Old Git

So, I've pretty much worked out the dims for the tube now and as far as I can tell, if anyone else is interested, these are as follows... A = 570mm long and dia about 165.5mm (length is measured from Bevel B to the start of the thread, I think the threaded portion about 102mm long) B = 100 mm long C = 350mm long x 137.5mm dia D = 165mm long E = 1265mm long (to end of muzzle) x 111mm dia all dis + or - 1mm I'm now working up a CAD file for the mantlet. Hopefully, it'll turn out nice again (best George Formby voice there).

Spotted this on eBay, wondered if someone here was selling it or if someone here might be interested... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/183161803844?

BTW, on the rear of the mantlet, the cut out for the BESA cradle. I see the main 'square' hole goes all the way through for the BESA barrel assembly but can I assume that the cradle only goes into the Mantlet a short distance? When I was at the TNA recently I copied a report from NWE in 44, WO 348/105, a analysis of "Casualties in Cromwells and Shermans". If you're interested I can Dropbox a copy to you, Just let me know mate! Pete

WowAdrian, that's fantastic mate, you're an absolute star! The counter bore is interesting, it is shownb on the drawings in the manual but it's not very clear so I assumed (yeah I should know better by my age) that it must be a taper to match that at B. on the tube. What is the purpose of the counter-bore? Is it supposed to be padded against an accidental strike ocassioned by an over-active recuperator or is it simply an 'air buffer' of some sort? The picture of the tube in the cradle is also very informative, again I was assuming the bevel came all the way past the end of the cradle. One bad assumption leads to another! But these are the areas that aren't well documented anywhere and of course what the manuals do show is based on the idea that you have the thing right in front of you. Thanks again Adrian, you never fail to impress with the amount of stuff you know and the amount of stuff you seem have laying in the shed!

Hi All, I originally started this thread as a means of confirming some dims for the QF 75mm tube but as I get further into my quest I find I need slightly more than I started with and so it occurs to me that this thread has the potential to turn into a useful aid to anyone who might need to mock up a QF 75mm, or parts thereoff, as a stop gap for some missing parts on a resto. So, initially I've tired to pin down the measurements of the the tube, followed by a Cromwell Mantlet, then the Breech Ring and Breech block, and hopefully finish up with something on the cradle and anything else that comes to mind. I've got a quick question re the 75mm on a Cromwell. In the drawing below I've marked various parts of the barrel and what I'm mostly interested in is the bevelled segment marked "B". From what I can tell the aperture in the Cromwell Mantlet that takes the 75mm is also bevelled at the rear of the Mantlet, is that correct? I so I presume that this is to take the bevel on segment "B". The next question is how far into the Mantlet does this bevel go, all the way so that the front face of "B" is then flush with the front of the Mantlet or does it only go part of the way into the Mantlet with segment "C" keeping the gun running true from the front of the aperture? Finally, can anyone provide dimensions for A - E? Thanks in advance chaps!

I'm not so sure there was ever an official paint colour with the nomenclature of KG3, there was a KG3 Blanco but not a paint colour of that name. At the outbreak of WWII most equipment was painted in one of the standards of Bronze Green (yes there was more than one variant of Bronze Green). However, with the onset of U Boat activity there was soe difficulty in obtaining certain pigmets for making paint and fro about 1940 onwards everything is standardised in SCC2 Brown, ALL new equipment manufactured after Dunkirk is painted SCC 2 Brown. This continued until early 1944 when "ACI 533. Camouflage. - War Equipment, etc. - Change in Basic Colour" stipulated: "I. Olive drab will be adopted as the basic camouflage colour for all army equipment, in lieu of Standard Camouflage Colour No. 2 (brown), and certain new equipments painted Olive Drab will shortly be received by units 2. An exception will be ade in the case of bridging equipments of British manufacture caontaining the word "Bailey" which will continue to be painted in Standard Camouflage Colour No. 2 to distinguish them from American made Bailey Bridges 3. This change will not authorize units,whose equipments, vehicles. etc. are alaready apinted Standard Camouflage Colour No. 2 (as the basic colour) to draw supplies of Olive Drab for re-painting until re-painting is due and necessary, and all stocks of Standard Camouflage Colour No.2, in unit or R.A.O.C. charge have been exhausted. 4. An A.C.I. detailing the catalogue and specification references for paint in Olive Drab will be issued in due course. " I believe this last referenced ACI was in fact 1100/44, although I don't have a copy of it to hand right now! It is also my understanding that priot to Dunkirk most, if not all, BEF helmets were painted Apple Green, which again is not anything near the colour of KG3 Blanco! Below is a rare, wartime colour photo of the Bailey Bridge across the River PO in Italy. You will see from this photo (and if like me you need visual assistance follow the link to the IWM website and use the tools there to zoom in on the pic) that the Bailey Bridge is indeed painted SCC 2 (brown). Compare this to the paint colouring of the helmet above! As for Oxidizing paint turning brown colour....well I leave that to your own sense of what's probable and what is not! BRITISH EIGHTH ARMY TROOPS CROSSING THE RIVER PO, BEYOND FERRARA, ITALY, 28 APRIL 1945. © IWM (TR 2852) IWM Non Commercial License

Thanks for the input, useful stuff indeed. As far as I can tell, during WWII, 41 ( as related to 6th Armoured Division, was either 5th or 8th Fd Sqn RE (still trying to figure out which). I shall now have a dig around on 27th Fd Eng Reg to see what I can turn up. EDIT: the following confirms your info :-) http://british-army-units1945on.co.uk/royal-engineers/regiments---major-units/27-regiment.html

Anyone got the Orbats for 6th Armoured Division after it's resurrection in 1951 and attachment to BAOR in 1952? Trying to find out what RE Squadrons were attached, possibly with AoS number of 41? Would these have remained the same from 1944?

I doubt that paint on the inside would fade all that much, I'd hazard a guess at SCC 2 maybe?

Speaking as a forum Admin and IT support guy I can tell you that it is a hugely thankless task keeping these things running. More often than not the Admins are well aware of issues that the end-user is not aware us and in some cases it's a case of holding on and hoping it doesn't go bang before you can get to fix it properly, (surely anyone who has ever had to jury-rig an engine just to get home will sympathise with that). The problem with forums is if they go bang, getting them back is easy (just a quick case of re-installing everything from scratch), getting all the data back is the hard bit. Reaching for your regular back-ups only to find that they too are corrupt is something every IT support Engineer dreads...it is what keeps us up a t night! Sometimes upgrading the software is something that is forced upon us by the forward march of progress. Recently my own forum stopped working and whenever a user posted something all that appeared was an empty post. It soon became obvious that, overnight, the company hosting the forum had upgraded the underlying database software (MySQL) and another essential web component (PHP) to the very latest versions, (they do these upgrades for security reasons, to keep out hackers and those who would embed viruses). Sadly, our Forum software does not work with these new upgrades and so we are being forced to upgrade before we were ready to do so. We now have to make a decision if we stay with the forum software we are using, which was what was being used here before the upgrade, or go another route to keep with the times and to give folks the feature requests they want. I don't know about here but I keep getting asked if I can add 'LIKE' buttons to threads. I can't and the software doesn't allow for it but the newest version does; it's just a case of whether I'm prepared to pay for that or not, especially when paying for the hosting costs is already a burden. Nobody likes change, (all of us here are here precisely because we like the old ways) but sometimes change is forced upon us, for whatever reason, and we just have to learn to deal with it. I appreciate that it gets harder as one gets older (I'm in my mid 50's now and beginning to get very set in my ways) but it is what it is and we need to learn to adjust. You just need to remember that we all come here for the content, the camaraderie and shared enthusiasm for all things historic, military and vehicular... the manner, or format, in which it is presented is less important. Just my two pfennigs!

This problem with photobucket has affected so many forums around the Internet, including all the modelling and hobby forums. I run a small modelling forum, based on VB 4.x, and have for some time used a VB add-on that imports all photos posted in threads onto my own webspace. Obviously, I don't want every single photo every posted on the forum so instead I created an Archives sections that no-one but the admin can post to. I then set those forums to be the ones that import all images to the local web storage. Whenever there's a great thread full of photographs that I feel is worthy of preserving then it gets moved, when the thread is 'finished', to the archives...which are viewable by all and findable via the standard search function! It's probably a bit late to fix this photobucket nightmare but going forward it might be something that Mods can look into for the future. If we can then get the pics fixed in some of the more important damaged threads then perhaps it'll go someway towards mitigating against the perniciousness of Robert Curdog's influences on Photoshop! BTW, your account on Photobuck is still there, and so are all your photos. It's still free to have the account and upload photos it's just not free to share those photographs to other websites. So, as a backup facility it's still good, as asharing platform it's now redundant. I suspect the migration of accounts has already begun and eventually and it may well be that all Photobucket has done here is shoot itself in the foot and I'm expecting this bone-headed move to signal the death knell of this platform. If you do migrate to a new photo hosting site then do remove all your photos off Photobucket and delete your account, it's the only way to let them know the folly of their ways!

Before I drag my aged-backside all the way to Kew next week, would anyone here have a copy of the ACI's (Army Council Instructions) from May 1955 that they can copy/photograph for me? Thanks in Advance Pete

Simon, thanks for that info and the link, I shall pop across and have a shufti's! Pete

I've looked at all the photos under magnification and I can tell you that there is a clear difference between oil/dirt and the clear indications of a distinct camo pattern. On Jimmy Priestly's Pixie suit the camo pattern can be clearly defined on the chest area, and the Czech tankies book, "Cromwelly Ceskoslovenske Brigady" has some very fine photos in it which are quite clear under magnification! But I take your point about re-enactors, thankfully I do this stuff for myself and not for the shrill voices of "Living History" lot!

Here mate..., Having looked at the Korea picture above, now look at the picture of Jimmy Priestly, and the pictures which follow it in this thread. http://www.onesixth.co.uk/vb4forum/showthread.php?289-The-Pixie-Suit-(aka-Oversuit-Tank'>http://www.onesixth.co.uk/vb4forum/showthread.php?289-The-Pixie-Suit-(aka-Oversuit-Tank)-Usage-in-Normandy-in-1944-a-discussion-piece&p=41561&viewfull=1#post41561 Also, look at this glaring picture http://www.onesixth.co.uk/vb4forum/showthread.php?289-The-Pixie-Suit-(aka-Oversuit-Tank)-Usage-in-Normandy-in-1944-a-discussion-piece&p=55967&viewfull=1#post55967 Sometimes you need to know what to look for! I've also shown that the term Pixie suit was used during WWII as well, a poem from a 1945 dated Recce journal references it.

Thanks for that Adrian. Now that the we are seeing big photographic reference books, on Czech and Polish forces, appearing it is becoming obvious that the Camo suit was indeed in use during the war years. I first became aware of how difficult it is to discern a camo suit from a tan suit, in B&W photographs, when looking at a Korean war photograph on IWM, (search on Alycidon on IWM) which shows two 8th KRIH tankies side by side, in direct sunlight, one wearing the Camo Tanksuit and the other the Tan Suit. Even in direct sunlight you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two. Now I've seen people claim that the Camo suit never saw service in WWII or Korea and that they were probably never even issued. Obviously this photo proves that to be completely wrong. Now, with the volumes on the Czech and Polish forces having recently been published it's obvious that these units had, during WWII, a mix of Camo and Tan suits. I think it's the Czech book that shows some chaps in new tank suits which are very clean and the difference is very, very obvious! Pete Here's the IWM pic.... THE KOREAN WAR 1950 - 1953. © IWM (BF 163)IWM Non Commercial Licence

Anyone got any dimensioned drawings of British 6 Pdr, Mk IV? Pete

Actually, the options were 'The Kit' or my 'Goolies', and she actually used that term, which made me laugh...until I saw the steely look in her eye and the steel in her hand:shocked::red:

Hi Chris, thanks for that mate, both interesting and useful! Any idea on current prices for these? My wife is giving me grief about getting rid of some of the "stinky old kit" laying about the place and these may well be on the list of things that "take up too much space and need to go"...before I find myself on that self-same list ;-)

Anybody know what this 7 line Switchboard and 5 Mk V Tele Sets, plus ancillary bits, are worth at the moment?

whatho chaps, apologies for the delay in returning to this thread but my Internet service has been a bit up and down of late, (more down than up actuall). It's amazing how much we fall behind when the Inet service goes, just shows how central it has become to all our lives! Thanks for the info on the suits. Was surprised at the price difference between the Camo tanksuit and the Tan Tanksuit. I assumed it would be the other way round, especially as everyone assumes (incorrectly I might add) that the Camo tanksuit wasn't used in WWII. Eddie, if I sell these I'll give you first refusal on the desert tank suit mate! I still haven't managed to get them out to inspect sizes but I'll see if I can't do that tomorrow! Just looked on eBay and saw a Camo Windproof smock priced at £375 BiN. Given that it had been hacked about a bit (full length zip added and then removed and a half zip then added at the throat) I thought £375 a bit high but then I don't know prices all that well, I bought these absolutely years ago so no idea what they're worth now? Pete

I shall dig out the Sizes and upload them tomorrow, I'm six foot, with broad shoulders, and I think they fit me OK, although I've only ever tried them on, never actually worn them for any extended period of time! Pete

Anybody know the current prices the following items are fetching... Tan Pixie Suit with Hood, label dates it to 1946 Camo Pixie suit, no hood, label dates it to 1944 CAmo Windproof Smock, label dates it to 1945 CAmo Windproof trousers, label dates them to 1943 Post war Denison, 1959 pattern although label dates it to 1945 Also, Jungle Tank Suit And Desert Overalls, used by Tankies in Western Desert, with stand collar.

Thanks for that mate, I know they have them at Kew and I was supposed to go up last week but events overtook me so I was sort of hoping someone here might have a copy before I re-schedule. Not convinced that they'll have the level of details I require, which is what I wanted a look at before I drag myself up there, but hey ho we can but try! Might try to make it up next Tuesday, if my overlord permits!

Looking for some info from ACI's dated May 1955, anyone happen to have a copy of these to hand? Pete