Some tank inspiration for 2017 - live firing

[Stephen White]

Some old images I found over the holiday, taken during my last gunnery camp on Hohne Ranges, Germany in 1994. Second Royal Tank Regiment in Challenger 1.

Pre-firing checks and ammo bashing:





The gunner's view, daylight and thermal sights:







Commander's view down range, two lead tanks on a battle run:



Firing:



That's it, time to hang up the helmet. My last day on the ranges:



Happy Armortek tank building in 2017.

Stephen

[duncanallender]

Nice pics Stephen
Cheers Dunc

[michael hilton]

Hello Stephen, thank you for the photos, some fond memories for you. I have trained on the ranges at Sennelarger near Paderborn during the 1950s however, only on a Norton motorcycle.
We used the ranges to practice, before entering the bikes in an all services time trial competition. The tanks used there created some excellent ruts.....Mick

[Mark Heaps]

I was REME attached to various Cavalry Regiments during my time. QRIH, 14th/20th KH, QDD, RDG

Picture 1 - SQMS tent in it´s normal place for that range but REME ARRV & WR512 not where we always had them. We were at the extreme right so we could do any large repairs that were required without obstructing the tanks moving from the waiting area to the firing area in front of the tower.

Picture 2 - Ammo bashing - So that is what it looked like. The Sqn always wanted to involve me in it but I always had a tank to fix at the time

Picture 5 - I hope the gunner was just checking his arcs because that is very close to traversing out of them.

Picture 6 - What is that item bottom left apparently in line with the barrel ? Looks to me like part of the DFWES kit which would have been removed before live firng.

Last picture - "one-one-billy" the CO´s tank. If you were not crewing it but he was there for your last ever day on the ranges, it shows what respect you were held in and what a good CO you had. Never saw such a large crew on a Chally 1 though

[Stephen White]

Mark, hi. I couldn't leave your questions unanswered!

Re arcs in pic 5. This was a battle run, with different arcs for each bound. Because you're looking through the narrow field of view of the gunner's sight, you can't see the arc markers which applied to this bound. In fact, all those targets were fair game!

Re the object in pic 6. Its part of the PGTE (Precision Gunnery Training Equipment) which transmitted a video of the gunner's sight picture to the tower in real time and merged it with video from a very powerful down-range camera, which was focussed on the target(s). No faking results as a consequence. The through-sight video was quite revealing on de-brief).

Re One One Billy - I have to confess: I was the CO. Thanks for the compliment though and you're right, I did select the best crewmen in the Regiment for my tank. Rank has its privileges!

All the best and hope you enjoyed them.

Stephen

[Mark Heaps]

Hi Stephen (don´t have to call you Sir now)

When I was attached to the Cavalry, the PGTE was mounted rearwards of the cupola. No obstruction of forward view.

Pic 6 seems to show the ARRV on the left shadowing the tanks on the battle-run.

As CO it was your train set to run as you saw fit, and I heard it was done in that manner at other units, but we never did that in any of the units I served with. By a battle run, the ARRV was always ready to go at a moments notice but until its recovery power was needed, the crews abilities were needed elsewhere, ie fixing tanks.

Regards
Mark
Sqn ECE

[Stephen White]

More work on the recognition books, Mark, the AFV on the left on pic 6 is the third tank in the troop. We did though always run the fitter troops down an MG battle run and got them qualified on the LMG, 66mm and 2in mortar. They rather enjoyed it.

Stephen