AlienFTM

You spotted my deliberate mistake, Pike. I was indeed thinking of the fluid flywheel. (Hangs head in shame.)

Or put the gun over the back decks? Not particularly familiar with the layout of a Fox, but I believe there is more length over the back decks than over the glacis plate. With the gun over the back is access to the driver's position realistic? Could the gun be pointed at a corner to improver driver access? I am sure that with the gun over the back (especially pointing at a corner) there'd be less barrel to catch and, if it's at the back of the hangar there'll be no room to get a lorry in there to break it. Bliddy soft skins. Engage them with yer coax mate. "Coax traverse right ... steady ... ON. 400 lorry in open." "400 ... ON" "Loaded fire" "Firing now"

How embarrasing is this? Did I dream the above? Bore evacuator at the end of the barrel: it's a T55. End of. There IS a good view of the road wheels: gap between 1 and 2 - it certainly a T54/55. And glacis plate splash guard IS clearly visible. Sincere apologies.

Follow the link, says it all really. http://www.mts.net/~parker2/camerone.htm

It isn't a real barrel is it??? About 1980 I was in Command Troop 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars in Paderborn. Our hangar was adjacent to an A Squadron hangar. One sunny afternoon we heard from outside "Brum, Brum, clunk, oh <expletive deleted>." My vehicle commander and I went out to investigate. One of their Scimitars needed to visit the nearby REME Light Aid Detachment square. It was parked at the back of their hangar. The troop moved the Scimitars in front out of the way and a driver jumped into the subject vehicle. We tended to park with the guns (Scorpion) or cannon (Scimitar) fully elevated to give drivers room to get in and out. With the Rarden fully elevated, there was a clearance of about 6" between muzzle and lintel over the hangar door. No worries. Except that subject cowboy driver (A Squadron were Close Recce, hence Scimitar, not Scorpion, who were permanently attached to other battlegroups, so they had no part to play in regimental exercises, so they'd be used as "enemy" and get to break all the rules and were a bunch of cowboys) managed to change up three gears in the one real-tank-length between moving off and reaching the lintel. As he passed under the lintel at speed, he changed up, the nose lifted and the Rarden caught the lintel. The lintel was moved six inches out of place and the hangar was declared unsafe for about three months while they repaired the displaced lintel. Imagine the picture above but with the barrel bent upwards in a vertical plane. A runner was despatched to find the Artificer (Weapons) and explain to him that the Rarden was broke. Asked what was meant by "broke," he explained. Tiffy's response was that you cannot bend a barrel like that. He was invited to come and visit the scene and see for himself. He burst into tears. My vehicle commander went on to be an Instructor (Gunnery) at Lulworth, then RSM (15/19H had by then amalgamated with 13/18H to become The Light Dragoons). He recently informed me that that barrel is now on permanent display at the RAC Gunnery School at Lulworth as a reminder that you CAN (just about if you try really hard) bend the barrel of a 30mm cannon.

In 1976 the two RAC regiments in Tidworth were 15/19H in Aliwal and 4/7DG in Bhurtpore. Does this have any bearing? What do I know?

I dunno what 80/90 signifies, but the oil in a military Ferret gearbox is OM13.

It was filmed on the site of the old gasworks, extracting town gas (superceded by North Sea Gas in the 60s) from coal. It was still securely fenced off in the mid-90s with signage warning about the heavy metal content in the soil, visible as you walk from Galeon's Reach DLR station to the Karting track at the end of the runway at London City Airport.

Be aware that there are both connection and security issues with Skype (don't ask me, but my company explicitly prohibit its use on our ThinkPads). Skype is a single, proprietary method of using VOIP. Other flavours are available and you may find that further research reveals a better alternative (or not).

Not realising when I signed up in 1975 that 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars had just foregone the Armoured role (slipping in an 18 month operational tour of Omagh in the process) before becoming a Recce regiment, thereby missing out on playing with a 60 ton behemoth. But Recce was better fun anyway and if I had joined an Armoured regiment I wouldn't have been asked by my Unit Paymaster and subsequently fellow Army Offshore Racing team member to date his nanny, now my wife for more than 1/4 century, I wouldn't have the two wonderful kids with whom I have been blessed, blah, blah, the Paymaster might not have headhunted me and got me into computers leading to the perfect job as Staff Software Engineer for a multinational IT megacorporation. But I do regret never having commanded a Chieftain.

I thought T55 but the bore evacuator 2/3 down the barrel is a primary recognition feature of a T62. You only get a brief glimpse of the running gear. First glance suggests a gap between first and second roadwheels, suggesting a T54/55, but second glance suggests maybe that gap isn't there and it may be between roadwheels 3/4 and 4/5, again suggesting a T62. (Roadwheel layout is a secondary identifying feature since we only ever expected to see them head on. Non-prominence of a splash guard on the glacis plate precludes T72 (wrong roadwheels for T64). However, as I type, it occurs to me that it might be a Chinese clone, maybe a T59? Next time I clock the advert I'll check for further recognition features. (Cos I don't watch the adverts and only click to this one after the recognition opportunities have gone and I really, really, feel no urge whatsoever to use my Sky+ to rewind ADVERTS!!!) Alien, the former AFV recognition instructor.

It looks to me like an upper section of a 27' mast, but I doubt it can be because you'd be able to see the lower sections telescoped at the bottom of the picture. But I'd guess it is something similar.

Googling for "Peace and War" +haldeman the first hit was this link: http://www.concatenation.org/frev/peaceandwar.html ISBN, reviews, etc

Peace and War is three separate books, The Forever War, Forever Peace and Forever Free in a single omnibus edition. My son recently picked it up in Waterstones. The Forever War, originally written in the mid to late 70s is Haldeman's tribute to his recent Vietnam War, moved to Sci-Fi. I had a first edition paperback which fell apart a few years ago through repeated reading by myself and my son. I have long described it as a perfect book: on the cover of Peace and War, a reviewer makes the same claim. Forever Peace is a direct sequel and just about comparable for quality of read. Haldeman describes Forever Free as not another sequel to The Forever War (because the timings are pretty much contemporaneous with the early stages of The Forever War) but an alternative what-if scenario, more easily related to events since The forever War was written. It is an entirely different story. The first story has a massive twist at the end and two latter stories both have universe-changing finales which I shan't spoil. But if you want an un-put-downable book, don't listen to others: this is the one (three). Maybe you need to be a Sci-Fi fan ... or maybe not. Oh and there's some stuff in the omnibus about why he rewrote part of The Forever War in the early editions to please his publishers before reverting to the original middle in later editions when he knew the book would stand without the edits and he could stand up to the publishers. I think if you buy a recent edition of TFW on its own - I also have this - you'll also get this information.

An intriguing book. Not something I would have bought myself but SWMBO wanted to buy me a book and this was the nearest to something I'd have bought had I wanted to. The book very cleverly interweaves fact and fiction to tell how the inaugural winner of the Monaco Grand Prix (listed enigmatically in F1 records simply as Williams) and his main rival and soon to be comrade in arms Robert Benoist become legends in the Bugatti team. Upon outbreak of the Second World War, Williams is recruited by SOE. If I tell much more it will spoil it, so I shan't. Not your usual war story, spy story, adventure story, love story but a bit of all of them. Long bibliography and the author claims credit for getting a rare admission from MI6 that they were wrong (wrt the end of the book). I quite enjoyed it, even if it isn't what we in the business call war porn (think Sven Hassel, Leo Kessler, James Rouch).

Don't forget that Stanley Kubrick (who wouldn't get on a plane) filmed the Vietnam finale of hmmm, ummm, erm Full Metal Jacket (?) at Galeon's Reach near what is now London City Airport.

If the driver cannot see the commander, keep exchanging the odd word of chat so that you know you still have comms. I think it must have been late 1981, probably the annual FTX, I was sat in the commander's position of 2 Bravo, the second Squadron FHQ command Sultan while we took part in a tactical night formation move (pretty sure there was more than just our battlegroup so it must have been a Brigade or Divisional move). Suddenly we rolled up behind the vehicle we were following in our packet, stopped and killed the headlights (we were on public roads and the Germans didn't like us travelling on public roads on convoy lights). My operator got out and stood guard while I manned the radios. We sat ... and sat ... and sat. Being tactical there was minimal radio traffic anyway. The Colonel turned up. That was a surprise: Command Troop was nowhere near us in the order of march. "Corporal Alien. I have here the telephone number of the nearest Krankenhaus. You're the regiment's German Linguist and there is a telephone box. Call the Krankenhaus and tell them we need an ambulance at this location to recover a man with serious head wounds." I yattered on at the German at the other end of the phone but I wasn't believed. Eventually an ambulance was despatched. While we awaited its arrival I got the story direct from the Colonel (whom I'd driven as a Squadron commander a couple of years before). We were near the front of our Battlegroup. Just ahead of us, one of the last packets of the previous (infantry) battlegroup had been led by a Warrant Officer in a Mark 1 Ferret. They had turned off the main road onto a narrow track through the woods and immediately killed the lights, switching to convoy lights. Some time later, the driver became aware that he wasn't getting any input from his commander so he stopped and, being sat so close to him, it took no effort to realise he was no longer there. It transpired that the Ferret has passed under a low bough unseen with no lights, which had caught the commander, snapped his radio droplead, instantly cutting comms, and lifted him out, depositing him right under the tracks of the lead FV432 behind him, which never saw himi. His head was apparently crushed so badly that it leaned obscenely to one side. He lived for about 12 hours.

That ties in with my distant memories. 15/19H did have unit markings in Tidworth 76-77 but after deployment to BAOR, there were none such.

When I went to Bovvy last year I was surprised at how many Chieftain / Challenger clone variants there were on display. Having sold Cent to the Israelis in the 60s and achieved a quantum leap in development from their ideas, HMG were very keen to do the same with Chieftain in the early 70s, but sadly, Middle East turmoil led to USG leaning on HMG to stop the sale of military hardware (presumbaly so they could sell them their own, but this isn't a political debate) In the late 70s, the Shah of Iran commissioned 1200 tropicalised Chieftains with all the latest mods, to be called Lion of Persia (Shir Iran). At this point, RARDE at Chobham announced their new eponymous armour and the Shah promptly change his order to include said armour. The new vehicle was to be called Shir Iran 2. Unfortunately, the Shah was overthrown and no way were the Shir 2s going to the Ayatollahs. This left HMG with 1200 tropicalised Chieftains with all the latest mods and nowhere to go. They were offered to the Royal Armoured Corps (which didn't number 1200 tanks anyway) and they were accepted. Director RAC decided to offer the men who would crew these vehicles the chance to name them (Lion of Persia was hardly apt and besides, traditionally our tank names tend to start with C. There were a number of option. I voted for Cavalier because I knew that Challenger had been used previously during WW2 to mount a 17pdr gun in an enlarged turret on a Cromwell (?) hull to create a tank destroyer. However the tankies' inferiority complex, due to their history only going back 60 years whereas the bulk of the RAC went back hundreds, led to Cavalier being rejected and Challenger being the winning name. All the tropicalisation kit was removed because the RAC would only ever fight one war, on the North German Plain ... er, wouldn't they? ... and Challenger came into service. In Sandpit Scrap 1, Challenger's shortcomings were quickly identified so that by the time Sandpit Scrap 2 came along, Challenger 2 (CR2) was in service. Anyway, this is all beside the point. What I wanted to demonstrate was that work continuously takes place to develop new variants and incorporate new technologies on tanks. I have now become aware that numerous projects took place to make Chieftain best of breed (many, me included, will tell you that in its evolution as CR2, that has been achieved) and examples of many such wierd variants have ended up at Bovington. The name Chieftain 90 sticks in my mind; I also seem to recall a project to fit spaced aluminium armour all over Chieftain as a defence against HEAT rounds (e.g. RPG), which bears a striking superficial resemblance to CR2, but much lighter (and less-well protected against kinetic rounds). For an explanation of the types of round used by and against tanks, see: http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Sabot

Firstly, is the picture a bitmap (.BMP) ? If so, using your favourite picture editor, open the picture and from the menu bar select File / Save As. I'd expect the Save As dialogue to offer to save it in the same directory ("folder") as the original. Under the list of files in the directory, there ought to be a dropdown offering (depending on the software) Save as File Type ... Scroll through this dropdown list and find JPEG. A JPEG will reduce the size of a bitmap typically tenfold. If your file is still too big, consider (again using your preferred picture editor) reducing the number of colours. Reducing the colour depth by one step will probably not make any significant difference to the naked eye. If it does, you can always go back to the original that you haven't deleted. If the picture is "black and white", there is every possibility that it isn't, having subtle sepia hues instead. Your picture editor may allow you to select a grey scale colour scheme, rendering the picture in true black and white - and probably enhancing it - and again, save a vast amount of storage. As a last resort resort, your picture editor may allow you to resize the image. Without knowing (and having) your picture editor, I cannot possibly tell you how to do this: it will be off the menu bar somewhere. Hope this helps. Edited for temporary dyslexic interlude.

Duke Bishops? Pah. I was born and grew up in County Durham, the Land of the PRINCE Bishops. Sir Walter Scott so rightly described Durham Cathedral as “Half House of God, Half Bastion against the Scots” and the Bishop of Durham was appointed by the king to be a Prince and Viceroy giving him demigodlike powers over his vice-regency right up until the Victorians realised what powers he had and took them from him. Remember also that in those days, Scotland started at the Tyne, and The Wall was built to keep those now known as Geordies in the Land of Darkness and out of the known universe. The Roman legions having been fought to a standstill by the heroic efforts of the warriors of Durham, whose bloods flows in my veins to this day, the Italian Army went into a decline that remained for thousands of years, leading for example, to cruel jokes about Italian tanks with seven gears: six reverse and neutral; and packets of Airfix Italian Infantry: 2 wounded and 46 surrendering. All the Roman troops deserted and set up businesses in the local community, which explains why there are so many Italian restaurants in Co Durham to this day. So the local Roman commander asked local artisans if they could make a defence system comprising a wall along the North bank of the Tyne with a fort every three miles, a castle every mile and a turret every 1/3 mile. The response of the locals was, in the vernacular, "Aye, marra, we can mack'em." So the locals came to be described in Latin by the noun Mackum (declines like Bellum), meaning Artisan and passed back into English as Mackem. Those unfortunates trapped North of The Wall and starved of civilisation foolishly sided with the monarch during the wars of oppression against the Scots and became known as King George's Men. Due to their unfortunate speech impediments, this led to their being called Geordies. Sadlly since the title of Prince Bishop was rescinded, the battle started by Emperor Hadrian to keep the Geordies out of God's Country to save his proud warrior race has been lost and the once-beautiful city has once again become a frontier outpost between the people of the known universe and the forces of darkness. To this day you can see the Forces of Darkness roaming around Co Durham like they own the place.

Last year I visited Bovvy on my birthday. After the demo, I bimbled round the back of the Leo that had taken part. I found an interesting metal plate on the back plate instructing me not to paint over the sign or doing anything at all to the paint finish because of the nasties in the finish. I didn't ask: neither did I touch.

ALWAYS use a torque wrench. In the run-up to D-Day, Churchill Tank crews dutifully obeyed the Servicing Schedule instruction to tighten the wheel nuts and when they hit the beaches, all the wheel nuts sheered. Hence modern vehicles including a torque wrench in the CES.

During the 1970s and 1980s, glow in the dark stuff was painted with a tritium (radioactive hydrogen3) solution known as trilux. (Hydrogen 3, light: get it?) Items that stick in my mind are: the Scorpion gunner's Quadrant Fire Control (QFC - a spirit level for levelling then elevating the gun for indirect fire) Sight Unit Infantry Trilux (SUIT - pronounce zoot), a low-light sight for the SLR Sight Unit Small Arms Trilux, ditto for SA80.

I am sure if you put in some internet research you'll find plenty of places to visit wrt the Ardennes Offensive. I have some strong but half-forgotten memories filed away in my head of pictures I found a year or two ago. Come to think of it, there's an outside chance I got the link from the This Day In History forum. Otherwise try Googling for Kampfgruppe Peiper (with, without and alternatively spelt for the Umlaut). ;o)