RattlesnakeBob

cheers .also.....on that photo list regarding the surviving Churchills there are a couple of photos that intrigue me.... ....one of a MK5 'Jackal' in the Netherlands and one of a MK8 Crocodile in Australia .....on both the gun barrel appears to be rather short and has a strange lump of iron about 12" long and 5" or 6" diameter on the end of the barrel... the bottom half of this lump is 'shaved off' horizontally level with the bottom of the barrel....... .they're not the ARVE models with the 'dustbin gun' and their main gun is very distinctive compared to the other tanks.......... ...it doesn't appear to be a muzzle brake in that it has no holes in it and does not protrude over the barrel at all....it almost looks like a crude 'strengthening' piece added on the end of the barrel as an afterthought..... ....so ....whats that all about? :undecided:

showing my complete ignorance of most things to do with the Churchill but.. ....regarding the Crocodile....was the main gun a 'proper functioning' completely normal gun that they just squirted/pumped the flamethrower liquid through when wanted or was it literally just a pipe ????? cheers and PS: .. ....think I have asked this before but got no answer...so try again... .about 20 years or so ago there was a plant company called Jeremy Walker Machinery up on the A40 Oxford road near Witney that had a very tatty Churchill on an equally tatty Mighty Antar tank transporter sat in their yard for many years .the apparant intention was to rebuild both but .....did it ever get done?...any ideas????

...agree with your appraisal of the original Jeep but I also gotta say that a series one LR with the standard 2 litre petrol in...on good tyres and with the right person behind the wheel will keep up with a Jeep in 99% of territory..... ..only thing lets a LR down is its lack of full axle articulation and that can be cured by a good set of springs ( I had what was known as Brambers on mine...single leaf jobbers that were very flexable) and then all you need do is put rear shockers on the front as well as the back so that the front springs can move as much as they need to and I'd say from experience that a Series One LR is equally as good as a Jeep ..........IMHO :-)

hahaha I'm gonna upset the Gipsy fans on here now cos half of whatever people were paying, would have been way too much to pay for a Gipsy! ...hahahah.. I'm only having a laugh but I do have to say......... I came across a few Gipsys now and then in my days back in the 80s and 90s messing about with the AWDC and also in normal road use and I gotta say I thought they were awful vehicles...heavy , slow , not particularly good looking.....pretty rubbish off road.....and ....they rotted for fun.... ...in fact.... ....about the same as an Austin Champ! (ooooer! christ! thats gone and done it now! :-X) mind you..........I am a an absolute died in the wool Jeep and Series One Landrover fanatic so I'm honour bound to fuel the old Landrover v Jeep v Gipsy v Champ debate .... and..having said all of that.... ..... we can't all like the same things and life would be pretty dull if we did so its nice to see them surviving so .....where d'you all reckon they've got the brand new Jeeps stashed then ?? hahah!

hahah I dunno!... ...mind you if someone had asked me did I think the Government would still have had any Austin Gipsys 'in stock' in 96 or 97 I'd have had to have answered "no way mate !" ....and I'd have been well wrong! .I really don't know.... the mind boggles at the possibilities... ....maybe a coupe of hundred Series One Landrovers? or if you want to get really dreamy:) .....does anyone know when actually (officially!) did the UK Government dispose of its last Jeeps?.. After all..........there's some proper seriously deep ex-ammunition dumps/depots around the west country such as Corsham and Box and Monkton Farleigh ....now...think about it..:-|.. .we all know about those places ....but... ...it's not too imaginative is it, to think there could be some other massive underground storage depots that we don't know about ????.....yet???????????

Whilst mooching the web came across this interesting bit of info........apparantly the last massive clear out of Austin Gipsys only happened in 1997...... .....click this link and scroll about halfway down the page...there's a few good photos of the sale too...did anyone on here maybe acquire one of these trucks?.... http://www.austingipsy.net/exmod.htm The Austin Gipsy was never my cup of tea but then again... the chance to get one 'brand new' out of storage would have been quite an opportunity I guess..... ...just goes to show how much kit was/still is(?) possibly lying about in MoD /Home Office warehouses..............

I've never had a proper good mooch in there but in the early 90s I did have to go there to price a dismantling job.......this must have been about '92 or '93 and one of the large sheds there was full and I do mean full front to back & nose to tail with black Austin Maxis... all absolutely immaculate and 'un-issued' and this was of course a long good while after BL had stopped making them...I often wondered what else was stashed away there.

I know the possibility of us ever going to war with Germany again is thankfully just about non existent..... (ah.....mmmhh....ahem....tell me it is...... isn't it ???:undecided:) but it sure does seem a daft move either way you measure it .... ......It'd certainly be a classic British Comedy moment if it ever did hit the fan with them again.... not only will we be in the rather difficult situation of having to ask if we "could possibly have some Landrovers for our army ???".....but also....."could we have our tanks back before we get started ?" .........always aware of getting too 'political' on an essentially 'vehicle' forum I have to say.... that as with many things concerning the MoD..... it would be funny if it were not true........ PS,,,and why does an advert keep jumping into my post ? baffled ! haha!

hello to you !.........always loving photos of wrecked /abandoned tanks and kit :-D

yep as I recall the bottom one is very similar to what I remember using ....can't 'click' the photo bigger for some reason but that does look like them........add a little stick/ box mag about 3/4" wide 1/2" thick and about 2" long right in front of the trigger guard and that's probably them

could well have been Tony... a lovely little rifle as I recall and ideal for small lads to learn on....it looked (again as I recall!.. t'was many years ago!) more like a 'hunting' rifle than a military issue type of gun...the forestock didn't go all the way to the end of the barrell as it sort of does on a 'bigger / proper' rifle such as the LE.... ........but they were as I said, great little rifles with which I won a little certificate for 'rapid fire' at the TA barracks ..think it was 7 shots all within a 2" group ???... I don't know why but for some reason I was always more accurate with 'rapid fire' than when you took your time and 'properly aimed' each shot....:-)

Yeah we used 'live' ones (proper good kick for a small 14 year old!) on the range whenever we had a special 'day out' or were on summer camp but we only had de-activated ones at our squadron hut for rifle drill & stripping practice etc.. ..we mainly used .22 bolt action rifles with a little stick mag that held (I think?) 7 rounds at our local TA range but again we never had these at our own hut... I guess they were kept locked up at the TA range .......

so...guessing that there must have been a few million Lee Enfield's manufactured for WW2.??? .what happened to them all??..... ..... the same as anyone of my generation I guess...I recall there being 30 or so de-activated ones at our ATC Squadron in the early 70s and all the Army Cadet units must have had a good few thousand of them too...........but ...that only amounted to a drip in the ocean compared to how many must have been made between '39 and '45... so.......what would have happened to the majority of the rest ????... did the government have a mass destruction programme on them at some point over the last 30 years ???????????????

Only just noticed this thread ..for what it's worth I'll throw this in.. ..I don't know anything about fiddling about with Bedford gearboxs but fiddling about with LandRovers and every tiny bit of them is something I have scuffed knuckles over for many a year...:embarrassed:.... ....way back when Rover SDi cars were far more abundant a good conversion was to put the 3500 V8 car engine into your truck complete with its automatic gearbox.. ( ....I can't recall anyone bothering to try an auto box with a standard LR engine though...) ..Most took the path of putting the LR transfer box onto the back of the car gearbox....(obviously not as easy as I make that sound ! hahah :cool2:) ... now.....this would all end up being a bit longer than a standard set up... so you would then need to shorten your rear prop and as I seem to remember (??) lengthen your front prop but it was all worth it..... A LandRover with a 3500 V8 and an auto box is an awesome truck....especially if you used the high compression V8 out of the old P5 saloon car....only trouble with them was they liked the old 5 star petrol which wasn't very available by then so you also had to fiddle about a bit with that side of things but it could all be done and was well worth it..... as I said .. ....I don't recall anyone bothering to try an autobox whilst keeping a standard engine (whatever it might have been)... ..in my humble opinion the old 2 1/4 petrol or diesel engine just wouldn't have had enough 'zipp' to make an autobox work properly/efficiently........mind you .... .having said that .. ...back in the early 90s a company called C & A Amos from Yorkshire (?) were racing a Landrover with a 2&1/4 petrol in her in the AWDC Safari series....they'd 'tweeked' the motor in some sort of serious order..I think they were getting something like 150hp out of one and that may well of course have been worth strapping an autobox to! :-D PS: Just remembered.. ..to shorten the whole assemble some folk used a LR bellhousing on the back of the V8 and then cobbed the car gearbox to that and then the LR transfer box to that .........it still ended up 'too long' but I guess it depended on what you were like at knocking stuff up in a workshop.....if you had access to or had the machine shop facilities yourself it did make the job in some ways maybe a bit easier ...but..... ..you know the way it is ...some folk swear equally by one, or the other method... ................. I think it was 6 of one and half a dozen of the other to be honest, either way you did it ...you had to know yer onions.:laugh: PPS: Probably the furthest anyone took this whole idea of 'hotting up' a LandRover was a fella that put a Jensen Interceptor motor (I think they were basically a 454 big block Yank motor ???..about 7.3 litres ???) into a LandRover mounted on a Range Rover chassis with a Thwaites dumper semi auto shuttle gearbox in it and JCB propshafts....(and also dumper axles as I recall ???)... ....now that thing was truly awesome..:cool2:...

Truly fantastic photos.......

hello to you !

.....there was/is(?) the sad remains of an E Boat in a small creek near to me .....the boatyard fella had I believe, had made various efforts to sell it but nothing every came through.. ......I'm pretty sure I heard that eventually it'd become so deteriorated and was also semi-submerged that I think..(not entirely sure of this so????) she was broken up 'in situ' ........ As I say ....I'm not entirely sure she was scrapped so??? ....if anyone is really keen :-D and fancies a go at her maybe??...... .... the little shipyard in question is Fred Larkham's operation at Ruddle just outside of Newnham on Severn on the A48 out of Gloucester. He has another yard a little further down the 'coast' at Bullo Pill and I'm not sure in which yard the E Boat was or possibly still is ...

Great photos ! reminds me of something from many years ago.....:cheesy:... I had a Landrover Series 1 with the ordinary standard 2 litre petrol in her at the time...I was driving lorries for a living and one morning one of the artics found she had a flat battery.......the other lorries had gone from the depot and there was no jumper pack available so I offered to tow start her with my Landrover.. .........there were many hoots of derision in the tea hut in particular from a young lad that was employed as one of the loaders.....he was of the variant that drove a hot hatch back with all the bells and whistles stuck all over it and had been very scathing over my 1955 Landrover since I'd started work there so was laughing his head off at my idea to tow start a tractor unit complete with its loaded trailer mind you !...without starting her there was no way to get her out from under the 5th wheel so we had no choice. ........I produced my Nylon snatch rope...hooked up to the artic and in low range easily but very steadily pulled her and the trailer out of the yard onto the private factory road where we had a longer run to try and start her.....I told the driver clearly what the drill was then set off at a good pace in a straight line down the road ..having now 'singled' the nylon rope..it stretched nearly twice as long cos of the speed I set off at and the artic lurched forward..........the driver dropped the clutch and she turned over and fired up to much applause and amazement off the fellas stood about waiting to see me fail dismally... I got a full English breakfast off the gaffer in the cafe later that morning and no one laughed at my little series one after that ..:laugh: PS: I don't wanna spoil my story but !!!... We hauled out of a factory that made Polystyrene insulation so.. ..although the artic trailer was fully loaded it had no more than 10 tonne of load on it ...... ...but still!.......an artic tractor and trailer plus 10 tonnes of load isn't bad for a Series One Landrover to tow start I reckon! PPS: I should also point out that my own lorry was out with another driver so that's why we didn't use it !

now that's what I call a restoration job ...fair play

Many many thanks for your answers! .:cheesy: ...I don't know why but it really did my heart good to hear that she's not only survived but is the same Lancaster thats in the BoB flight and was in the documentary last night! Thanks again! I have very fond memories of those long gone days.. ..Little Rissington airshow was one of the highlights of the summer in those days...I also recall queuing up for ages (probably only half an hour or so but you know how it is as a kid!...) to go up into the cut off nose section of another Lancaster that was mounted on a trailer for eager ice cream daubed kids to clamber about in...... D'you know what is truly heartbreaking though???? ........over 7500 of them built and now there are but 15 left in the entire world and only 2 that are flying maybe 3 if the money and luck doesn't run out... ...I know the UK was in dire financial straights after the war but the shameful haste with which our heritage was scrapped is just that ...shameful.....not just aircraft but ships as well... Britain doesn't have one single example of her old capital fleet left ...not one.....even HMS Vanguard the last proper Battleship ever built anywhere in the world was lamped up without ceremony.....bloody shameful. :embarrassed: PS...I know HMS Belfast survived but.she is not a battleship ..nothing like it ...

Having watched the cracking documentary last night on Bomber Command a thought came into my head (dangerous as that can be!)... .....the program said the Lancaster featured was the only one left flying in the UK.... Now...as a lad.... I was often taken to the air show open days at Little Rissington and I vividly recall a Lancaster being there a number of years running.....the letters on the side of the fuselage was KM-B .and .....it didn't have a dorsal turret fitted so was not your usual Lanc..... ....I know the family had some photos of this Lanc and various other aircraft taken at those long gone air shows somewhere so I'll try and find them in the next few days........ My question is this ...she was flying perfectly in the early 70s...so. ..did she loose her airworthiness cert and is now in a museum somewhere?... crashed and wrecked maybe? sold abroad to a collector perhaps??? .....does anyone know what happened to her.???....any ideas?????

...is this a Matador based battlefield command vehicle?.... ......something the same or very similar to this sitting in a yard near to me.... ..........being worked on but very slowly.......:-)

Sorry Deggsy..you'd put your post up whilst I was writing mine so I didn't see it 'til I posted mine!......I totally agree with you mate! ...and more people were actually killed in the big Hamburg raid than Dresden anyway....I think the problem lies with folk that have a smattering of knowledge of the war as a whole and then they go and say "oh bombing them like that was wrong"......... ............ I think 'fronting' the show with a young famous actor fella probably brought more folk in to watch it than if it had been done by wise old professor type.??? .........either way ..a good documentary and well done.. The boys of Bomber Command have been cruelly ignored and ...when not ignored.. it has been far to easy for those nowadays in the safety zone of hindsight to criticise what they did ....Total war unfortunately is just that ...'total'.. As someone once said regarding the bomber war ...." to have ignored and turned away from what the bombers could possibly do, would have been a worse folly... we were fighting for our very existence"..... There within lies the problem I believe..... .........it is incredibly easy for certain folk alive now in that warm comfort zone of 'hindsight' to completely and absolutely fail to exactly understand what those dark days were actually like........

Not a bad documentary at all I thought...

hahah ....oh yeah that as well :cool2: .... by Christamighty...if you added up the money I've spent on Music and Women since i was 15, I'd have had enough to own a couple of Shermans , a brace or so of halftracks , at least 4 Jeeps a couple of assorted trucks.....etc etc :-D .. oooh dear ...best I stop with this line of thought :-)