RattlesnakeBob

Haven't got a clue what area you are in mate but it is well worth checking out your local sawmills..... The one down the road from me is a real gem when it comes to cutting specific timber for various projects I've done.... to give you an idea....the timber for a job I did a few months ago was... 9 Lengths 18' long X 6" x 3" in Larch came to £60.00 cash !! beats the pants off any timber merchant for price and don't even think of bothering to price it up from someone such as Travis Perkins or Jewson...:laugh:..

.errrrr..:undecided: ...........from what I've seen the prices for Militaria have always been rather silly.....at least since the mid 1970s anyways.......

Hirsts the Scrap Metal Dealers of Hurstborne Station up the road a little probably had a hand in chopping a lot of those up...they were doing really big business around those times on lamping up Chieftains by the dozen ....and they all came from Ludgershall as I recall .........

I picked this fantastic book up at a table sale in our local town hall the other day .. .....I'd not heard of Lofty Large but I bet some of you have.??? ....A real legend in the SAS through the late 1950s and the 1960s , but before that , he was a regular Infrantryman in the Gloucestershire Regiment at the imfamous Gloucester Hill on the Imjin river in Korea. Seriously wounded after a God almighty battle he was captured and endured 2 years in a Chinese POW camp..... It's a real adventure of a story and written with clarity as he saw it.....Very humorous and blunt he definitely speaks from the hip......in short...awesome !!.....and such a good read I've been on Amazon and bought his second book 'One mans War in the SAS'

I recall about 4 or 5 years ago there was a picture in one of the Sunday papers of a tank cutting operation going on in Russia....It was all part and parcel of the arms reduction treaties at the time that said the Russkies had to get rid of so many Battle tanks and it had to be done somewhere out in the open where satelites could keep an eye on how the job was going I guess......... ..in the aerial photo there was probably at least a 1000 tanks parked up nose to tail on a flat piece of open ground...the 'zoom in' on the picture showed just one crew of only 3 or 4 fellas working away on a tank with cutting gear....I think the story said they were managing to reduce no more than 2 tanks a week and at that rate they were going to be working for at least the next 10 years to do the job.....:cheesy: and taking those figures above into account...there has to be many thousands of tanks somewhere in the former Soviet Union........

holy moly ! looks like Hursts & also Harry Pounds yard used to !:-D seeing pictures like that really does bring home to you how much the Soviets used to spend on defence / preparing for war ....... Just out of interest does anyone have any idea of how many main battle tanks the Soviets had say in around 1980???? I do recall my cousin who was in Chieftains at the time in the BOAR told me, they would have had to knock them out at something like the rate of 6 to 1 of ours to even have a hope of staying ahead????????..scary stuff.

Don't know if anyone has ever seen this?...A absolutely breathtaking number of tanks dumped here at a disused facility somewhere in the former Soviet Union.... http://defensetech.org/2012/06/05/tanks-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see/ If anyone saw that TV programme the other day about the BOAR?....these photos do make you think about just how many tanks the Soviets could have rolled into Germany....

Good luck with trying to insure a Landrover for yourself mate....I gave up trying to insure one of mine for either my son or stepson when both were at similar ages.....:undecided:.... By the way... .perhaps somebody that maybe works or has worked in the insurance business can shed some light on this question??..... ...I've never managed to work out if it is actually the number of a certain type of vehicle being crashed that determines the cost of insuring them???.... ...... or whether , as in the case of a Landrover , how much damage it will generally do to an 'ordinary ' car when involved in an accident ????????

I know this thread is primarily about criticising Insurance Companies......and I know I've done my share of that :cool2: .....but I feel I should say this in praise of an Insurance Company. I recently had some damage done to the canopy back fitted to my Mitsubishi L200........briefly , the damage couldn't be repaired for various reasons, but meanwhile I'd found a few of them on Ebay and quickly realised I could replace the whole canopy for less than the work was going to cost even if the parts had been available. ..So :-\ More in hope than expectation I rang my Insurers and endeavored to explain that , although they had agreed to repair my truck (which they readily agreed they were ready to do )......it was proving hard to do.....("yes it is" they said) . so .........would they be happy giving me a budget to work within???........ and then I would find a complete replacement and fit it myself instead of them trying to repair the old one?? I also explained I could possibly do it for less than they were getting ready to pay out for a repair so , it could actually save them some money.......... As I said.... I rang more in expectation than any hope of common sense prevailing but after only a minute or so of actually speaking to a 'real' person he simply said "Yep that sounds fine...here's a reference number....go ahead and do it within this budget and just send me the invoices and your costs for fuel etc and we'll pay for it" He was as good as his word too. No messing about , no haggling... and like I said ....a 'real' living breathing (and understandable if you know what I mean) person to speak to with a name and his own extension number. So !!!........they're not all bad ! .The company by the way is called Markerstudy Insurance.

He was an old veteran too...spent most of the war in a German POW camp

As others have said .....I can't imagine extra track links or whatever would have stopped an '88' but.... by the latter stages of the European fighting the danger of an '88' either in an opposing tank or as an independent antitank gun was very well recognised ??..... I thought the 'general plan' by late 1944 was to leave 'tank on tank' action , wherever possible , to the 'specialist units' equipped with M10s and Fireflys ??...(unless an Allied Tank was taken by surprise of course in which case the poor crew had no choice but to get 'stuck in' and do their best ) so..... ....I'm guessing (by that stage of the war ) that an awful lot more 'hand held' things such as Panzerfausts were being encountered?....and perhaps the sandbags / railway sleepers / track links etc would have been effective against low velocity 'blast' type weapons such as these ?? PS: the Sherman having 'track guards' welded on seems sensible too...as the Allies came up against more and more fanatically entrenched Germans I'd guess having the tracks blown off your tank by a concealed Infrantryman using whatever device came to hand was a real possibility?...so those plates would at least protect a fair portion of your tracks?? It's always struck me that no matter how thick or well sloped your armour is on a tank , your most vulnerable and easiest damaged point... is always the tracks.... and once a track is blown off your tank is scuppered and can't function half as effectively even if the main armament is still functioning .........

Crikey! :shocked: if that's what they're worth I'll fetch the lump out of the one in my meadow and you can have that !

Hey Chris...I'm guessing you went through RAF Halton then ?.. .....what year I wondered? . If it was around 1985ish .....maybe you'd maybe recall some fellas 'draftproofing' the hangars? .nobody laugh now:cool2: .. Yes ...I was one of those chaps.......about 8 weeks up there living in a portacabin behind one of the hangars attempting the herculean task of exactly that job.......We had to screw big versions of the usual door draft excluding 'brush strips' to the bottom and tops of all the hangar doors..... messing about on the top of a tower scaffold or kneeling on those concrete floors !..... What I do recall is all the examples of various aircraft and helicopters there for the apprentices to work on ..what would have happened to all of those because they'd be well out of date these days ? One Sergeant we chatted to every other day reckoned they were in the best condition of any plane in the RAF seeing as all that ever happened to them was, they got stripped down and rebuilt every few months! Also recall as 'contractors' we were allowed to buy meal tickets for the other ranks mess........beautiful food too ! and at (I think it was ) about 25p for breakfast and 35p for an evening meal....then into the Sergeants Mess to play Snooker for the evening :laugh:

Don't know if anyone has ever seen this short bit of film before but it's amazing what you can find on Youtube..... A Liberator on a Pacific Bombing mission gets hit hard and goes down.......

:laugh: It's probably to my mind one of the all time best theme songs and has stuck in my head ever since seeing the film for the first time so very many years ago ......and yeah.........I know it's sliding off topic but!.......... nothing winds me up more than seeing Jeeps with external fuel fillers and one piece windscreens in WW2 films ! ......and M47/48 Tanks being used as Tigers and Chaffees pretending to be Shermans and White Halftracks painted up as German Halftracks and ...and... and.... and.... etc etc !

hey up and welcome I'm just over the river from you mate

...... Couldn't watch it ...... Was too busy ........ Drinking wine , eating cheese & catching some rays ;)o

according to Google Street View ( don't know how out of that date it is mind you) the steel gateposts to the yard are still there...they are made out of the 'end bits' of sections of the Mulberry Harbour.....:-)

I did have loads of photos of Harry Pounds yard from about 1985 through to about 1995....... but when I got divorced things got lost and away they went somewhere...:undecided:... ...Harry's yard looked very simialar .....the yard still had a lot of 'good' stuff in those days most numerous seemed to be Churchill tanks .also I recall the 'big shed' in their yard was like an Aladdins Cave of stuff... ..one time I visited , there was a beautiful 1940s era US Staff car in there in perfect condition.....a Buick I think it was along with so many other very desirable things I couldn't list them but I do recall there was a whole pallet rack shelf full of brand new outboard motors most of which were either Mercury's or Johnsons think it was... and a dozen or so Ural Motorcycle combinations plus untold wooden packing cases stacked right up to the ceiling. The whole place reminded me very much of the scene at the very end of the first Indiana Jones movie where the Ark of the Covenant is hidden away in a vast anonymous Government warehouse .........:-)

Hahah I like your style reminds me of when I used to have a Coles 6 Ton Argus crane in my yard.....she was rated at and would easily lift 6 ton..and with the wheels closest to the load ran up on a pair of railway sleepers to 'tip' her backwards a bit she'd lift 10 ton easily enough too........ Mind you...you only wanted to lift the load up off the lorry enough to let the trailer be pulled out from underneath and then you'd drop the load down onto the floor.....you didn't want to try slewing ........oh no .....no no no .and I did have to weld up a sort of 'Mad Max' Steel RSJ frame on the front to stop the load damaging the front of her....

Not that there is a 'good' side to this at all but .....it sounds like only the Poppy Money was stolen??? Yes I know that is quite bad enough but it could have been worse....they could have trashed & vandalised a load of exhibits and stolen others to be sold for a pittance of what they are truly worth .... ...........and I don't just mean their financial value either. ironically........I read an article in a Sunday newspaper t'other day that said apparently burglary is now a 'go soft' crime as far as the Courts are concerned.........not encouraging.

I've always reckoned the old QL is a really purposeful 'serious' looking truck ....an equal at the very least to any US truck well done for restoring them

It's endemic Tony and not just concerning classic vehicles either . I've seen the insurance on my Mitsubishi Pick Up go from about 280 quid 5 years ago to nearly 700 now........had to move 3 times because the other companies decided they weren't going to cover 'commercial vehicles' or they didn't like my occupation .... I've not had an accident (touch wood) since 1988 ....I have full no claims and am over 50 years old........ You tell me how they work it out mate......like someone else said........they make the rules up as they go along .....

Great programme!!........found it by accident and very much enjoyed it. My younger cousins were there off and on from about 1979 til 1990 ish one in the Infantry (Gloucesters) ... t'other in Chieftain Tanks.....(Guards ...can't remember now..was it the Coldstreams ?? :undecided:) anyways ! ..good prog!!