Two pics of M-4's extremis but the Ardennes one would be like a fridge inside that tank....:eek:
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Two pics of M-4's extremis but the Ardennes one would be like a fridge inside that tank....:eek:
They had to run the engine for 10-15 minutes every couple hours to keep them from freezing so it was probably a lot warmer inside than out.Quote:
Originally Posted by CINDERS
I've done my time in armor in winter and didn't like it much. If your heater was punk, you were hosed. Mine died and only because I was driver I was OK, until you shut it down in the hide and it turned into a fridge.
Nice weenie roaster & matching beer cooler.
In Korea the only tank (M-48) in my platoon with a heater that worked was the platoon Sargent's and I wasn't on it. I would wrap my sleeping bag around me and with the "Mickey Mouse" boots, the cold was tolerable, mostly. Tom
And...I always smelled like Diesel.
And when it got to being even moderately warm, the insides cooked. Even on the mildest of days inside our Centurions, the crews worked with overalls undone, tops off and arms wrapped around the waist and still sweated their conkers off! How they ever got used to that nauseating stench of petrol, oil, cordite and main charge propellant that the fume extractors barely coped with I'll never know!
Great pictures!
Guess the tank second picture, the first one is about the last thing a M-4 wanted to meet head on infact I was disappointed in Fury that 131 only really made a cameo appearance then again the only running Tiger in the world why risk it
Second tank is a Comet?
I remember seeing Comets on Salisbury Plain and Warcop ranges as hard targets in the mid 60's. There were still half decent Comet hulls on the anti-tank ranges in Hong Kong when the poms left in 1997 so I was told by one of the last to leave. They survived a long time as they only really got battered by light anti-tank stuff and practice 120mm
Like this piece, prac round projectile from a Leopard but I am sure the Chieftain would have fired something similar
Only 5 Centurion tanks in Hong Kong as a strategic show of strength. Couldn't be moved anywhere meaningful either! Gifted to Oz in the 80's
Imagine that posting. Just one troop all alone amongst the infantry and corps types...and it's not like the tanks would be out exercising every day...
If only BAR! The tanks were kept in a hangar like building under care and maintenance and once a year 5 sets of crews used to fly out to 'exercise' the tanks based in Hong Kong and Singapore for 3 weeks. 1 week exercising the tanks and a 2 week all expenses paid jolly! This was a bit of a lottery while I was attached to the Royal Hussars. The best crew from each squadron went plus an inter squadron raffle/lottery winner plus another crew.
The Centurions stayed there into the Chieftain era simply because if the Cents were marginally too heavy, then the Chieftains would never cope! Additionally, during the monsoons the ground turned to mud that simply bogged them down. Hard to believe but it's true!
The bridges and roads were not capable of taking the 60 ton weights even if taken by tank transporters (of which there were none anyway!)
I guess two weeks of exercise for the Cents was about right. At that point, it would take the rest of the year to make them see 100% again. We had 4 at the end in Wainwright for troop training use and larks, one fine day they came out to play and one at a time broke down. One at the tank park gate, one a few miles past that. One a few miles short of the troops and one at the start line...back to dismounted infantry work boys... That was about 1974...Leopards were about in hand. Well, in CFE anyhoo...