Adrian Barrell

So get talking.....:-D

Nothing too exotic for me unfortunately. Flown in:- Caravelle 737, 747, L1011 etc L4 Cub Flown:- Cessna 150 and 152 PA28 Pushpak Citabria RV9 Harvard Robinson R22

What Maurice said. Althought the turret is different to a 75mm, it is the same casting with an added ventilator on the roof. The 105 has no power traverse and of couurse all the stowage, particularly ammo, is different. Whist not a conversion at the time, the Wheatcroft collection have an M4 composite that has been fitted with a 105 gun and turret and a dozer blade by the Israeli army as an engineers tank and this has power traverse.

You don't get many infantrymen inside a Stuart! These were all as Richard says, 17 pdr gun towers, a post war British conversion. I don't think many M5A1 Stuarts were converted to recce tanks by the British army, most of those seemed to be the M3A3 which is what it mostly had at the time.

Missed that the first time around! I have seen the MAFVA site before though and I'm a great fan of Peter Browns research. It does clearly show the current naming 'rules' though as AlienFTM was describing.

When I bought a Diamond T and Rogers from the yard at Breda, there was a nissen hut with 70 Wards in it!

They are fitted to Cromwell tanks, possibly others, as a single tail light and should be marked L-WD-T1A meaning, Lucas, War Department, Tail 1A. The stamping is usually very faint and is on the back of the mounting face. The bulb should be twin contact but only one filament as they are insulated return as Richard pointed out.

In the 26 years I've been doing this, I've seen prices do some odd things. Generally, the trend is always up but I remember just before the '89 Normandy tour, someone paid £18000 for a Dodge Command Car, a price it probably wouldn't reach now. It's all to do with someone wanting that particular type of vehicle. Why have Shermans in particular doubled in 'value' every 2 to 3 years? It cannot continue at that rate. Regarding the 432 versus CVRT thing, it's always been my experience that people want a 'tank' to have a gun regardless of the vehicles presense. Freud would probably have something to say about that! I have an M75 APC, it makes a 432 look like a toy and is very rare at least in the UK but it would only make a quarter of what an M41 tank would make if not less even though it's a much more practical vehicle. At the end of the day, does it matter? If you have the vehicle you want, that's all that matters. Those who feel the need to sell for a profit if that means they ask more than the perceived market value are possibly going to be disappointed.

Alan, might well take you up on that. I have not yet flown an Auster, I am in a group, we were flying a Citabria and now we fly an RV9 that we finished last year. I have just over 200 hrs most of which is tailwheel and farm strip. There are three of us in the Auster group, Andrew has CPL, IR and FIR with over 2500hrs and like many of his generation (!) learnt in Austers. He has described their foibles in great detail! He also remembers the Lycoming being very noisy so we have gone for silencers.

Alan, thanks for the offer, we have to learn fabric covering soon! We are doing the engine at the moment, it is the Lycoming O-290-3. We have two and so far have not had to buy many parts, not that they are easy to find! Some parts are the same as O-320 but a lot of it is special and long out of production. Where are you based, Booker?

I am currently restoring an Auster IV, MT243.

Isn't that a Thruxton Jackaroo?

Actually converting a Charioteer back to a Cromwell is quite involved as it needs new roof plates and a rear plate not to mention a lot of parts to remove and new ones to find. On the other hand, some parts are simple mods to the original. The turret basket springs to mind as even though the ring size is increased, the platform is the same, the support plates simply being bent to fit a larger diameter. Rather like my Sherman, when I started collecting parts for the Cromwell, few others were so I had access to quite a bit of stuff.

I have two turrets complete with rings but both have 'problems'.... I will end up making a new inner skin and possibly one or two armour plates and fitting original bits to it. To explain further, the Cromwell turret is made from a 1/2" mild steel inner skin with a 20mm armour plate roof welded in. The armour panels are bolted on from the inside with 2" BSW bolts, the holes in the plates themselves being tapped. Special nuts are then screwed on bolt ends on the outside which are then welded to the armour. The bolt heads inside the tank are then welded fully to the inner skin although this was a mod for combat so is not always seen on surviving turrets which are usually from Centaurs. Obviously undoing the bolts is going to be impossible if only because corrosion between the inner skin and the armour has bulged the inner plates about 1/2" putting the bolts under incredible tension. My plan is to burn the head of the bolt away from the surrounding nickel weld. This should allow the plates to be released leaving a short stub to the bolt. My new inner skin will have 2" dia. holes in all the appropriate places and I can weld the stubs when the plates are in place. Then weld a 2 3/4" hexagon blank over the new weld to replicate the bolt head et voila! Not battle worthy but they won't fall off!

Richard, could be, though other vehicles are listed as 41GVD-ROF BIRTLEY and 41GVD-MILITARY AIR ATTACHE EMB W1 ROF Birtley is no problem but the Air Attache Emb (embassy?) is more intruiging. I assume W1 is the London location but whose embassy and why the air attache? Looking at the key card closely, it could be avd which would make a lot more sense! It is a peculiar mix of upper and lower case. Just need to find out where those armoured vehicle depots were.

I've noticed that on the news. I seem to remember hearing the .50 had a bit of a resurgence in the Falklands and British Army stocks were replenished as a result.

Hanno, I also thought they were sold to Jordan and from there passed to the Lebanon but on the key card for mine, one of the other vehicles is stated as going to 11GVD- MINISTRY OF DEFENCE. LEBANON. I took this to mean perhaps they were a recipient. Looking at it now, perhaps not! 11GVD is also listed ahead of T WARD-SHEFFIELD on a few of the others. Mine is listed as follows:- s/o g xxxx to allies MELF 30.9.57 The xxx are illegible, the writing is appalling! The date of 16 July 1958 I referred to in my earlier post could apply to the next vehicle on the card 03 ZW 57.

2 troops tanks were named as follows. ANNOUS APREZVOUS APACHE ACHTUNG I thought it might be Latin but also found nothing on the net. The other thing I came up with is a bit tenuous but.... As Capt Clapperton was the senior officer in the sqdn after the sqdn commander, Maj Crisp and moved up to HQ when needed, I compared the names of the HQ troop tanks to find a link. They were:- ANWENOIT ANWECANDOIT ANSODOWE Obviously a corruption of And we know it etc. and I wondered if my tank had been named as a follow on such as 'And us'. This would have course been abbreviated to ANUS so would have needed to be changed or at least modified a bit! I'd hate to think my tank was named arsehole....:red:

You are correct in saying that the RAC had regiments not battalions but they were calling what was in effect a battalion sized unit a regiment. This results in the Royal Tank Regiment being made up of numbered regiments. I understood all of 1 RTR tanks were eligible to be named something begining with A regardless of sqdn. In the same way 3 RTR tanks began with C and 9RTR began with I. It is true that only A sqdn of 1 RTR applied it thoroughly, there seems to be a degree of troop level naming in other sqdns. It could be the volume of wartime regiments led to some loosening of the 'rules'.

If you have a .50 cal on the cupola, it's always in the way. It fouls the hatches, makes it harder getting out in a hurry and generally is a pain in the neck. There are plenty of photos showing them in use on British Shermans but I don't believe it was that widespread, an extra .30 being just as useful and much easier to handle.

It's a Firefly turret sat on a standard M4A4 (Sherman V) hull.

I wish! 2020 perhaps.....

Hanno gets the biscuit! My Cromwell was built by English Electric as a IV in March 1944 and was given the census number T189557. It was issued to the 1st Royal Tank Regiment and delivered to Thetford where 22nd Armoured Brigade were preparing for the Normandy Invasion. Training included a road run to Boyton in Suffolk to set up the guns, a distance of 70 miles each way. There are photographs in The Kings Head pub in Woodbridge of Cromwells driving down the High Street. Just prior to the invasion, the tanks were transported to the grounds of Orwell Park School for wadeproofing and then parked up in Trimley. Loading on to LSTs took place at the flying boat ramp at Felixstowe and they eventually landed on D+1, 7th June 1944. My tank had been issued to a Capt. Philip Clapperton who was troop leader in 2 troop, A sqdn. The sqdn commander was Bob Crisp, a soldier who had served and been injured in the desert war and still had troubles with old wounds. When he needed recurring treatment, Capt. Clapperton moved up to sqdn HQ as a replacement. All the tanks were named, the troop tanks were usually names beginning with A in the RTR tradition, Ist batt, letter A, 2nd batt, letter B etc. My tank was named ANNOUS but I have not been able to find out what that signifies. I spoke to Lord Carver some years ago and he remembered Capt. Clapperton as being the Batt. QM officer and said, tongue in cheek, that the tank probably survived because Capt. Clapperton never let it be issued! The tank obviously survived the war, was rebuilt as a VII and renumbered 26ZR35 and was selected to be converted to a Charioteer. This was a program to equip redundent Cromwells with a 20 pdr Centurion gun to get a bit of extra firepower in case of a war with the Soviets. After conversion, the tank was again renumbered this time 03ZW56 and sold on the 16th of July 1958 to the Lebanon. The Lebanese used them for several years and even modified the turret traverse system using kits put together by Chris Wilkinson. This included Sherman parts to allow power traverse without the main engine running, the original hydraulic system using an engine driven pump. Ultimately, the Lebanese disposed of their Charioteers and I believe they ended up with the PLO. Mine was knocked out with a hollow charge weapon which penetrated to hull side and other damage included a broken elevation mounting and much schrapnel marking. Eventually, it came back to the UK for the Budge Collection and I bought it from the receivers in 1993. Full circle! Rather like the Sherman, I have spent the intervening years gathering all the parts I need and it is now a complete project with the exception of a few small parts. You may be wondering how I know all this or indeed be thinking 'here we go, another ''my vehicle landed on D Day'' delusion'. Well, the tank still had it's Charioteer and Cromwell plates in it and using the key cards at Bovington, I was able to confirm that it was indeed T189557. In itself, this meant very little as there was some 2000 Centaurs and cromwells built but whilst looking through the order of battle for 1RTR on D day, I noticed a familiar number! There was T189557 listed. I confirmed it was not a typo from other sources and the rest is research I have done since. As a footnote to this, many of the Cromwells on the key cards were sold to G King and Son of Norwich, scrap dealers who later became steel stockholders. We used to deal with them many years ago and flicking through an old catalogue, I noticed one of their reps was a Philip Clapperton. Kings are long gone now but I knew a current suppliers rep used to work for them. The next time he came in I asked him if he knew Philip and he said he did and confirmed he thought he served in the war as an Army officer. He offered to track him down as he thought he was now living with his daughter. After a short time, he spoke to Philips daughter only to find her father had passed away three weeks before...... I was unable to confirm if he was the same man though it seems entirely possible.

Again, not quite true. A goods vehicle, that is a vehicle constructed or adapted for the carriage of goods, over 3500 kg GVM, used unladen or drawing an unladen trailer, pre 1960 is exempt from plating and testing and can be driven on a normal car licence provided it is an older licence, pre 1991 I think. It's got nothing to do with if it's being used commercially but whether it is laden or not. Commercial use requires an operators licence and HGV taxation. An Explorer is not a goods vehicle.

Not as such but after I finish the scout car, the Cromwell will be the last vehicle (probably!). As well as the part finished M3A1, I'm doing a cosmetic restoration on the Matchless and a full restoration on a 1943 Auster. The Cromwell will probably take several years due to having a young family and I don't need any more projects as hard as tanks. Maintaining the fleet is enough work!