Larkfield? Thanet? where else in Kent is represented in the forum? I'm at Canterbury, so that's at least 3 of us!
Well greetings from the sunny south-east of England to all you guys and gals, or is this boys toys only?
I have just taken "flexible retirement" after 40+ years at the local goverment coalface and now find myself working only 4 days a week and refinding all the things that I loved as a young man before I had family and mortgage. I used to do military modelling, plastic kits that is, not wearing the uniforms whilst people take photographs ...... I am still into board wargaming, also reading history books, genealogy and of course, military vehicles!
Last year I went, with wife, daughter and boyfriend, (hers not mine) to The Kent War and Peace Show and discovered that all those facts that I knew as a young man were still in there, merely lying dormant. After an afternoon of "that's the 76mm upgunned Sherman, you can see the new mantlet" and "that's the T34/85, you never see the T34/76, it influenced the design of the Panther you know", finally my wife cracked and said, "yes you can have one, but no tracks, no more than four wheels and no turret with a gun in it" ...... then almost as an afterthought, "if you get one you're not just to leave it sitting on the driveway"; or could it be that it was a clever wife looking at what her husband is to do in retirement?
Looking around I decided that the best option was a Dingo, all round vision and no claustrophobia ..... something I had forgotten about until I got in a Pz IV driver's seat on a tank driving day at Bovington. But Dingo's are few and far between. I wanted something British though and so much of what is available is American, it also had to be small enough to fit on the drive and something I could use and not just garage and take out to shows two or three times a year. Jeeps I decided were ten a penny but the Jeep's big brother the WC51 or 52 seemed to fit the bill except for the British service angle.
It was searching for British service WC51 that led me to this website. I can see that a small number of WC 51 or 52 were used in Normandy but that more were used in the far east and let's be honest how often do you come across military vehicles in XIV Army guise; so there's an ambition to realise. All I've got to do now is find out about WC 51/52 in XIV Army service, sort out uniforms and then buy one and probably get it repainted from Western Europe to Far Eastern colours.
Anyway, by way of an introduction to the group that's my ambitions set out.
Bob