OneGuyFromBarlick

On a recent visit to the RAF Hendon Museum, London, I took photos and these included pics of motor vehicles as well as aircraft. I know some OG members are particularly interested in this sort of thing, so here are the pics. Excuse the colour and lack of crispness but the Hendon museum lighting is difficult to balance.

Jeep in front of B17 bomber


Austin K2 Ambulance


Ferret scout car


WW1 Hucks Starter for starting engines of the old biplanes


Humber MkIIIa armoured car


Hillman Minx in front of Airspeed Oxford


Scarab tractor vehicle


Standard Vanguard, Focke Wulfe 190 to the right


Phelam Moore motor cycle, adopted by the Royal Flying Corps in WW1

Tizer, th pic of the Standard Vanguard brought back memories, it is a 1949 beetle back, bench front seat with column gear change on the right of steering wheel, it was one of my earlier cars in my courting days, bench front seats were very handy, i once had 15 passengers in the same car,
The Scarab if my memory is right was made by Scammel, every goods yard had them

The Scarab Mechanical Horse. Built to replace horse haulage at rail goods depots. Had a trailer that automatically coupled, all you had to do was back under the front of it. My mate John Ingoe has one.

Sorry about the quality, images are thin on the ground. A Stuart gun-tower with a 17pdr anti tank gun. They were based on the American Honey tank with the turret removed. Two Cadillac V8 engines and hydramatic transmission. Heavy but a good tool for the job. We had them in the 1950s.

Here's an oldie for you. When we were in Berlin the army only allowed us obsolete equipment on the grounds that if and when the Russians overcame us we didn't want to be handing them any modern technology. We used Austin 3 ton four wheel drive petrol engined vehicles as gun towers and here is a partial view of one of them. Looking back I wish I'd taken more pics of things like the Austin Champ with the Rolls Royce engine and our Bren gun carriers. The Bren gun carriers were great fun to drive especially on the concrete apron in front of the ex Luftwaffe aircraft hangar where we kept the guns. They had a normal steering wheel which had two stage steering. Slight adjustments were made by altering the alignment of the tracks and any further movement of the wheel braked the track on the appropriate side. They were steel tracks and the engine was I think a Ford V8. We used to drive across the concrete at full chat and then put full lock on, the carriers used to do wonderful skid turns, great fun until our masters found us enjoying ourselves. We got away with it by saying that we were just doing maintenance and tests!

One of my friends in the 60s was in the army, drove a Champ and loved it. I seem to recall he said they had multiple reverse gears and it was more fun going backwards!

I may be wrong, I never actually drove a Champ, we always had a REME driver but I seem to remember that reverse gear wasn't in the main gearbox but in an external gear which gave you the same gears backwards as forwards. Not sure about this but there is a vague memory in there somewhere. At that time BMC were using RR engines in some of their higher range cars, the manager at RR in Barlick had one. The Champs were heavy and overbuilt to a very high standard. I have little doubt they cost a lot more to make than the ubiquitous JEEP.

I remember going to an Alvis Car Club meeting at the Duxford aerodrome and the `drive past' included Alvis military vehicles such as the Saracen and Saladin. There was even a Percival Provost training aircraft with an Alvis Leonides engine!

I have an idea that one of Rover's contracts when they moved into Barlick, Earby and Clitheroe in 1940 after the raids on Coventry was reconditioning Alvis Leopard engines. I think they did that in Butts or Calf Hall. I also have a vague memory of reading in the history of Wellworthy Piston Rings that in the early days of the war they had problems with sleeve valves on the Alvis engines which made them very unreliable.
Just had a furtle and found THIS, looks as though I am confused and it was a Napier engine.

Gatow aerodrome, Berlin in 1955 and the Cheshire's Support Company gets ready for the move to the live-firing range at Putlos on the Baltic coast which was the old Wehrmacht ant-tank gun training range. This was only part of the convoy of course. Austin 3 tonners towed the 17pdrs. The Mortar Platoon had the Bren gun carriers, you can see one at the back. The machine-gunners (still using the old Vickers .303!) used the jeeps. I think the Pioneers used Bedford 15cwt trucks. Bit of a shock to realise that this was almost sixty years ago! Notice the fine barrack blocks with the boiler house and cookhouse just over the road, Gatow was a Luftwaffe officer's training school in WW2.

When you were there, driving these vehicles and firing the guns in Germany and Denmark, I was playing with Dinky versions of them on the floor of our house in Blackburn!

A 17pdr firing an APCBC round (the most common armour piercing ammunition) on the ranges at Putlos in 1953. The pic is blurred because of the concussion. Notice how far the piece has recoiled. With APSVDS Super velocity ammo that was a bar of tungsten carbide in an aluminium sabot and more powerful cordite) it came back even further. Great fun and a lot better than the Dinky Toys! We were firing at a scrap tank about half a mile away, noptice how little elevation we have on. The trajectory was almost flat at that range because of the high velocity. Lovely tool introduced in 1943 and proved to be the answer to the Super Tiger tanks.

Stanley wrote:

Here's an oldie for you. When we were in Berlin the army only allowed us obsolete equipment on the grounds that if and when the Russians overcame us we didn't want to be handing them any modern technology. We used Austin 3 ton four wheel drive petrol engined vehicles as gun towers and here is a partial view of one of them. Looking back I wish I'd taken more pics of things like the Austin Champ with the Rolls Royce engine and our Bren gun carriers. The Bren gun carriers were great fun to drive especially on the concrete apron in front of the ex Luftwaffe aircraft hangar where we kept the guns. They had a normal steering wheel which had two stage steering. Slight adjustments were made by altering the alignment of the tracks and any further movement of the wheel braked the track on the appropriate side. They were steel tracks and the engine was I think a Ford V8. We used to drive across the concrete at full chat and then put full lock on, the carriers used to do wonderful skid turns, great fun until our masters found us enjoying ourselves. We got away with it by saying that we were just doing maintenance and tests!

The truck is an Austin K5 Screemer