question White crosses on post war trucks?

[Austin]

I've got a great little paperback book here on the BAOR, and some of the vehicles have white crosses on the left front window and/or on the left hand door, what does this mean? I was thinking it was something to do with the demob of the vehicles, but then I spotted this picture in the Antar gallery.

 

Anyone shed any light on this?

 

[AlienFTM]

In the 1970s and 1980s, we marked umpire vehicles distinctly, sometimes like this, so that exercise participants did not act upon them.

 

I cannot imagine a tank-transporter being used by an umpire, but I am prepared to guess that maybe it is indicating to exercise troops that this is not an exercise vehicle.

 

Maybe.

[Minesweeper]

Umpire Vehicles were marked similarly in 1960 - tho' I have only seen it on Land Rovers.

 

Tony

[AlienFTM]

On Spearpoint / Crusader 80, we fielded three armoured divisions (1,2 and 4), the entire 1 (Br) Corps with the Hannover Gap as its area of operations. 3 Armd Div's General Deployment Plan role was to cover the Harz Mountains and south to the Army boundary and was therefore literally outside the scope of Ex Spearpoint. Enemy forces comprised 2 (US) Armored Division ("Hell on Wheels") who deployed via Op Reforger and a Bundeswehr Panzerdivision.

 

To provide umpires, 3 Armd Div deployed in full, each unit / formation umpiring a unit / formation one level up in 1, 2 or 4 Armd Div, which scale gave a very close match with the number of units or formations to umpire.

 

Thus a medium recce sabre troop would umpire a recce sabre squadron; a medium recce squadron HQ would umpire a recce regiment battlegroup HQ and so on. Thus Command Troop 15/19H umpired a Task force (Brigade) HQ, Task Force Hotel, in 4 Armd Div.

 

Whilst I find it a little hard to believe (but I could be wrong - it certainly would not have been impossible) that 3 Armd Div Tanks actually travelled with tanks of the other divisions to provide umpire support, certainly 15/19H rolled out every vehicle we had to provide enough vehicles to umpire the rest of 1 (Br) Corps. This included all our CVR(T)s and Ferrets.

[fv1609]

I cannot imagine a tank-transporter being used by an umpire, but I am prepared to guess that maybe it is indicating to exercise troops that this is not an exercise vehicle. Maybe.

 

Maybe they were actually yellow crosses for the "enemy" forces?

[antarmike]

The second Antar seems to be showing a cross on the Radiator grill...

[gazzaw]

Some formations were marked up with white crosses to effectively take them out of the exercise whilst moving to a new area or serial in the exercise then at the new start point remarked as blue or orange forces and fed back into the exercise. Saved fuel and the logistic chain moving them in formation etc and lessened any confusion between opposing forces seeing large amounts of armour and vehicles moving through or round their lines etc.

 

Gary