BillS

Does anyone know where the mine cabbed Bedford RL water tanker that was used by the UN as a fire tender at Nicossia airport ended up? There is a picture of it in the third batch of photos posted by Snapper on 19 June 2008 of vehicles being removed from the Beverley site (See the first page of this thread).

There are two photos in an article on Saracens the October 2001 issue of Military Machines International which show in-service shots of Mk 5 ACVs with turrets. I also found a photo of a Mk1 turreted ACV in "In National Service" by Pat Ware, again an in-service shot, and I have another culled from somewhere on the internet of a Saracen ACV in Aden which had reverse flow cooling and a turret. Turreted ACVs may not have been common but they definitely existed.

It's a flat metal plate attached to the brackets (and by the looks of it, the body sides) on which the wings are hung. There are some clear pictures in Joachen Vollert's excellent 1996 book The Humber 1600 Series. None of the flying pigs illustrated in the book appear to have roof hatches, though that doesn't mean that they were absent on all vehicles - one of the Kremlin Pigs illustrated has a roof hatch while another doesn't. Some of earlier flying pigs with mesh screens did, however, have a hinged mesh panel attached to the roof that could be raised to a vertical position.

On the subject of Cyprus bowsers, does anyone have any pictures of the one used at Episkopi that was mounted on Bedford MK? There is (or was) a front three quarter shot of it somewhere on the six appeal wheel website which is useful, but I'm looking for a rear shot so that I can make a model of it.

Knew I had it somewhere, and have just found it. There was an article on these vehicles in the motoring section of the Daily Telegraph on May 28 1998 (how time flies!). According to this the first trials of using helicopters to lift light vehicles took place in 1957 using 2CV's built by Citroen in Slough of all places. The article states that they subsequently entered service in late 1959 and were based on the commando carriers HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion. Despite being built in Britain, all of the vehicles were right hand drive. A total of 65 were produced for the Admiralty, 35 of which were delivered in 1960 and 30 in 1961 (which conflicts somewhat with the date that the article gives for their entry into service). They were withdrawn from active service in 1964, though some continued to be employed by teh Navy in dockyards. According to the article some that were too worn out for further service were scrapped by being pushed from the carriers into the Indian Ocean.

For those who have not come across this site before, something to set you drooling ... http://album.sixappealwheel.org/albums.php

Another new subscriber to this site, though I have visited it a few times in the past. One of my hobbies is making models of military vehicles (or more often than not, buying kits and adding them to the stash in the loft), hence my interest in this site. I mainly concentrate on 1:76 scale post war British vehicles, but stray occasionally into 1:72 modern German vehicles, 1:72 British helicopters and 1:72 British coastal forces ships and landing craft.

Curious - if you add the registrations on the vehicles shown in the link in the above post, and that of the 432 shown having its turret fitted in one of the earlier posts, to my list you get 18 in total: 00 EA 63, 03 EA 43, 03 EA 48, 05 EA ?5 or 6 (or possibly FA), 11 EA 29, 17 EA 13, 17 EA 92(?), 01 EE 27, 01 EE 84, 01 FA 05, 01 FA 38, 01 FA 75, 03 FA 69, 03 FA 77, 03 FA 81, 03 FA 84, 04 FA 38, 05 FA 47. Either the number produced was greater than the 13 cited by most sources (which seems unlikely) or the turrets and associated equipment fitted to some of the original 432/30s were later transferred to new host vehicles, possibly because the original 432s were no longer serviceable.

According to the old AVF Profile booklet on the FV 432 (published in 1973) the FV432/30 was first trialled in 1970. The third edition of Terry Gander's Encyclopedia of the Modern British Army that a smalll batch of 13 conversions were carried out. They were used for troop trails in Germany until the project was ended in mid 1976 when 12 were issued to the Berlin Garrison where they stayed. Gander and some other sources suggest that the project was cancelled in the light of the introduction of the Scimitar which was intended to carry out much the same role, though I've read elsewhere that development was stopped as the trials were not successful. Originally they were painted in the normal green and black camo scheme, but were repainted in the Berlin scheme when that was introduced. There are some nice pictures of the vehicles in Berlin in the Tankograd book on the Berlin Brigade. From the various reference sources that I have to hand I have managed to find the registration numbers of 11 of the 13 vehicles that were converted. they are: 03 EA 43, 03 EA 48, 05 EA ?6, 05 FA 47, 11 EA 29, 00 EE 63, 01 FA 38, 01 FA 75, 03 FA 69, 03 FA 81, 03 FA 84,