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Moderator
(M1 Garand/M14/M1A Rifles)
"Tank suit!"
"Yer welcome!"
"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' "
Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring
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08-28-2017 02:48 PM
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Yep, there it is in black and white. But really........, what orbitary planet was anyone thinking about....... a thick tank suit like that in the jungle....... Tanks wouldn't even GET into the jungle and that's why the Brits had Dingos and Ferrets in Kuantan and retained the last of the old Daimler armoured cars for so long there (the Malay Army took them over). I remember that they sent tankies from the UK to see how the Australian tank doctrine was operating in dense scrub of SVn - and the scrub would STILL pack the wheel station positions. The jungle we were operating from was on the equator no less and the strategic reserve tanks there couldn't even operate with the engine decking on. What jungles were they day dreaming about I'm bound to ask? You couldn't even touch the sides of the Bedfords and Harvester Int trucks without getting burned. Maybe they were thinking of Hong Kong - no jungle and much cooler.
I am usually never lost for words but today I'll make an exception............ tank suit for the jungle........ Even our JG's were so hot we just wore them for 0730 first parade and were shirtless for the rest of the day........... Speechless at the stupidity
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Legacy Member
It was general Far East theatre issue kit, not just for pure jungle issue. A lot of Burma wasn't all thick jungle.
It's quite light, not that thick and not heavy at all. It feels lighter to wear than the denim tank suit, which was what the Tankies and armoured car/Reece crews wore in Normandy in the summer of '44.
We used a significant amount of tanks/armour in the Burma campaign.
North Burma in 1944.
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So that's not a 50's or 60's tank suit then......., the era I'm talking about? Not that it makes any difference. North Burma might be hot, but it's probably 2000 miles from the equator to be fair! Anyway, as a bit of an aside...... The tanks previously held in strategic reserve Ordnance in Singapore until 1962 or so were old Comets (or Cromwells, feel free to correct me....) of Korean war vintage until they were replaced by the Centurions. Those Comets were gifted to the Burmese Army who were a sort-of friendly nation - as they usually are when they're being gifted 10 tanks. The problem was that they couldn't even get them there because the roads and even the rail bridges couldn't take the weights all the way up through Malaya, through Thailand and into Burma. So they had to be taken by landing ship to Keppel Harbour where they had the heaviest cranes to lift them onto ships to take to Burma. As told to me by one of the LEP gun fitters while I was there
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Contributing Member
Do not modern-day Royal Tank Regiment crews wear their black coveralls/overalls while inside the Challenger 2 Tank or do they just put them on when they get out? I have seen them wearing the black coveralls at Bovington Tank Museum, when I was last there, and a tank crew were also looking round the museum. I assumed that the black coverall, worn today, is the modern-day equivalent of the WW2 "Tank Suit".
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Advisory Panel
shirtless for the rest of the day
At least you had an order of dress that way, rank badges on a watch type cuff worn at the wrist. T shirts and web belt. We just kept shirts and wool hats on(berets)...FFS...
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Thread 25 question. Answered on P2, thread 13. Black boilersuits/coveralls with white name tag. Other armoured units just wear the standard issue green boiler suits/coveralls/overalls. Someone asked by PM how I knew about the Centurion strategic stocks of tanks in Singapore. Because we had to remove the old BESA guns and replace them AND the mountings for the .300 Brownings. So ask me and Dave Lee what it's like working inside a tank turret 50 miles from the equator..........
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Legacy Member
Peter, any idea what happened to the no71 scopes off the BESA's? I would imagine they would have been a valuable source of spares for you and your fellow armourers.
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Nope....., we had plenty of the spares then so they just went the way of the BESA guns. Maybe I ought to explain what the No71 telescopes were. They were a No32 sight converted to a ring sight reticle and used as the sight for the co-ax BESA gun. Had to use No32's because the mount didn't have the eccentric ring adjustment. Used in a similar way that the No42 and 52 were used with the BESA on the Churshill Mk7 and 8 gun tanks.
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While in the central library today, I was browsing through a book of illustrated pics of the the "Tommy in WW2" for anything dispatch rider, but found a page with a "Tankie" wearing a camouflage tank suit........ same pattern as a denison smock.
Few years ago at the W&P show there was a small display with REME personnel (the real deal not re enacting) who where on some heavy armour all wearing Black overalls ........ can only guess they were RTR LAD ??
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Thank You to bigduke6 For This Useful Post: