Main battle tanks

hi there,
I was on chieftain from 1980 till 1988.......what a tank it was........guaranteed to break down but still loved it.
Then Challenger 1 from 1988 till about 2000......awesome compared to Chiefy.
Superb piece of kit.........i drove one down Albersloherweg in Munster got about 70 kph (according to the speedo)...it vibrated itself into the workshop.....lol.
REME governed it to about 55kph after that.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

pinky wrote:

hi there,
I was on chieftain from 1980 till 1988.......what a tank it was........guaranteed to break down but still loved it.
Then Challenger 1 from 1988 till about 2000......awesome compared to Chiefy.
Superb piece of kit.........i drove one down Albersloherweg in Munster got about 70 kph (according to the speedo)...it vibrated itself into the workshop.....lol.
REME governed it to about 55kph after that.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

We nicked one of your chieftains once. Well truth be told we played with one whilst your regiment were in NI. It was okay though because it was one of your blokes attached to Bde HQ that took us there.

Left our 432 on a nearby German (21 Panzer) wash point and those cheeky chappies stuck a high pressure hose down the exhaust. (well they did lose the war). How we laughed at being towed back and the REME chaps dismay at all that water in the pack. Full screw in charge laughed even louder when he was charged. He was rightfully exonerated.

The first time I ever saw a Chiefy must have been '62.

Morale in the Armed forces was very bad then.

At this particular time we were in the field and all the units around were gathered on an area near Soltau. We were to be visited by the Minister of Defence, Profumo.

While the great man was having a conflab with the officers a Chieftain drove onto the area.

I remember being surprised by its low silhouette and by how noisy it was.

The first (and only) time I saw a Challenger was in the 80s, when I was driving along the tank road to Bovvy, we were going to the Tank Museum.

I glanced in my mirror and saw this monster roaring up behind us, probably trying to put the frighteners on me.

Cowboy.

There you go guys just to wet your whistle .I prefer to look at a plate of spag boll or full english breakfast

hi there,
great picture....that is a Chieftain with the armour upgrade called 'stillbrew',it was like an extra layer of skin over the front of the turret,which you can make out quite easily in this photo.
sorry john boy but any british tank gives me the 'horn'.......still.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

Got to agree with you "John Boy". Now if you are talking Artillery Pieces, different ball game altogether!

pinky wrote:

hi there,
great picture....that is a Chieftain with the armour upgrade called 'stillbrew',it was like an extra layer of skin over the front of the turret,which you can make out quite easily in this photo.
sorry john boy but any british tank gives me the 'horn'.......still.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

pinky wrote:

sorry john boy but any british tank gives me the 'horn'.......still.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

I bet you were a big hit on the tank park !

hi there,
life on the tankpark was great in the 80's,tanks always needed working on.
at one time we had 51 tanks in the regiment ( 12 in each of the 4 squadrons and 3 in regt. headquarters).
Todays armoured regiments in UK have about 15 i believe,a totally different way of life and approach to soldiering.
Mind you most of today serving soldiers have been to bosnia,kosovo,iraq,afganistan and maybe 2 gulf wars. (hero's every one of them)
in time there will be no M.B.T's.......sadly.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

Shelldrake wrote:

Got to agree with you "John Boy". Now if you are talking Artillery Pieces, different ball game altogether!

big enough for you Shelldrake

Wrong thread lol
Thats not a TANK...........huge gun non the less,quite impressive - lol.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

pinky wrote:

Wrong thread lol
Thats not a TANK...........huge gun non the less,quite impressive - lol.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

yeah I know I put it up for one of the guys he likes big guns anyway welcome to the site
We don't take much notice of threads on this site the picture I put on of the tank will probably end up becoming a picture of a plate of curry wurst or similar but the topic of tanks will still be there all good fun though

pinky wrote:

hi there,
I was on chieftain from 1980 till 1988.......what a tank it was........guaranteed to break down but still loved it.

pinky
HUSSAR

Tell me about it....you broke them...I fixed them .

Thanks Bob,
Great website John Boy.
Cheers
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

Centurion, one of three designated as HQ 20 Armoured Bde defence.
Len (Ciphers)

Great picture of a great British Tank.
In the early 80's the REME still had the recovery version.........awesome.
atb
pinky
HUSSAR

Other than with the expendable ARK's, (they even were driven or pushed into small rivers), the Churchill Bridgelayer recovered his bridge after use for the next use. It remained in service until the early 1960's when the Centurion bridgelayer replaced it. We used these extensively at 20 Armoured Bde during the 1950's.

Len (Ciphers)

Impressive....Never seen one of those before

welcome to the worlds largest tank Currently, the largest tank ever built, the M1-J10 Main Battle Tank, nicknamed “Jihadi Slaughter” or “JaySlaw” for short is being built in Lima, Ohio by General Dynamics. The JaySlaw measures nearly 90 feet in length, 35 feet wide and stands almost 2 stories high. The main weapon of the M1-J10 is a 478mm smoothbore cannon, designed by the Rheinmetall Corporation of Germany. Engagement ranges approaching 22 miles were successfully demonstrated during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The JaySlaw has been clocked at a speed of over 200mph in desert sand which is simply astounding considering the vehicle weighs more than a thousand tons.

Something does not seem quite right

Dummkopf !

That's not the world's largest tank.

That's the world's smallest soldiers !

John Boy

The pic you put up of the gun was it by chance the HARP project. This was being tested at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona by a Canadian University when I was there 1965-67. They were trying to see if they could put a small satellite in low earth orbit, if I remember it was unsuccessful.

Bob

brum wrote:

Dummkopf !

That's not the world's largest tank.

That's the world's smallest soldiers !

what those plastic one we played with when we were kids

BobG wrote:

John Boy

The pic you put up of the gun was it by chance the HARP project. This was being tested at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona by a Canadian University when I was there 1965-67. They were trying to see if they could put a small satellite in low earth orbit, if I remember it was unsuccessful.

Bob

1914-18 war I believe

"john boy" wrote:

BobG wrote:

John Boy

The pic you put up of the gun was it by chance the HARP project. This was being tested at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona by a Canadian University when I was there 1965-67. They were trying to see if they could put a small satellite in low earth orbit, if I remember it was unsuccessful.

Bob

1914-18 war I believe

Just looked it up.

That is the Kaiser Wilhelm Geschutz known as the Paris Gun. It was used to bombard Paris from Mar-Jul 1918.

It had a calibre of 210mm and the result of adapting a naval gun. It was braced "to prevent excessive droop". (I know the feeling !).

The gun fired 303 shells from the Forest of Crepy, about 80 miles from Paris.
183 shells fell within the city.
256 Parisians were killed.

brum wrote:

"john boy" wrote:

BobG wrote:

John Boy

The pic you put up of the gun was it by chance the HARP project. This was being tested at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona by a Canadian University when I was there 1965-67. They were trying to see if they could put a small satellite in low earth orbit, if I remember it was unsuccessful.

Bob

1914-18 war I believe

Just looked it up.

That is the Kaiser Wilhelm Geschutz known as the Paris Gun. It was used to bombard Paris from Mar-Jul 1918.

It had a calibre of 210mm and the result of adapting a naval gun. It was braced "to prevent excessive droop". (I know the feeling !).

The gun fired 303 shells from the Forest of Crepy, about 80 miles from Paris.
183 shells fell within the city.
256 Parisians were killed.

"I kneww dat"