteers to crew Sabre, Army's 55' yawl, on the 1980 Tall Ships Race. Having crewed for the Unit Paymaster on a number of Royal Armoured Corps regattas in recent years, I had volunteered and been accepted to crew one of the transit legs, in this case to move Sabre from to Gibraltar. The Paymaster had also been accepted, for a later leg. One of our officers had also been selected for the same leg as I had and we travelled from Paderborn to Gosport in his Beetle. (All subalterns drove clapped-out Beetles.) We sailed from Gosport mid-March, having been delayed a day or two because the Retired-Officer skipper did not want to bend the Army's race entry on a transit leg and a Force 10 storm had raged in the channel. We duly sailed as the storm died away, though there was still plenty of sea in the Channel after we rounded the Island. Skipper was taking no chances and we were all issued Stugerol sea-sickness tablets. I can verify that Stugerol is a superb sea-sickness tablet: I was sick as a dog for days. With anything I ate coming out the same way it had gone down, my alimentary canal had precious little work to do and by the time I returned to dry land, it was doing nothing. We handed Sabre over to the next transit crew, but we had arrived late due to our late start and we had an extra day's stopover in Gib while flights were rearranged. We got flights to Gatwick okay but being Friday, we couldn't get connecting air-trooping flights back to BAOR before Monday, so we were also issued train warrants home and a buckshee weekend's UK leave. I returned to my unit on the Monday morning to learn that a Colonel had been shot in Bielefeld during my absence and the alert state in BAOR had gone through the roof. I was to spend the next week performing daytime main gate guard (at least it meant that I didn't get rubber-dicked for a normal overnight guard). However, being (still) in Command Troop, I was tipped the wink to start putting items of uniform into the regimental tailor because the latest round of promotions had been notified to the Orderly Room and I was to be promoted Acting ( = paid but no seniority) Lance Corporal, effective the date it was to be published on Part Two Orders and backdated to the date that Acting Rank had been awards by RAC Manning and Records. Substantive promotion would follow after 90 days in the Acting rank. Consequently, come I think Thursday afternoon, I sloped off and read Part One (Squadron) and Part Two (Regimental) Orders and saw my promotion published. I went back to my basha and changed Combat Jacket and Wolly Pullie for the newly-tailored items I had retrieved from the tailor. By the time I got back to the Guardroom, all orders had been posted and I was instantly set upon by all and sundry trying to have a go at me for being improperly dressed (i.e. not wearing the correct badge of rank). Until I waved my right arm at them. The point to note in this story is that a year and a half previously, the RSM had predicted that I'd remain a Trooper so long as there was a hole in my backside. Somehow I don't think he had expected it to heal up while I was away sailing. RSMs: gotta love them. p.s. As Lance Corporal I was no longer required to carry out the guard duties of a Trooper, and the following day I was replaced as main gate guard. Ah, halcyon days.

Another look at the top picture. The bottom item (in plastic bag) looks to me like it might be the cleaning rod for a pistol or revolver c/w screw on finger loop to aid pulling through. Or a meringue?

I work for a multinational IT megacorporation whose UK Software Laboratory is in the picturesque Hampshire countryside. We bought the site from Vickers in the late 50s. Late in 1940, the Luftwaffe bombed Supermarine's Woolston and Itchen factories and manufacture of the Vickers / Supermarine Spitfire was quickly moved to Hursley Park on the outskirts of Winchester. A handful of years ago, the auditorium in the Grade 1 listed Hursley House was ripped apart and re-infrastructured for the 21st Century. After ripping off the wooden cladding, the centuries-old coving was clearly visible but in a bad way. Plaster casts were taken and the broken bits filled in from the castings. Of more interest though were signs on the wall describing the auditorium's wartime role of benchtesting the Merlins before they were fitted to airframes. Having lifted the floor, the smell of oil and aviation spirit was clearly discernable, even 60 years after the event. The auditorium is a magnificent balance of 16th Century (IIRC) architecture and 21st Century technology. Whenever the Americans come to visit, they struggle to get their heads around the fact that they are in a house that is older than their country. When Vickers' test pilot died last year, they sent a lone Spitfire to fly past The House in his memory. I don't think they'd expected 3000 of us on the lawns to watch the event. The pilot went on to spend about 20 minutes flying past and there were 3000 pairs of damp eyes as he flew off. Co-incidentally, the completed aircraft were immediately flown across Winchester to the RNAS HMS Kestrel at Worthy Down prior to delivery to squadrons. HMS Kestrel became RAPC Worthy Down, comprising Technical and Porfessional Training Wings, Depot, RAPC Computer Centre and Command Pay Office UKLF. RAPC Computer Centre was my last posting, whence I transferred to the Reserve in 1989. In 1943, Lord Haw Haw proudly announced to the world that a U-boat had sunk HMS Kestrel. An astonishing achievement given that Worthy Down is some 15 miles inland.

That reminds me of the time I wrote some notes on "How To Use VM/CMS" (IBM's Conversational Management System for the Virtual Machine mainframe operating System). VM allows you give file names a maximum length of two strings of eight characters. I needed to squeeze the name of this document into one eight-character filename because the filetype (second eight characters) was given. I ended up calling it HOWUUCMS: HOW (two "U"s) CMS. I'll get me coat.

I agree that it looks VERY like my memories of a GPMG boresight. That said, I cannot remember ever boresighting a GPMG. After spending valuable time boresighting the 76, we never felt that boresighting the coax as well was going to be worth the effort. Instead, the gunner would fire a burst from the GPMG, observe the fall of shot and then aim off accordingly. I think I may have seen a GPMG boresight once. I could be wrong. They were just clutter in an already cramped storage plan of a Scorpion. The acid test is, does it fit tightly down the barrel of a GPMG? Otherwise I'd guess it's the boresight off something else, but I cannot think anything comparable that might come with a boresight. Never saw one for a Three-Oh. If this thing is bigger, might it be the boresight for a Chieftain Five Oh RMG?

Yes I recognise it now.

Top picture top right item (upside down L shape). It shouts at me that it's (one of a pair) to secure sand-channels to the glacis plate of a Ferret Scout Car. I really cannot remember ever having seen these off, so I cannot be sure. Maybe a similar part off a different vehicle?

Because after penetration by a Tiger-defeating anti-tank round, the insides of the Tiger would be not unlike the inside of the Cream Egg perhaps?

Good a place as any for explanations would be to visit here: http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/ARRSEPedia_Intro It's a (generally) military wikipaedia run by the Army Rumour Service (my alternative skive site).

Combat Vehicle, Reconnaissance. Usually qualified as CVR(W) or CVR(T). CVR(W) (Wheeled) is Fox armoured car issued to UK Recce Regiments in the 1970s and scrapped in the early 90s. CVR(T) (Tracked) comprises a family of vehicles on a single suspension and a discrete number of hulls. Scorpion was the main recce vehicle, armed with a 76mm gun used for divisional recce squadrons (the name has changed over the years). It was scrapped in the early 90s because (the general consensus says) firing the 76mm gun, which auto-ejected the empty case after firing, flooded the turret with carbon monoxide. Those of us who fired them and experienced splitting headaches all agree. Scimitar is essentially identical apart from being armed with a 30mm Rarden cannon. It was planned to be used as close recce at the battlegroup level. When Scorpion and Fox were both scrapped, the former's hull and the latter's turret were mated to produce a hybrid, functionally identical to Scimitar called Sabre. It is my understanding (but I could be wrong) that when the Scorpions were scrapped, even with the Sabre stopgap, there was a significant shortfall and I believe that a further run of Scimitars may have been ordered, but I have absolutely no evidence of this. Two CVR(T)s have (had) large hulls: the Sultan armoured command vehicle and the Samaritan armoured ambulance. Remaining CVR(T)s had a hull somewhere in size between Scorpion and Sultan: Spartan armoured personnel carrier; Striker anti-tank guided missile launch platform; Samson armoured recovery vehicle (I think: I never saw one of know of one ever being on any regiments order of battle). They are aluminium-hulled and extremely fast. Since I lived and worked on them they have been greatly modified and enhanced. Come to think of it, I recently learned that armoured regiments are being equipped with a Medium Armoured Squadron each of Scimitars, basically to keep regimental size realistic without having too many Challenger 2 tanks.

It's a walk in the park. Okay it's a drive in the country. 1. It's a pre-selective gearbox. The actions are: Take foot off accelerator (not necessary if you are going uphill and losing revs, necessitating a change-down - see below); Select gear (if not previously selected - see below); Hit Gear Change Pedal; Accelerate. In your own time select gear ready for next change (see above). As opposed to (in a manual): Take foot off accelerator; Dip the clutch smoothly; Select the gear; Release the clutch smoothly; Accelerate. Having changed gear properly, the fluid flywheel ensures smooth pick-up of the drive so you really do just "HIT" the GCP. You do NOT engage / disengage smoothly the way you must with a manual. The only thing that can give you a rough gearchange is by bad application of revs after the change. The fluid flywheel is the reason you don't need release revs changing down going uphill: releasing the revs only means you have a hiatus during the gearchange which will cost you more engine speed and mean you need to change down again sooner. As the drive disengages to select the lower gear, the revs will race briefly in exactly the same way as double-declutching would in a manual car, hence a far better gearchange than releasing and reapplying the accelerator. Once you get your head around pre-selecting the gear and that the GCP is NOT a clutch, gear-changing is FAR easier than a manual car. It's the same gearchange as was seen in buses when I were a lad. I don't do buses nowadays and I have no idea how they change gear. The steering wheel, as you will have found, slopes the wrong way. You'd never get your feet on the pedals otherwise. Hold the wheel at one minute to one minute past and steering will be no problem. The issued mirrors to Ferrets were tiny and universally replaced in the field by standard Landrover / truck mirrors. This is the best ride you'll ever have. Believe me. I have driven most CVR(T) variants, Landrovers, a 4 tonner or two, motorcycles, mopeds, staff cars, mini-buses and nothing, but nothing, compares with the Ferret. Enjoy. Jealous Mackem in Southampton. ;o)

You should be doing a lot better than 35! In Cyprus 76 - 77 my Mark 2 was selected for PRE (Periodic REME Examination). I had to bring it in to our base at Nicosia Airport from our outstation in Skouriotissa on the Northwest coast. The best I'd ever done the trip was 45 minutes (apparently a journalist had recently set a UN record for the trip over the mountains in a 1/2 ton Landrover in daylight in good conditions at 34 minutes) in a previous Ferret. But that Ferret had been on its way to have an electrical fault fixed: it was running on 12v and it was dark and damp. That Ferret was subsequently taken from me (cannot remember why) Needless to say, this early morning trip went superbly and I rolled into camp straight up to the LAD (Light Aid Detachment) and inspection. All went well and the inspector took it for a road test around the garrison. He was more than pleasantly surprised to get 55 out of it, but he hadn't realised it was HOT, rather than just started up and rolled across the track from the vehicle park. Even so, I cannot remember ever having a bad Ferret - getting less than 55 with ease. Come to think of it, thereafter I only ever drove Mark 1s. I cannot remember the top speed of our Mark 5s (which I only ever commanded on an ad hoc basis) and whether the increased wheel size would compensate for the extra weight of the massive Swingfire turret: I doubt it.

Changing gears in a Ferret, oh yes. Omagh, Spring of 76 (again). I had recently qualified as a Crewman, Gunner, Scorpion Class 2 and been posted to my regiment as a section rifleman (obviously! ;o). Tim needed to carry out some servicing on his Ferret and I was volunteered to be duty gopher. We bimbled - I mean tank-park-shuffled - I mean marched in that idiosyncratic cavalry way - past the Air Squadron hangars where a Scout helicopter was taking off and a Sioux was being serviced ("Stay outside the yellow line or Air Squadron will try and chop your head off with their rotors. Don't even THINK of driving over the yellow line in case you contaminate their landing zone,") to the B Sqn hangars. "Can you drive?" I was asked. "I have a full Group A licence, yes," I replied. "That's enough to drive a Ferret: get in. I need to work on the wheelstations and I want you to move it to turn the weheels so I can access places in turn." I think he must have been checking the oil levels in the hubs. "You want me to drive an armoured vehicle I have never sat in before over the top of you?" "Yes." "Don't you think it would be wise to let me have a spot of familiarisation first?" "I'll talk you through it." He showed me how to select neutral. I didn't believe "Select neutral then hit the GCP." "What's a GCP?" "It's the pedal like a clutch." "I know what a clutch is. Why didn't you just say, 'clutch'?" He let it go. With the engine off and the Ferret already in neutral, it didn't make any difference. We got the engine started and idling nicely. He squatted down out of my sight. He told me to select second then hit the GCP. I "pressed the clutch" and selected first. then he held his hand up above the glacis plate and told me to press the accelerator gently until the revs got high enough to turn the flywheel and roll forward, and stop when he indicated. Needless to say, not happy about his wierd instructions which made no sense at all to somebody who knew perfectly well how to change gear and his determination that I run him over (and he was a lot bigger than me), I was trepidacious in the extreme. Eventually he bothered to explain to me that it was a pre-selective gearbox NOT a manual. I must have done the job well enough because I didn't run him over and a day or two later I was given a Ferret to drive on the streets.

Good move. It was designed to run on Combat Gas, which was a very low common denominator which made 2* look high octane. Similarly, CVR(T) and CVR(W), even though they were powered by the J60, a derivative of a Jaguar XK420 sports car engine which ran on 5*, had low-compression (I think is the right term) head to allow them to run on <2* (that will never get past my Rexx interpreter). Everything "petrol" ran on CombatGas, though the term "ran" can be qualified. I suspect this tale has appeared on this forum somewhere before but I cannot remember where. Feel free to leave the thread if you have heard this one. In 1976, newly converted to CVR(T) in Tidworth, our CVR(T)s ate plugs and points and suffered badly from running on CombatGas. I was familiar with the POL (Petrol Oil & Lubricants) Storeman who had an office in a shed by the fuel pumps at the POL point. One day from across the vehicle park I saw him conclude business with a Texaco tanker driver whom he watched leave, with a puzzled expression on his face. I bimbled across to him to ask why. "He pumped a tanker-load of fuel into the CombatGas tank and announced, 'There you go, topped up with Five star.' "'Five Star?' I asked incredulously? 'It's meant to be CombatGas!!!' "'Yes,' he replied, 'but there was an error on my work ticket and you're the lucky winner.' "'But hang on,' I went on, 'If we are the lucky winners, surely there must be a loser somewhere?' "'Yes,' he replied. 'Don't fill up with Five Star at the petrol station up the road in Burbage.'" The POL Storeman went on, "At least our CVR(T)s will run well: Five Star is what they deserve. But don't tell a soul or the whole of Tidworth Garrison will be refuelling here." There are no secrets. Every vehicle in camp quickly topped up with Five Star CombatGas and for a fortnight there were none of the usual breakdowns. But word DID reach the rest of the garrison and a lot of people (who hadn't heard) wondered why our POL point was the garrison's favourite for two weeks (until we got another delivery of CombatGas, this time, sadly, <2*).

This is the usual cause, then, of the legendary Chieftain runaway engine? Nice to know. I have heard of it often enough but never heard an explanation as to why. There's a good first-hand description here (last but one post on the page): http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=61346/postdays=0/postorder=asc/start=0.html As I understand it, the Chieftain will run on petrol, but the ignition timing settings are a compromise between those for diesel and petrol, so to paraphrase Doctor Johnson*, it runs indifferently on either. It did occur to me during the Tesco et al fuel fiasco a couple of months ago that Chieftain owners the world over would be flocking to wherever this duff fuel was and only charging a pittance to take it off their hands. Or would this fuel not work in a Chieftain either? * Dr Johnson started work on his English Dictionary a couple of years after an ignominious action on the battlefield by 13th Light Dragoons. His definition of Dragoon, then, was something like: Dragoon: a soldier who performs indifferently mounted or on foot. In those times, indifferently could mean the same as er "the same," though observers believe he was making an early and clever play on words.