Snapper Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Fun times for me yesterday taking my Iltis out for a run to pick the kids up from school. They love the old rust heap and it baffles their friends (mostly). Anyways - there I was cruising at comfy speed - about 28 mph - through Leigh On Sea when a crazy woman driving a Morris 1100 pulled out without looking. I braked carefully. With the Iltis you know what it does when you slam the anchors on....what it blimmin' well likes...and there we were on collision course. She had her eyes shut and a hand on her head, waiting for the worst when with stunning driving skills I managed to sort of steer/glide/doughnut round her and carried on my sweet way. A small crowd stood in a kind of awe. True!! It could have been one to explain to the insurance company and would have made for some interesting snaps. I've already written off a Fiesta with the thing - a kid reversed into me in a McDonalds car park. He had no insurance. I had not a scratch....I am sure my luck will run out somewhere, but given that an oil seal blew on the gear box driving it home from Derbyshire in 2003, I've been getting positive payback. Don't you just love this way of life?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian2b Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 ....I am sure my luck will run out somewhere, Your luck should hold out as long as you don't meet me in Southend when i am out in the Bedford. :eek2: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bodge Deep Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Nearly rammed one of those blinged up Range Rovers not long after I got the Dodge. Coming round a roundabout, the silly sod looked right at me (got me lights too) then pulls out right in front of me. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack when i was expressing my dissapointment at him :whistle:... missed him by inches, the tool :police: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghasp! Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Anyone had any experiences of road accidents while driving heavy metal? I imagine even a small armoured car (let alone a tracked vehicle) would demolish most modern vehicles that they come into contact with. I remember a friend of mine told me about a story when he was on exercise in Germany many years ago, riding down a country road on the back of a Chieftan (in a long nose to tail convoy). Suddenly a beetle came up behind them tooting loudly. It turned out to be full of German teenagers leaning out the window making it very plain what they thought of British soldiers, before overtaking on a blind bend. Unfortunatley there was another convoy of Chieftans coming back that way. :schocked: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snapper Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 I'm sure Lee has a tale to tell of his Fox and a dozy woman driving a small car on the way to Beltring last year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtistsRifles Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 On one occasion whilst with with 215 Sqdn RCT(VR) we had a convoy of Mk1 Militant GS's rolling through a training area at night on convoy lights only. Sentries were posted at the entrances where public roads crossed and, where the convoys crossed these roads, despatch riders were acting as traffic officers. A friend had just started to cross when a little MG came hurtling round a bend causing the despatch rider dive for his life - MG went under the Militant just missing the fuel tank and what came out the other side wasn't a pretty sight. Police at the inquest reckoned he was doing over 70 at the moment of impact. The sentries at point of entry to the area were interviewed and stated that the driver had slowed & stopped in response to the waved red light by one of them, the second had approached the vehicle and started to warn the driver of the dangers ahead when the driver suddenly took off. No one ever found out why but the guy in question always blamed himself despite being cleared by the court - he was Irish with a heavy accent and felt that seeing him come out of the dark with a weapon and start talking had scared the driver of the MG. Sounds crazy now - but remember this was when the "Troubles" were at their height!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlienFTM Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Anyone had any experiences of road accidents while driving heavy metal? I imagine even a small armoured car (let alone a tracked vehicle) would demolish most modern vehicles that they come into contact with. I remember a friend of mine told me about a story when he was on exercise in Germany many years ago, riding down a country road on the back of a Chieftan (in a long nose to tail convoy). Suddenly a beetle came up behind them tooting loudly. It turned out to be full of German teenagers leaning out the window making it very plain what they thought of British soldiers, before overtaking on a blind bend. Unfortunatley there was another convoy of Chieftans coming back that way. :schocked: During the late 70s - early 80s in BAOR, it seemed like every exercise a German civvy would pile into the back of a Chieftain whenever we were on exercise. In my experience they were usually at night and usually Merc drivers who thought they were bigger than anything else on the road. As a battlegrop Control Signaller, I was forever picking up Noduff* messages on the air about them. *Noduff: orig "No DF". A signalling term used on exercise to indicate that the following is a non-exercise (typically emergency) message with automatic priority and not to be used by opposing forces to direction-find their enemy. Classic: Exercise Spearpoint (1980) was to be the biggest deployment of armour since WW2 (three UK Armd Divs, plus 2 (US) Armored Div ("Hell on Wheels") to be deployed as rfts by Operation Reforger, deploying direct from bases in Texas by airlift. The exercise was so big that the whole of 3 Armd Div (whose role was entirely separate from the rest of BAOR and therefore not pertinent to the exercise) deployed as umpires. In order to ensure we umpires were on the ball from Day 1, we deployed a week early on Exercise Javelin, in which we dry-ran the entire exercise and dealt with all the potential problems. For instance even the new Clansman radios didn't give enough channels to allow sole use of all the required channels by a single net and where possible, conflicting nets on the same channel were deployed at opposite ends of the exercise area to prevent contention. One day, an umpire came up on the exercise command net with a Noduff message, reporting that he had seen a helicopter go down at a given grid location. Everything swung into action like clockwork. Then messages started going back up the line that nobody could find the crash site (German civvy ambulances were all over the area) and nobody else in the area could confirm having seen the helicopter go down. The whole thing dragged on forever. Eventually the GOC came on the air (you know when a half Colonel or above comes on the air: his presence is like that of Death, his voice sounding like coffin lids opening and closing (Terry Pratchett), he has a certain air about him). GOC was not at all happy. His exercise had ground to a halt due to outside forces which nobody could even find. The originator (himself a half Colonel) was told to verify the grid he'd given. When he did, GOC told him that he was standing at that location and there was no sign of a downed helicopter and the half Colonel might consider resigning his commission and why did he think this was the right location? "Because my Pink (exercise instruction sheet) says it happened and I was to send a Noduff message." Moral of the story: when you are sending a pretend Noduff, prefix it with the exercise name. What a glorious waste of a hot summer day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TooTallMike Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 So let me get that straight – it was an incorrectly phrased fake emergency message broadcast as a practice during a rehearsal for an exercise... No wonder it got confusing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centurion Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 In the early 70,s when I commenced my career with the constabulary we spent several nightshift hours in the west end of Newcastle pursuing or being pursued by a TA bloke :shake: who having got drunk in the mess, thought he would have a drive around in ferret that was handy. The damage to cars and street bollards was quite something. It only stopped when he ran out of petrol. Even then getting him out of it was not easy. Centurion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Signals Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Last summer a d@~*head in a Mondeo overtook a parked car which was in his lane rather than wait for me (oncoming) in the Dodge to pass. He caught the corner of my bumper and took his front wing, door panel and most of his rear wing off. Scared me to death in the process but barely took the paint off the bumper on the WC! Look as I could there was no bend anywhere, and I was expecting a very bent something or other. After getting over the intial shock me and my mate fairly peed ourselves laughing at his predicament. And of course 'it was your (my) fault'. Not. :-D :-D Unfortunately didnt have a camera with us to record the war damage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 As you can see this EOD Pig has been damaged by a van that drove into it. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v684/fv1620/12BK96-3.jpg[/img] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Hayward Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Ghasp, I can verify the story you were told as true, and from memory think it occured in 1980 during Operation Crusader 80 / Operation Spearpoint which I was on. Some of my mates passed the scene of the accident and said it was not a pretty sight seeing a crushed human being. No doubt the were many other incidents like it over the years! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marmite!! Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 Here's a couple of MV related accidents M1 crash http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/2980640.stm Since when has a gun tractor been a tank.. :dunno: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/217/217119_crash_horror_of_runaway_tank.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fv1609 Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 As you can see this EOD Pig has been damaged by a van that drove into it. I took it from a copy of Visor Service News, although I don't have a date. It reads: "The scene after the collision in Duncairn Gardens area of Belfast. A van drove around a Security Forces road block in Belfast earlier this week and narrowly missed a soldier who had tried to flag down the van to warn the occupants of th danger of a bomb incident in Duncairn Gardens. The van was then involved in a head-on collision with a one ton armoured RCT Humber. On hand at the incident was the medical crew of 40 Field Regiment Royal Artillery. The doctor and his team gave immediate first aid to two men from the van, one of whom appeared to have serious head and facial injuries. A civilian ambulance was called and took the men to the Royal Victoria Hospital." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryker Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Anyone had any experiences of road accidents while driving heavy metal? I imagine even a small armoured car (let alone a tracked vehicle) would demolish most modern vehicles that they come into contact with. I remember a friend of mine told me about a story when he was on exercise in Germany many years ago, riding down a country road on the back of a Chieftan (in a long nose to tail convoy). Suddenly a beetle came up behind them tooting loudly. It turned out to be full of German teenagers leaning out the window making it very plain what they thought of British soldiers, before overtaking on a blind bend. Unfortunatley there was another convoy of Chieftans coming back that way. great story sounds like a dumb question but did anyone in the beetle actually live? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghasp! Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Don't think so. I was told this story a long time ago, but I think he said more than one chieftan went over the wreckage before they managed to halt the convoy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andreadavide Posted February 13, 2007 Share Posted February 13, 2007 Four years ago a middle aged man was thinking he was smart enough to overtake a queue of vehicles, but when he saw a bus coming the opposite way he squeezed at the back of my UAZ 469, obviously without a proper distance. That was the moment the queue came to a stop... Final score: UAZ 469 - flakes of paint coming away from the Warsav tow hitch. Fiat Uno to the wrecker; Driver's wife to the hospital (she wasn't wearing seatbelts and tested the laminated windscreen with her skull); driver without license. Luckily two cars behind mine there was a Land Rover of the Carabinieri who saw everything... I love my Land Rovers but I still miss the UAZ... Andrea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marmite!! Posted September 25, 2007 Share Posted September 25, 2007 & here's a very near miss :shake: http://www.hmvftv.com/view_video.php?viewkey=666788607efbfca35afb&page=1&viewtype=&category=mr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
da bomb Posted September 25, 2007 Share Posted September 25, 2007 As you can see this EOD Pig has been damaged by a van that drove into it. I bet it took ages to clean off all that broken glass! I have seen some pictures of an Abbot in private hands, that had rolled down a slope it had been parked on, without brakes and then came to a stop on top of a Jeep Cherokee, fortunately nobody was involved in the accident. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Daymond Posted September 25, 2007 Share Posted September 25, 2007 about ten years ago we were using the militant to move a bus, we were towing it on a solid bar, all was going well until some prawn overtook the bus and tried to get in between the bus and the militant :dunno: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlienFTM Posted September 25, 2007 Share Posted September 25, 2007 Anyone had any experiences of road accidents while driving heavy metal? I imagine even a small armoured car (let alone a tracked vehicle) would demolish most modern vehicles that they come into contact with. In 1976-7 we twice tried to get range time to carry out shoot-to-kill tests on the SMGs and to fire the three-ohs in the Ferret turrets. Both times they were called off after we got there. The second time, our section carried out our patrol of our sector of the green line as usual before short-cutting to the range which was nearer the end of the patrol than the beginning. As troop leader's driver I was leading as usual. We came around a corner and a Cypriot farmer pulled his tractor into the road in front of me. A swift right-left on the wheel and I sailed by him, right wheels on the dust bank. A few seconds later Troopie called me to a halt. Rather than wait for a chance to pass safely, the nig* driver of the second Ferret had tried the same manoeuvre and failed. He clipped the front end of the (ages old) tractor and the cast centre section of the body simply broke. The two halves of the tractor were only held together by the drive train encased within the cracked section. It was a good job there was an awful lot of dust, cos there was an awful lot of oil. Not a scratch on the Ferret. * Nig: New In Green; a British Army acronym for a Cherry Boy or, as they say in the USA, FNGs (Flipping New Guys). Not in any way to be confused with a similar-sounding now-generally-considered-racist term with didn't apply anyway cos he was as Anglo-Saxon as me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N.O.S. Posted September 25, 2007 Share Posted September 25, 2007 A few years back I swung the RAF Scammell Constructor out of the drive into narrow village road and got into 3rd just as 85 year old cheroot smoking Mrs. S pulled out of her drive in a Peugot 306 facing us. She rapidly reversed back into her drive and we went passed. 10 minutes later we came back, and yes, she was still sitting in her car in the drive....... :shake: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Johns Posted September 26, 2007 Share Posted September 26, 2007 In the early '60s my Uncle used to drive a 1940s Morris armoured car, he always reckon he was invinceable with all that armour plate around him, however one day a Standard 8 lost control on a bend and demolished itself on the o/s front of the armoured car, Uncle was ok but was dismayed to find the axle had shifted back on the spring and sheared off the sector shaft in the steering box, it too had to be suspend towed away... :whistle: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B Posted September 26, 2007 Share Posted September 26, 2007 & here's a very near miss :shake: http://www.hmvftv.com/view_video.php?viewkey=666788607efbfca35afb&page=1&viewtype=&category=mr And both drivers stopped to change thier underwear. :-oI had a near miss with a Fox CVR(W) on a horse once. We were going opposite directions along a ride near Savernake in Wiltshire. Me on horse. I turned a corner at Full gallop to meet the Fox coming up the other way. Horse stopped Fox stopped comander and I met both hanging on the gun. Both horse and driver were killing themselves laughing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bodger Baz Posted September 26, 2007 Share Posted September 26, 2007 I had a similar incident this year in normandy, driving along quite merrily in a Dodge 1/2 ton command car at about 40ish, when just in front of us a camper van reversed out of a side road that had a 12 foot brick wall either side, i did not see it until it was in my lane!!! somehow (pure luck) i managed to bring the ol' gal to rest about 6" from the drivers door!!!!, you can probably still see the skid marks! The elderly gentelmen driving and his PASSENGER!!!!!! were quite.... well..... how can i put it.....oblivious to whole ordeal!!! not sure of the driver actually saw me as i think his glasses were made of bullet proof glass! A few words of encouragement were called out before he pulled back into the side road to let me continue, he then reversed out blind again!!!! What can i say? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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