N.O.S.

Many thanks for the info, SG05TOW, and great to see someone enthusiastic enough to be prepared to keep one working and in such good condition. :tup::

While Jack is still high from his flight over the beaches, I'll quietly sneak in a couple of pics of a recently acquired set of wheels - been after this one for 7 years........ Restored in mid '90s and fitted with Scania diesel, she has that lovely patina of a well-used truck, and is in great condition. Hope to get her out and about this year. While searching for info on planes named after the Autocar :-D I found two B17s, one of which was with 96BG at Snetterton Heath, the other served with 390BG. A photograph of the96BG plane shows not yellow painted bombs, but 5 yellow crawling babies with a note that 5 babies were deliverd on board :confused: I'm awaiting an explanation from the 96BG historian, and will advise in due course.

Yes, well spellchecked Degsy! The actual link is www.hellfire-corner.demon.co.uk/Westlakeblaina.htm By the by, an interesting eyewitness account of tanks in action comes from The History of the Norfolk Regiment 1914 - 1918, and concerns the use of tanks in the capture in November 1917 by 9th Norfolk and 1st Leicester of a wide front of the Hindenbrg Line near Cambrai, which was very heavily wired. A crucial role of the tanks was to flatten out the wire sufficiently to allow infantry to pass freely. This is a partial account of the battle by Colonel Prior: "Everything was peaceful and still, and there was no indication of the inferno that was shortly to be set loose....The guns had opened before we got half way down the line, and the leading line of tanks, followed by the Leicesters, were crossing our trenches and starting across 'No Man's Land' - a wonderful spectacle in the half light of the early morning. Ponderous, grunting, groaning, wobbling, these engines of war crawled and lurched their way toward the enemy lines, followed by groups of men in line. Overhead our shells were pouring over.......but the slowness of those tanks! It is at these moments that one itches for quickness and rapidity, and the slow, deliberate action of these monsters is exasperating" Sounds like a good design brief to me!

Some progress at last - 1) TRENCH MAPS I managed to get a 1/2 day at the National Archives Friday (thanks for your offer David, but it was a last-minute opportunity), and after having my biro confiscated and buying a pencil from the shop I was able to access the map room and eventually come face to face with some original trench maps! The poor copies which I posted a while back are in fact the only ones relevant to our search, but the originals make it easier to work out what's going on - so I've ordered some quality digital copies. Some maps I looked at give the names of each trench, but sadly ours show very little of that sort of info on them. I've also discovered how to interpret map co-ordinates of the time, like 5.16a.90/30 (see www.btinternet.com/~prosearch/tomspage13html ) 2) 1st Batallion Norfolk Regiment - their context within the British Forces The 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment formed a unit of the 15th Infantry Brigade which, together with the 13th and 14th, formed the infantry of the 5th Division. The 5th and 3rd Divisions constituted the 2nd Corps. Other units of the 15th Infantry Brigade, who fought alongside the 1st Norfolks throughout the war, were the 1st Cheshires and 1st Bedfords. The 1st Dorset, in at the start, were replaced in 1915 by 6th Cheshire and 6th Liverpool until these two were replaced in 1916 by 16th Royal Warwickshire Regt. 3) More detail of Beugny Raid 2 SEP 1918 Realising that 1st Cheshire were fighting alongside the Norfolks on this day, I found a summary of their movements from an interesting website, www.stockport1914-1918.co.uk The following extract is taken from that site: The village of Beugny is some 10 kilometres north east of the French town of Bapaume. By this stage of the war, the German army was in retreat but was far from beaten. It was fighting carefully planned rear guard actions from prepared positions and it was known that the village was heavily defended. The Cheshires moved into position during the evening of 1 September, ready for the attack scheduled for 5.15 the next morning. The march up to the front line was, in itself, difficult as the guides lost their way and enemy planes were bombing close by. Just before the attack started, the enemy artillery opened fire. Captain L Ferguson wrote in his diary "The enemy guns opened on our trench and in less time that it takes to write had just about blown us to hell. Great big shells fell right into the trench, causing at least 50% casualties before we started. We also got sneezing gas and liquid fire mixed up with the H.E. I was uncertain what order to give.... but it was certain that if we stopped in the trench till 5.15 am none of us would be left to attack..... so I called to those who could hear me to get out and lie in "no man's land" till time was up. Shells were now falling like hail and I saw a number of fellows blown to bits....." When the order to advance was given, the Cheshires found that, although the British artillery fire had been heavy and accurate, German machine guns were still active. One company managed to enter the village but was forced out again by a counter attack. The Battalion consolidated overnight and Beugny was captured the next day by other units Another link with Beugny found was a site recounting the fate of soldiers from Blaira, in Gwent - a Lt. George Henry Adney MC was killed in action near Beugny on 2nd Sep 1918, aged 21. He served with 7th Tank Corps. So tanks were being used in the location at this time, but the Norfolk war diaries make no mention of this. I have requested a copy of the war diary entries from the Cheshire Regt. museum, but they do not have a complete set of diaries and I am waiting to hear if we are in luck. Hopefully they will give us more information on the raid. 4) The Significance of the Beugny Raid Found in 'The History of the Norfolk Regiment' by Petre is the following extract from battalion orders, which testifies to the conduct of the Norfolk men that day: "The divisional commander has asked the commanding officer to inform all ranks of the 1st battalion of the Norfolk Regiment how much he appreciated the extraordinary goodwork carried out by the battalion during the operation from August 21st to September 2nd. During this time the division has recaptured a depth of over fifteen miles of enemy territory, which is more than any other division in the whole army has been able to accomplish in the same time, and has captured an enormous amount of booty and prisoners. "During the operations near Beugny village on September 2nd the 1st battalion the Norfolk Regiment was the only battalion, out of three divisions, that reached the final objective in its entirety, and it was only due to the fact that the battalion held on throughout the night to the high ground south of the village that the village became untenable to the enemy, and he was forced to retire... The trouble is, we could go on and on finding new information, and I think we have enough now to paint a reasonable picture of the circumstances surrounding Jackson's last days. Hopefully the Cheshire records will yield a bit more detail, and we can then look at writing it up (where's that Rob Langham hiding?). More as and when :sweat:

Howard, I'd heard these were essentially US components assembled with a DAF cab - what can you tell us about the make-up of the truck? Was it a US chassis? Tony

Saving Private Ryan - Some of the close-up beach scenes were filmed in a gravel quarry in Hertfordshire. The silt lagoons were deemed to be the ideal colour and beach - like. However - Tom Hank's insurance advisers were not happy about him swimming in the water (concerns over bacteria etc) so for his scenes a very, very large tank was constructed and filled with water. Then............ A 20T load of gravy browning arrived, and was mixed in until the colour matched that of the silt lagoon.

Our Humber 1 1/2 T with breakdown crane went out to pull in a 10T tipper on a rigid bar (empty, but it could just about cope with a loaded one!!) and gradually lost power, eventually stopping. When the driver lifted the bonnets, he saw petrol coming out of the dipstick tube - that was a lift pump diaphragm failure, and I'm amazed the engine didn't blow up what with all those fumes in the sump :shake:

Mods - do you think we should have a US filter on some of these posts, as I'm worried they'll start thinking our comedy shows are in fact real-life documentaries.......

Yes, Richard, I followed those Unipower trucks closely, and thought the range would secure their future and at the same time provide the forces with really good wheels. But I guess it is all down to comonality of components on the battlefield, hence MAN and Stewart & Stevenson (US) trucks - British industry has to take a back seat!!

Stormin, it lifts the valves off their seats to allow you to turn the engine over on no compression (imagine trying to turn the 6LW over with a starting handle :shake::shake::shake:). Thus you can build up a bit of momentum (and some handy extra fuel in the cylinders!!) before dropping the decompression lever and enjoying the smoke effects :yay:

My understanding is that the great DVLA computer is sort of "intellligent" in that it (very slowly albeit) gradually learns to adapt to constant declarations by exasperated applicants, and other input. An example is that one of my work vehicles, after 10 odd years of having to declare that no MOT is needed (for special types), has eventually been so marked on the renewal notice. And don't forget they make you declare certain things as a sort of "self-policing" policy - the onus is on you to work within the legislation rather than them having to interpret and advise you. Particularly relevant to grey areas like our green machines. Ho hum. Just don't give up.

Ruston Bucyrus, could be 19RB, maybe 22RB? Late 60's to mid 70's? Did you look around the back at the counterweight? Big cast letters 9" high should give the game away

I cancelled my Roadsure vehicle policy last week (changed as I had to add an extra vehicle and there was only 1 week to run on) - I was told on the phone that I could keep my recovery policy (only got one vehicle on this at present) and that it was open to vehicles not insured with them. Perhaps some clarification is required - we seem to have 2 conflicting verbal statements here! Someone else phone up and we'll go for best of 3 :-D

Just come across this ww2 pic of Watton airfield, I had not realised until now that airfields were camouflaged from the air by painting fields, hedgerows, trees and shadows on the grass and runways, as well as hangar roofs. At Watton personell were made to walk around the painted trees, and could only cross hedgerows at the unpainted gaps :shocked: I am NOT making this up see www.455thaaa.com

It seems the Norfolk Regiment Museum in Norwich will take the stone, but cannot guarantee to display it. I have been advised that it would almost certainly be put into storage (due to lack of display space, not interest) so that is where it would probably stay :-( Once in storage, I'm not convinced it would get much (if any) use as part of school - based research, so I do not like this idea. I'd rather give it a home myself (must admit I've become quite attached to it!) and establish some contacts with schools in order to make it accessible. I did wonder whether to contact the British Legion Thetford branch and see if they have any interest in displaying it at their nice old building on the Market Square . At least it would keep the stone local and in an appropriate environment. Any views on this please? And if I get enough time to pull some more detail together and consolidate the info you have all contributed, we could pursue the possibility of a write-up in Britain At War magazine in time for November? The Sec. of Anglian and Norfolk Regt Association is still on the case and very enthusiastic, and has passed my contact info to someone locally with a lot of trench map experience - awaiting a call, and hope to have more info for you soon.

Here is another unusual memorial, at Snetterton Heath, Norfolk - home of the 96BG. It is a massive stainless steel structure portraying a climbing B17, with the supporting structure representing the contrails from the 4 engines. I was lucky enough to catch it in the evening sun this week.

What increase did the "High Speed" Diffs (identifiable by grease nipple in hub centre) give?

See how easily he's led astray.......:whistle:

You've upset me now - That Ruston was bought by Bill Kemble, and I was due to take one of my Euclid R15s to Power in the Past to be loaded by it (as he was worried about the lack of opportunity to practise his driver would have had, and I wasn't worried about a few "dings" :-D). I was half way through replacing the tipping hinge pin, bosses and body bearing pads when the show was pulled - possibly a chance in a lifetime gone west :-( Hopefully there might be an odd private working event or two at some stage?

Yo Skin, Looks like a job for the generic stepframe! Try any local plant hire companies, if they are quiet they might do a good rate. Expect to be charged at least 8 hrs for the job (it's a day gone). Make sure the one coming back will start and drive, to avoid embarrassment and extra hours booked!

Nice adverts. The first dumptruck has clearly been designed to be used in loading practise sessions for trainee dragline operators:whistle:

Not my back yard, but vehicle must be same one on the same day judging by markings, bag, box etc.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I used to think closed cabs were les nuits de le chien, but have to admit that the topless variants have a certain appeal...........:n00b:

"Hey Seaman, get your hands off my runflats!"