RattlesnakeBob

cracking photos :-D

just what manner of apprenticeship wages are you on that you happen to also have a B17 (albeit in pieces) in your impressive shed young man????:D:D...I'm knocking on a bit for an apprentice but.....I'd give it a turn:D

not jealous.not at all

Interesting thoughts for a topic..... ....around my district there were a lot of US camps during the war and many vehicles never made it back out of the area after the war..one in particular worth mentioning was a Jeep that for many years after it's second life had sat in a shed just up the road....the fella had been involved in timber work and he'd 'bought' it when the Yanks pulled out of one of the big camps in I guess late 1945 sometime.. ....not just vehicles either... .the camp just down the road from me was dismantled by the locals in the years after the war with everything being re-used in some way...My Dad recalls seeing fellas heading there with wheelbarrows and such.. "just off to get a door / window frame or whatever for my garden shed " etc ! The origins of 'recycling' I guess

now that is what I would describe as a serious duty tractor :-D I like...:laugh:

I quite like it :-D

she looks grand mate..and a Toyota lump sounds a good idea...good torquey engine that :-) ..any idea what the 'table' on the front of the cab of these old trucks above the radiator was for?

could well have been.....:undecided: I actually had 2 books on them .... .. as I recall they were published by TW Wards on I think the occasion of their 50th and subsequent 75th anniversary of the companies foundation..fantastic books........I sort of know where they went but have no hope of getting them back now. ah well........ and yes I see your point Tony about 'swords/ploughs etc' but ......... saving one battleship and one carrier from that era wouldn't have affected the economy that much.........after all....did we seriously need every single absolute ton ?.. No....I tend to think that things are often done in this country under the cover of 'economic necessity' when in actual fact it's a very convenient way for the powers that be to do whatever it is they've already decided upon....... after all.. ..we may well have been in dire financial straights when we scrapped all the WW2 era ships in the late 1940s early 1950s but we weren't in a similar state when we lamped up Vanguard in the early 60s and nor Ark Royal in the early 80s either.... so I don't see that the idea of us 'needing the steel' really holds any weight..... (holds any weight !...haha as in scrap metal hahah!...bit of pun there I'll get me coat )

AEC Matador hey? very nice...wish I had a the room for one :cheesy:welcome in by the way :-D

hello to you Doc

looking good there !........I'm not even gonna start to think what she would cost to fill up here in the UK :-D

looks great .wouldn't have thought you'd have any problems selling her.. price ? heck knows ...:laugh:... but don't worry....cos he's probably on here somehwere...

At one time I had a book (stupidly lent out to someone and now gone forever) .....all about Thos. W Ward & Co a massive company that back in those days owned the Inverkeithing Ship breaking yard (amongst many others around the UK and the world) and there were some fantastic photos in it of the scrapping of a lot of the big capital ships through the late 1940s and into the 1950s... Pictures I recall in particular were of HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson moored up one behind the other at the dock ......it was horrible to see, those great once proud battleships , after incredible service for their country throughout the Second World War.... were reduced to nothing more than smoking piles of scrap metal........

Fascinating picture....got any more ????? but..:cry: ...as I have commented on HMVF before..the scrapping of HMS Vanguard was without a shadow of a doubt an absolutely appalling decision....as our very last 'proper' battleship , no way on this planet should she have been scrapped. ..........and neither should our last 'proper' carrier HMS Ark Royal either come to that ......apart from the little tiddler HMS Belfast we have nothing left to show what 'sailing on a ship of the line' used to mean

a worrying possibility for the future I guess Jack.........

Also....didn't all CJ models have a tailgate?... I guess everyones 'ideal' is the typical 'wartime Jeep' but personally I'd happily settle for a CJ..or a Hotchkiss...or a M38 or...

Admit to not knowing anything about MJs but.... I can't think of anything that could result from removing the front prop having done it (either from reasons of frugality or out of necessity/breakdowns etc) on countless 4 wheel drives such as Landrovers & Toyotas & all manner of others.... and also other 4x4 stuff such as dumpers and tractors etc over the years ..... can't honestly think what could be so different about a Bedford transfer box????? but .hey..you're asking in the right place to get the info :-D

and a visual one that nobody has mentioned..... CJs have 7 slots in the radiator grill whereas wartime ones have 9 PS @Nick...are you assuming that one is a CJ convert or have you further info??..just wondered.......I know they say it is a 1953 chassis but...could it be a Hotchkiss chassis or..?

I couldn't agree more...... ......The Vimoutier Tiger for example should stay as she is ..... .....even if (IMHO) she is relatively (going on what some lads on here have done :angel:) easily 'restorable'.......

just out of interest..........would that be the same Mike Phelps that had an M10 a good few years ago????????? not seen nor spoke to him for many years.....bought a couple of Landrovers off him way back when...............

well ....whatever...all your thoughts.... .I am still pretty much shocked and very saddened by this theft.... ..it's bloody awful that this should happen at a Military Vehicle show in the UK..... ....somebody somewhere knows who did this.............:-(

uuuuuummmmm..lighten up a little there lads..... I was only suggesting that if ..( that's a great big IF by the way ..you know a sort of sarcastic 'if'??? ....you know what I mean????? no???....ah well...) .......IF.....you were to suggest to the Police that the stolen .50cals could be made to work again........ then they may POSSIBLY ....get a lot more interested in recovering them.... ......my tongue was in my cheek ....and I would have thought there was a hint of sarcasm to my post understandable to most seeing as it had been suggested earlier in this post that the Police weren't that interested at all.......but never mind.

Regards the damage to the Vimoutiers Tiger 1 ... ....As I understand she was undamaged at the end of the war having been simply abandoned probably for lack of fuel in the German retreat to the Seine ..?? ..from what I remember most of the damage was done when a scrap dealer started to lamp her up in the early/mid 70s but thankfully this was stopped by the townsfolk of Vimoutier who wanted her saved as a memorial.... but...I do believe she is missing her gearbox and substantial amounts of equipment inside her is also missing????.....quite how or why the gearbox was removed between when she was originally abandoned and when she was dragged back up the bank and placed on her plinth is anyone's guess.........I would have thought removing the gearbox from a Tiger to be quite a heavy duty job requiring some heavy tackle yet no one around in the town during those intervening years seemed to know when or how or by who it had been taken......... PS: One year on a motorcycle tour of France I took a detour to get some up to date photos of her...I have a few somewhere of my lady leaning on the old tank with an expression that says something like "tour France" he said...."you'll enjoy it" he said... he definately didn't mention going miles out of our way to look at old rusty tanks....

good thinking.........worth looking up and down the road in any direction for privately owned CCTVs on shops/garages even private houses that may have had a glimpse of the low loader going by?... you never know......... .most crimes are solved by tiny little details rather than massive breakthroughs...gotta be all worth a go:undecided: ..........Also the Police have been mentioned as being not very interested......but can they be persuaded to allow inspection of any trafic junction footage of their CCTVs? and......someone mentioned the Olympics?.... ...how about a slight 'suggestion' to the police that the 50cals could relatively simply be made 'live' once again?. ..bet you'd get their attention then....