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Comet Crew

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 7:47 pm
by Stephen White
This statuette came up on Ebay last week:

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It's a maquette of the Royal Tank Regiment memorial in Whitehall Place, London, which was unveiled by the Queen in 2000:

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There is a full size copy at the Tank Museum in Bovington:

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The statue has an interesting history. The design was commissioned after the war for a memorial to RTR tank crews. It was to stand on Horse Guards but for various reasons the project was dropped, despite having been approved. The idea of an RTR memorial in London was resurrected in the 1990s and the site chosen was Whitehall Place, next to the Old War Office, appropriate as it is overlooked by the office in which Ernest Swinton conceived of the first tanks.

The statue represents a Comet crew and is full of accurate details including a representation of a BESA.

Regards

Stephen

Re: Comet Crew

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:21 pm
by Steve Lewington
Hi Stephen
Nice one its good to see were not forgoten.

Regards

Steve

Re: Comet Crew

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 11:37 pm
by Adrian Harris
An interesting piece and, as you say, full of detail.

Good to see that the statue finally found it's place in Whitehall, though I do think more people will probably see the one at Bovington :shock:

Three things which stand out to me are that

1) They are all wearing the neck-cord for their revolvers
2) They are wearing the holster on their left leg rather than the right
3) They all seem to have cross-over braces*, which I don't think Dragon included with Wayne or Doug.

Adrian.

* I'm sure there is some technical Army term for this style of webbing. "Reverse Playtex" :wink: :?: