AlienFTM

I was promoted to Lance Corporal in 1980 and IIRC the exclusive use of combat stripes on DPM was only just coming in. Certainly in 76 in NI, our NCOs wore normal stripes blacked out, and these tended only to be replaced either upon promotion or replacement of a worn-out jacket. I was still wearing a normal stripe on a brassard with my overalls right up until I transferred out in 1982. ISTR that out of camp, what you wore on a brassard (which you bought yourself) was up to you. If you can find "A Pictorial History of 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars" by my ex-Troop Leader Ralph Thompson, you'll find a picture of the back of me in overalls with brassard and normal stripe about 1982 being talked to by my Troop Sergeant.

If you are after US boots and your feet are wide, be careful. In my experience, the average American foot (and hence footwear) is substantially narrower than its British equivalent. In the 70s (when DMS boots were awful and Boots, CH were still in development) I simply could not get hold of a pair of US boots to fit me in a desperate attempt to find footwear better suited to exercises in BAOR. In the winter I wore fur-lined Panzerstiefel (Jack Boots for tank crews). Coupled with a cut-down greatcoat because parkas were in limited supply and a giant pair of motorcycle gauntlets from my civilian mode of transport, I was generally greeted as a right sight on exercise, but I tended to stay rather warmer than most huddled in the cab / turret of my Ferret.

pmsl. Sounds like The Army Act 1955, Section 69A, entitled something like, "Conduct prejudicial to the maintenance of good order and military discipline." During my 88 days' pensionable service in the Royal Military Police in 1975 (before I told them where to stick their truncheons) we were told that Section 69A was known in their circles as the "Ways And Means Act." About 1981 in the cavalry we got a new RSM and one of his first edicts was that Section 69A was NOT to be used when bringing a charge. If the NCO couldn't find a more appropriate charge than Section 69A, either it wasn't a charge worth bringing or he wasn't a very good NCO.

I raise an eyebrow at that. You are definitely NOT allowed to carry passengers in caravans and even we the military weren't allowed to carry passengers in any towed vehicle we possessed.

I'd personally seek legal clarification before you did. Even in the 1970s, Scorpions were retrofitted with seatbelts. Don't ask if anybody wore them. I'll posit that your legal position is not cut and dried and the opinion of anybody here will only be hearsay.

I guess so. The Army classifies vehicles as Armoured (A), Soft-skin (B) or (don't know what the class is, but it includes trailers) C. Like I just said in another thread, I drove Ferret and Saracen on a Group B (automatic car) licence throughout my time. They were both "A" vehicles maintained by "A" Vehicle Mechanics (VMAs). I am sure there are one or two of these on the forum who can explain more. Scorpion was substantially lighter than Saracen but required a Group H licence because it was a track-laying vehicle steered by its tracks.

I would be surprised if you could. Even way back when, drivers of troop-carrying 4 ton Bedfords required a separate TCV licence (or at least a test?) over and above the normal HGV.

I passed my Group A test in 1973 before joining the Army in 1975. Posted to my first posting part-way through a Northern Ireland tour, I was astonished to learn that I was qualified to drive a Ferret Scout Car, which was actually classified as Group B (Same as A but with an automatic gearbox). I did in fact drive a Ferret in NI based on this (it wouldn't have been a problem anyway since, being on military duties I could have driven anything at all on a provisional licence and there'd always be two of us. L plates might make me a target though). Being in Tidworth from the start of the tour, with everybody else who hadn't done one, I did a couple-of-days' Ferret familiarisation course before heading off to UNFICYP for six months where all we had was Ferrets. I think I may have been given a test but it meant nothing - like I say I already had Group B on my licence. Even more astonishing, maybe 1978 I was sent on a Saracen course. It involved a couple of days Maintenance training and a couple of days driving round the Paderborn Ring Road. But at the end of it, I again didn't get anything on my licence as the Saracen was also classified as Group B, even if it did weigh a whole lot more. At that time we might even still have beeing driving the double-decker APCRA Saracens instead of the ACV Saracens we were meant to have been issued. As has been made clear elsewhere, the rules were greatly tightened in the 1990s and if you were to be tested now, it'd be a completely different kettle of fish.

30-something years ago I was reading a car mag and learnt how an Italian had found a rusting lump at the back of his barn. He dug it out, started to remove the rust and was astonished to discover Ferrari markings on the cylinder head. Eventually he found out what he was looking at. The engine dated from the days (mid-50s IIRC) when Formula 1 meant "whatever it takes to win." Monza being a pure-torque circuit, Ferrari had decided they needed a FIVE LITRE TWO CYLINDER engine especially to ensure victory at Monza. They built this thing and started to bench test it ... until the bench went hurtling out of the workshop. They gave up on a 5 litre 2 cylinder engine and quietly hid the evidence.

Every up you count will be followed by a down. Every down you count will be followed by an up. Otherwise it isn't radially symmetrical and won't work very well as a spline. Like somebody else hinted at, mark your starting point and stop when it comes round again or you'll be suspicious when you reach 347. ;o)

I may be stupid, but ... ... surely the answer will be the same whichever you count?

You may wish to compare BHP with PS. PS = Pferdestärke = Horse power in German. German cars are rated and insured by PS. 1PS = 0.9863201 BHP Don't bother trying to pronounce Pferdestärke - it's universally PS. Okay P - FAIR - duh - sh - tear (rhymes with hair) - kuh.

You can type in the message you want to send, right through to the end, including pasting in the text you want to quote that may not have been in a previous post. When you're done, , then select the Quote button above. ;o)

Never come across the VERY unauthorised modification to the safety mechanism that converted the L1A1 to fully automatic as per the original FN???? The latter day thinking is that it is better to seriously wound the other guy rather than kill him. Kill him and his side are down one man; wound him and they are down 12 people while they casevac him, patch him up and help him recuperate. As for the SLR. I have to confess that this beautiful weapon was only my own for a short period in Northern Ireland and another short period when I first transferred from cavalry to pay services. During my time in the RMP, my personal weapon was the Small Metal Gun and alternative was 9mm pistol; in the cavalry, SMG then SLR. I did frequently fire the SLR competitively - by coincidence, I am unusually working from my front room and I can see my trophy cabinet from here. But not surprisingly, automatic fire from an SLR was not one of the competitions. It served me well when a colleague fell off the Matterhorn and killed himself. I returned from leave and was told to dress for saute-the-coffin training and be SLR-drilled for a week by a Green Howards drill-pig. I was able to bluff the REMEs that surrounded me but when the drill-pig marched on from the other end of the drill square 1/4 mile away and screamed a word of command, he could tell and started screaming. So I looked him in the eye and pointed out that I had NEVER done rifle drill in 9 years. This was inconceivable to an infantryman and I did so enjoy watching the veins pop in his neck. He kicked me off the square. I muttered, "I told you so," and bimbled off and got on with some real work. A few years later, the Adjutant General was to open his new Computer Centre and Sgt Alien was shortlisted to be a part of his Honour Guard. Needless to say, I tried the same trick, but sadly the RSM was not stupid and I and another transferred-in ex-RAC got a crash course in rifle drill. So yes, I am aware of the SLR sear mod, but never had cause. ;o)

I have blown the picture up to try and have a good look, but 1. it looks like it's been lifted from a newspaper and 2. it looks like the censor has obliterated all markings, so I cannot say either way. Are you absolutely certain the picture wasn't printed back to front? Maybe I am wrong, but in the absence of any evidence that these vehicles did exist in RHD versions, I'd posit that it is simply that the pic is back to front. Looking again at the man standing on the running board of the lead vehicle (RHS as we look at it). Look at which way his jacket is buttoned: it looks to me from this that his jacket is done up the right way, which suggests that the pic isn't back to front, but maybe someone with a matching jacket can confirm they don't button up like a big girl's blouse? Pass

An addendum to John Pearson's post which you may (or may not) find interesting. At the end of the 19th Century, every country started to look seriously at field artillery. Design of a field gun did not involve choosing a calibre and building a round to fit: quite the reverse. Decide what you want the gun to do (how far will it fire, how much explosive will it deliver onto the target, how high the round must fly (think howitzer), etc). Then design a round to deliver that payload and a gun to deliver the round. Curiously, everybody had a similar idea about payload and IIRC between about 1895 and 1905, most countries produced a 105mm field gun (notwithstanding how they described the gun, e.g by wieght of the round or calibre in inches, etc). The notable exception was the Swiss Army (whose main weapon now appears to be a knife ;o) which developed a 104mm gun. In the same way, many countries produced pistols firing 9mm rounds (even though the actual bullets were different) and there were so many rifles etc produced at around .30", .303", 7.62mm, 7.92mm, etc. By the end of WW2, the British recognised that the .303" round was far too powerful for the modern battlefield, so the Royal Armaments Factory at Enfield developed the EM1, then the EM2 firing a round of something like 4.85mm. The guns were revolutionary in having the working parts behind the trigger occupying the space that traditionally comprised the stock. Unfortunately an American war machine that had produced untold millions of rounds of 7.62mm ammunition was adamant that the newly-formed NATO would standardise its rifles around this round. With all that development work wasted, the UK took the Belgian FN 7.62mm rifle effectively straight from the shelf (with minor mods ... oh and of course in our Army we only fire "single aimed shots", so there is no need for an automatic capability) and called it the SLR. The Americans promptly fired their way through this bullet mountain in Korea, and when they went to Vietnam, they realised that the 7.62mm bullet was far too powerful for the modern battlefield, so they built a 5.56mm version of their M15 assault rifle and called it the M16. With a view to a total overhaul of all Army systems from boots to field guns into the 1980s, the EM2's plans were dusted off and used as a start point for the SA80.

I'd guess that the expansion of say a tank round case into the breech during firing would affect a large calibre round less than say a rifle round. I assume that they are made of brass so that they expand to ensure a gas-tight seal. Chieftain fired a 120mm round propelled by a bag-charge (no brass cases to clutter the bottom of the turret after firing - everything went downrange except for a vent tube like a blank which detonated the cordite in the bag charge. The Chieftain gun was unbelievably complicated by its need for an obturator to seal the breech before firing, as there was no brass case to do this.

In an English barrel the calibre (sp!) is measured land to land; in the US, it is measured valley to valley, hence US 76.2mm equates to UK 76mm. I'd posit that in small arms, the difference is negligible enough not to make a difference. Referring to a weapon as a 30 cal or 50 cal is an Americanism. The usual British reference to these particular weapons is Three-Oh or Five-Oh (Browning). It means .50". 303 = .303" (watch out for American "3030"s pronounced Thirty-Thirties = .303") 22 = .22" .223" = 5.56mm (Nato Standard) 7.62 = 7.62mm With tank (German: Kampfwagenkanone) and anti-tank guns (German: Panzerabwehrkanone), don't get a UK nomenclature (e.g Ordnance, Gun, 76mm L23A1 on Scorpion) confused with the "length in calibres" (e.g. 75mm KwK 42 L70 on Panther). L23A1 describes a UK model number. IIRC the GPMG on Scorpion is an L43; on Scimitar an L37, yet they differ only cosmetically. L70 indicates that the length of the barrel is 70 times the calibre. Put simply, from pulling the trigger, the explosion of the cordite in the case causes the round to accelerate down the barrel until it passes out of the muzzle. At this point, the gases escape, acceleration stops and thereafter the raound slows due to friction with the air. In particularly long barrels, timing the opening of the breech after the round has left the barrel is a black art: open the breech before the round has left and the backblast will kill the turret crew, so you'll see a bore evacuator part-way down the barrel. Like in a gas-operated rifle, this starts to bleed off the gas before the breech seal is opened and helps ensure that the gases are expelled forward out of the tank, not backward into the turret. Scorpion was found, upon firing, to flood the turret with carbon monoxide every time a round was fired and this is why it was taken out of service. I can vouch for the number of times I suffered carbon monoxide poisoning while firing Scorpion. Hence muzzle velocity is the maximum speed of the round. The longer the barrel, the greater the muzzle velocity and the more kinetic energy available to a kinetic tank-defeating round (AP-T, APC-T, APCBC-T, APDS-T, APFSDS-T, etc). Less important in rounds containing HE (HE-T, HESH-T, HEAT-T, etc). Compare the main armament on a Tiger 1E and Tiger II: IIRC, L56 vs L71. Thus the Tiger II's gun fired a vastly more powerful AT round than that of the infamous Tiger 1E even though AFAIK they fired the same rounds. In fact, ISTR that, comparing ballistics charts for Panther and Tiger 1E, at longer ranges (approaching 200m IIRC) the Panther's 75mm had better armour-defeating characteristics that the Tiger's 88mm. ("-T" indicates a phosphorus trace in the warhead to track the round in flight. The only tank round I have ever been aware of that didn't have a trace was smoke: so long as it wasn't over-fuzed and buried itself in the mud before going off, you couldn't really miss a smoke round, which was so slow in flight that you could follow it with the naked eye anyway. All other rounds tend therefore simply to be referred to without the "-T" suffix. Note that there are Geneva conventions governing the use of trace in small arms rounds. Used against infantry, rounds may be loaded as four ball, one trace, so that in a burst of ten rounds, two will give you an indication of where the burst went. As a coaxial rangefinder, one ball, one trace is permitted. In Northern Ireland a friend carried a 7.62" LMG ("Bren") and IIRC 160 rounds of 7.62" in eight mags of 20. They were supposed to be four ball, one trace, but he worked on the principle that by loading all the trace into the first two mags, he could hosepipe his target and be sure of getting the kill, then bring down another six mags of ball into the body and risk somebody actually working out what order he'd fired the bullets.)

On the book rack behind me I have an AA Handbook for 1999-2000. Because it is in this rack (at work) it implies that I was issued a later one and cascaded this one down. ISTR that they took to issuing the book only from AA shops upon production of something (renewal letter? a voucher? membership card?) rather than shipping a book to every member by snail mail at great expense. I also STR that they closed a lot of their High Street shops, which would have made this difficult. Maybe nobody bothered to collect them from the shops?

No, no, no, no no! This is Burbage in Wilts, just north of Tidworth on the road up to Marlborough. I'd like to think that after 30 years they've got rid of all the Combatgas! Let's face it, they got rid of 5star not very long at all after 1976 (but exactly when escapes me). ;o)

Lol I agonised over whether or not to make a point there that for emphasis the number was made up. On other message boards I frequent I knew I'd be torn to shreds for that. ;o)

In HM Forces they have (in my day anyway) incredibly low octane petrol. Anything "petrol" driven ran on Combatgas, which made 2star look powerful. This in the day when only Japanese cars ran on 2star: "real" cars like Rovers and Jaguar XK420s (can you see where I am going yet?) ran on 5star. So one bright sunny morning in 77 I am playing with my - er the Squadron Leader's - Landrover and I watch a delivery of "Combatgas" from a Shell(IIRC) tanker to our POL (Petrol, Oil and Lubricants) Point. As the tanker drives away, I cannot help but notice that the POL storeman is standing with chin on deck, so I bimble over and ask why. "He just gave us 100,000 gallons of 5star for Combatgas!" "Why?" "I asked him that. He said there'd been a Pimmel auf at the depot over work tickets. He'd been given the wrong load. Not his place to argue. 'Just accept your good fortune. Oh, and don't fill up at the Shell filling station in Burbage for a few weeks.'" The POL storeman continued to me, "Get yer Rover over here and get some real petrol in it. But don't shout it from the rooftops or the whole garrison will be filling up here." I didn't shout it from the rooftops, but you know how it is. Within half an hour there was a queue round Tidworth to fill every petrol-engined vehicle in the garrison with 5star "Combatgas." I have to tell you that for two weeks there wasn't a single fuel-related breakdown in the garrison. The Scorpions' XK420 engine may have been modified to run on Combatgas, but they went through plugs and points like toilet paper after a good Chili.

I remember in an Army Surplus Store in the early 1970s stumbling across two patterns of green denim jackets. One was a direct copy of the ubiquitous battledress jacket; the other was the same pattern as the first DPM combat jackets but in plain olive, as still being worn on the streets of NI by the first troops to arrive in 1969 IIRC.

I have been thinking again about the question of Fox stability. Two more penn'orth. My own nearest experience of a comparable vehicle is a Mark 5 (Swingfire turret) Ferret. Seeing those pics of Fox without the Rarden, it would be very easy to confuse them. Only one turret hatch on the Ferret 5 though (two man crew). The Ferret 5 carried a heavy steel turret and two Swingfire ATGMs, each weighing about 1cwt. I'll never forget watching the squadron medic hump one onto his shoulder during loading, forgetting that he wasn't really dressed for the part and the AGTM pushed the pins of his 15/19H shoulder title into his shoulder. Oh how he squealed! I never drove one bombed up (I was fetch and carry with the Squadron Leader's Landrover), but even so, the Ferret 5 never felt at all top heavy, even throwing it around the country roads of Northumberland to get them to the sidings at er Morpeth? to entrain them for the journey back to Tidworth. I presume the Fox turret is aluminum (alloy?) like the rest of the body. I assume all the major assemblies are steel. Fuel tank, ammunition etc are in the hull, not the very small turret, so the addition of the small aluminium turret will not raise the centre of mass as far as the heavy steel turret on the Ferret. I'd therefore posit that the Fox IS inherently stable and that by and large, roll-overs would be down to driver error. As an aside, armed with a cannon as opposed to a gun, there would also be no recoil effect on the vehicle during firing, compared with a Scorpion which leapt about when the 76mm gun was fired.

We had the following Mark 1s during my time in 15/19H: 1976 - 77, Tidworth: B Sqn SSM 1976 - 77, Cyprus Sovereign Bases: C Sqn SSM 1976 - 77, Nicosia: Force Reserve Sqn SSM 1977 - 82 (at least): Command Troop: RSM LO 2 * Rebroadcast B & C Sqns: 1 * SSM each All of these Mark 1s had .30" Brownings. However, that said, I was very well aware at the time that historically the Bren was more usually fitted to Mark 1s. Points: I can only remember once for certain in seven tears ANY of these Ferrets actually carried the MG fitted, one day on a range at Hohne, when I learned the very valuable lesson that the .30" Browning mounted on the back of a MK 1 FSC is less than ideal as it sprayed rounds all over the range as the whole vehicle shook. I'd posit that the Bren WAS a better weapon to fit. The .30" (pronounced Three-Oh in the UK - irrespective of what any Walter Mitty who wasn't there or American might tell you) was a bitch to keep clean and during the Cold War it was simply too much effort to mount the MG, dismount it, strip, clean and reassemble it to keep the rust at bay. Our Mark 2s in Cyprus carried their Brownings pretty much permanently because we were on ops. The 30s were still bitches to clean, even in the dry heat of Cyprus. If any of our Mk 1s had a 30 mounted and not actually being fired (and as I said I cannot remember it happening), it would have been wrapped up tighter than a fish's bum to keep it dry. HTH ;o)