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Saracen 82BA77


datadawg

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I just got history cards for my Saracen from Bovington. Would love some input on the following:

 

What does any of content mean, things like EIN, Class 3, UIN, TXN, etc.?

Why is there a 12 year lag between 1955 date in service and 1967 first entry?

Any significance to different cards (pink and white)?

Why would some lines have text in both blue and red colors?

Why does white card have redline with "R" on top, yet pink card have green line with "C" on it?

My vehicle has RFC and is an MK6, yet cards state MK2. Wouldn't the cards reflect upgrade history when it would have been up-armored to MK6?

 

In case the cards are hard to read, you can click on them to open picture in new frame and then click twice more to maximize the image in a separate tab. It's a lot clearer than if looking at imbedded image in the post.

82 BA 77 Vehicle Service Card (1).jpg

82 BA 77 Vehicle Service Card (2).jpg

Edited by datadawg
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Hi Data!

 

I own 82BA29, and also got the data cards from Bovington. Mine also only start in the late sixties. Someone on here said that lack of information for a given period, ie, from production date to the late sixties, could imply service abroad? I know My first entry shows 29 coming to Ludgers from Singapore.

 

I have all the same questions as You, especially how to decipher all the small annotations in the lower portion. I'm sure SOMEONE here knows...nudge. The little I know of the seller is that he is first class, I bet Your Saracen will be super.

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Hi Data!

 

I own 82BA29, and also got the data cards from Bovington. Mine also only start in the late sixties. Someone on here said that lack of information for a given period, ie, from production date to the late sixties, could imply service abroad? I know My first entry shows 29 coming to Ludgers from Singapore.

 

I have all the same questions as You, especially how to decipher all the small annotations in the lower portion. I'm sure SOMEONE here knows...nudge. The little I know of the seller is that he is first class, I bet Your Saracen will be super.

I am sure you are right, people on here have tons of knowledge, and I bet someone either has a "code" to all the cryptic information on these cards or knows how to decipher it. The theory that missing information for a given period reflects service abroad doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially if the missing information is from the beginning of service. If the theory were true, wouldn't they still put something on the card as soon as the Saracen went into service? I mean, it's not like it rolled off the production line and then got teleported somewhere. It probably went to a depot, sat around, the planners figured out what's needed where, then it got assigned to some unit, loaded for transport, brought to a port, went on a ship, etc. It would have to have had history during this time, otherwise someone could have just taken it for joyride and no one would miss it.

 

I am really interested in figuring this out. Part of the allure of preserving my Saracen and giving it new life is learning about its history and what happened to it before. Everyone of them has a rich story to tell!

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My Saracen's history card lists "UIN" as F7834a. According to this informative post, UIN stands for Unit Identity Numbers, and there is specific information conveyed by the UIN. The post explaining it is at this link:

 

http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?49270-RAF-UIN-Unit-Idenification-Numbers

 

The only thing I've been able to decipher on my own from the UIN of F7834a is that the prefix "F" signifies Ministry of Defense, Royal Air Force. Why my Saracen, an armored vehicle, would be attached to the Air Force is beyond me.

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I am sure you are right, people on here have tons of knowledge, and I bet someone either has a "code" to all the cryptic information on these cards or knows how to decipher it. The theory that missing information for a given period reflects service abroad doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially if the missing information is from the beginning of service. If the theory were true, wouldn't they still put something on the card as soon as the Saracen went into service? I mean, it's not like it rolled off the production line and then got teleported somewhere. It probably went to a depot, sat around, the planners figured out what's needed where, then it got assigned to some unit, loaded for transport, brought to a port, went on a ship, etc. It would have to have had history during this time, otherwise someone could have just taken it for joyride and no one would miss it.

 

I am really interested in figuring this out. Part of the allure of preserving my Saracen and giving it new life is learning about its history and what happened to it before. Everyone of them has a rich story to tell!

 

 

 

Certainly Your right, there must have been a documented chain of custody. I understand that, certainly in the case of Saracens, and ours would both (I think) be fairly early production, there was at that time a real shortage of practical APCs around the world, and a cetain proportion did travel overseas very soon after delivery to places such as Malaya. Here is an observation/question:

 

Of the admittedly few record cards I have seen, they dont seem to show any activity outside of BAOR, NI, and the rest of the UK. (Except for deployment to hong kong) Mine do atleast show as their first entry (1969) that it was being released from 221 Base Vehicle Depot (Singapore) to Ludgershall. I know that it was overseas during the early sixties as I have conversed with a veteran who has pics of himself and 29 in libya. I saw in Iraq a few years ago how vehicles were deployed to theatre and then handed from departing units to arriving units, this activity overseen by a higher authourity in theatre. Could there ever have existed records maintained at, as an example, 221 BVD, detailing all vehicles assigned there... maybe all destroyed at some point (being of no practical value)as operations there ended, or as individual vehicles left theatre? Someone here must be able to illuminate how overseas record keeping might have worked?

 

Out of curiosity, do You know Your Saracens' hull number? I believe Mine to be 569, would like to compare it 82BA77 which I would hope to be about... 607, maybe? I think someone started a data base; I've never added mine to it. Cant even remember where I saw it. Here are 82BA29s cards, for comparison:

 

 

82 BA 29 ©.jpg

82 BA 29 (a).jpg

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We used to use Saracens on RAF bases.

During the 90's the main bases along the east coast from London to Inverness had TA Royal Engineer ADR Squadrons attached to them. (ADR - Airfield Damage Repair) These units were paid for by the RAF but remained as Army personnel and equipment.

We had, as part of their vehicle allocation, Armoured recce vehicles in many cases Saracens but later replaced by Sultans I think.

The distinguishing feature of these Saracens etc was the removal of the top hatch with an armoured perspex cupola. This earned them the nickname of Popemobiles.

The cupola was required for post air attack airfield survey enabling the Recce officer to survey the airfield for bomb craters or scabs while remaining buttoned up against anything nasty. An example of what he would be looking for can be seen on Google Earth at RAF North Luffenham in Rutland just to the South East of Rutland Water, take a close look at the main runway.

 

One disadvantage of the modification was the removal of an escape route meaning you only had the back door to get out of if the front sustained damage.

 

The rest of us in our Diggers, Tippers and Graders etc, did not get any such modifications to our vehicles.

Edited by ploughman
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l will try and explain the cards first the card form 419B first came into use in 1950 the pink form 419A came in to use in the mid 1960s with the idea it would be used for armoured vehicles and engineers plant but both cards stayed in use with more

details shown on the white 419Bs there are up to thirty spaces on a 419B card for entries the lack of details of the vehicles history may be due to a number of reasons including loss /damage no longer relevant but unlikely due to it serving over seas the abbreviations TXN transaction EIN equipment identification number VBT vehicle been transferred UIN as already

explained CLASS indicates condition one been first class there coming to the end of its service life THE reason for the use of red and blue ink the use of red is to highlight the information as in the case of the red diagonal line across the card the vehicle was no longer in service the same with the green it was struck off hope this answers some of your points

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l will try and explain the cards first the card form 419B first came into use in 1950 the pink form 419A came in to use in the mid 1960s with the idea it would be used for armoured vehicles and engineers plant but both cards stayed in use with more

details shown on the white 419Bs there are up to thirty spaces on a 419B card for entries the lack of details of the vehicles history may be due to a number of reasons including loss /damage no longer relevant but unlikely due to it serving over seas the abbreviations TXN transaction EIN equipment identification number VBT vehicle been transferred UIN as already

explained CLASS indicates condition one been first class there coming to the end of its service life THE reason for the use of red and blue ink the use of red is to highlight the information as in the case of the red diagonal line across the card the vehicle was no longer in service the same with the green it was struck off hope this answers some of your points

Thanks for the info. Lack of punctuation made this a difficult read, but I want to make sure I understood what you said correctly: "first class" is at end of service life, so presumably it was worse condition than "third class"? Somewhat counter-intuitive, the way the cards are printed, the box for 3rd class is to the right of 1st class, so you'd have to fill out the card from right (3rd class) to left (1st class), to show progression from good condition to worse. Unless you Brits fill out paperwork from right to left, this seems strange!

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Out of curiosity, do You know Your Saracens' hull number? I believe Mine to be 569, would like to compare it 82BA77 which I would hope to be about... 607, maybe? I think someone started a data base; I've never added mine to it. Cant even remember where I saw it.

I don't definitively know my hull number, and the shop restoring it tells me that it's actually stamped on armor beneath the up-armored layer. So it's not possible to view it, unless you cut armor - not something I would do. They did tell me that each of the escape hatches is numbered and the hatches are generally uniquely fitted to each hull. My hatches are numbered "404".

 

That doesn't seem to jive with the sequence, if your hull # is 607, and your military vehicle id numeration (82BA29) is lower than mine (82BA77). My Saracen also lacked the official ID plate (making up replacement), so without forensic anthropology here, it's really hard to know what is factual. I considered the possibility that my hatches are replacements and the true hull # isn't 404, but then the hatches would have had to have been replaced by identically numbered hatches, and I can't really come up with a valid reason for this. Plus, assuming hatches were numbered 1 to 1,000, the probability of getting 2 identically numbered hatches is 0.1%. Low odds, so I think the hatches are original and correspond to my hull #.

 

Still no rhyme or reason for the numbering gap on hull between our 2 units.

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l tried twice to answer your question the first for some reason did not go through the second attempt went through with part of the text missing the part on the CLASS should have read class one in new condition CLASS three at the end of it's

service life

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I don't definitively know my hull number, and the shop restoring it tells me that it's actually stamped on armor beneath the up-armored layer. So it's not possible to view it, unless you cut armor - not something I would do. They did tell me that each of the escape hatches is numbered and the hatches are generally uniquely fitted to each hull. My hatches are numbered "404".

 

That doesn't seem to jive with the sequence, if your hull # is 607, and your military vehicle id numeration (82BA29) is lower than mine (82BA77). My Saracen also lacked the official ID plate (making up replacement), so without forensic anthropology here, it's really hard to know what is factual. I considered the possibility that my hatches are replacements and the true hull # isn't 404, but then the hatches would have had to have been replaced by identically numbered hatches, and I can't really come up with a valid reason for this. Plus, assuming hatches were numbered 1 to 1,000, the probability of getting 2 identically numbered hatches is 0.1%. Low odds, so I think the hatches are original and correspond to my hull #.

 

Still no rhyme or reason for the numbering gap on hull between our 2 units.

 

 

Yes Data, I concur, it would be a rare event to find both hatches matching from another machine. I understand hull numbers and reg numbers did not progress absolutely side by side, but these figures do seem awefully far apart. I actually thought My supposed hull number seemed high for a machine manufactured in early 55. As I am positive that mine is 82BA29, and one of the hatches is marked with "OS 569" I inffered the hull number from the data base posted by lynx42:

 

http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?19375-Saracen-chassis-number-where-is-it/page2&highlight=saracen+hull+numbers

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Mine is 82 BA 88. I've not been able to determine the hull number and both escape hatches have different numbers on them.

 

I still need to get the history cards for it.

 

Cheers,

 

Terry

Terry,

In case you ever remove your fuel tank, I saw a post on another thread where someone said they found their hull # stamped when they removed fuel tank. It's post #25 here:

http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?19375-Saracen-chassis-number-where-is-it/page3&highlight=saracen+hull+numbers

 

"With the tank removed it was located under the paint on the floor of the vehicle in the rear right corner of the floor looking over the lip of the rear doors (as a point of referance it is on the floor straight down fromroughly where the gas tank vent tubeis located). It contained the reg number of the vehicle, a date (about a year before the"in service" date of the paperwork from Bovie) and some initials and numbers (QA maybe)."

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