Dave Clark

And then you went back and interviewed Léon Degrelle!

... with snow on their boots!

It may well be that this guy will no longer resemble the major BP once knew. It happens so much. Ken, What does BP mean? British Petroleum? Can't be that. . Battle Position?? Doesn't fit. Mike See Post #45 (he's a TankNetter!)

What, pray, is a "leader" - it's not a military rank or appointment that I recognise. Obviously, though, as a "leader" he can, off his own bat, rearrange the look of an area of the Army War College as he wishes.

I wonder how much was spent on the half dozen or so proposals before they realised just how dumb the idea of a flying jeep was The Hafner Rotabuggy (based on a Willys Jeep) actually flew during 1943/44, but was then abandoned after the Horsa and Hamilcar gliders were developed. There is a surviving example at the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop. Incidentally, if anyone fancies building a model of this contraption, I can scan and post a scale plan of it.

Wow! An ArchaeoStuGosaurus !!! The Austrian pre-war ADMK. After several iterations became the Saurer RK-7, which was taken over by the Wehrmacht after Anschluss as the Sd. Kfz 254. They saw service in North Africa, the Balkans and the Soviet Union. All 129 produced were lost in action.

That's a bit high-brow of a reference for this thread methinks Never let it be said that TankNetters are Philistines!

A modern version of the multi-barrelled mortar system is the SM-4 developed by Noricum of Austria. The original system was mounted on a Unimog chassis. The Multi-Mortar-Gavin™ was developed to meet a Canadian requirement.

VT 2-2 in Munster? Does it have dummy or live guns on it? According to the museum catalogue, the Munster vehicle is the Gefechtsfeldversuchsträger GVT 04 the dummy guns of which contain Talissi laser fire simulation devices. These could be supplemented with 20mm cannons mounted on the barrels for sub-calibre fire effect when necessary.

Meanwhile producing a - wait for it - turreted tank destroyer!

Interesting to see the Boxer without the mission module

There's a very thin line between the two, and it's not a path down which I would wish to walk.

The final mix would actually have been the CVR(T) series from the mid 70s ie Scimitar-Spartan-Scorpion.

No, Colin, Ferret-Saracen-Saladin

There is a fascinating discussion of the history of this: Eckert, Astrid M. The Struggle for the Files. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012. ISBN 978-0-521-88018-3 Hitler Confronts England is an interesting but somewhat idiosyncratic book. According to the blurb on the inside cover, the book treats it [sealion] along two distinct but related lines: along the line of a running evaluation of the German leadership and the command relationships that that leadership imposed, and along the line of an examination of the German invasion capability as judged by a naval officer long experienced in amphibious warfare. The second objective is totally successful; the first not so much as the author tends to keep slipping into a psychogramm of Hitler. Incidentally, I have the impression that the literary coverage of Sealion is extremely thin. I have the following volumes on my bookshelves (and would be most grateful for any further suggestions!): Ansel, Walter. Hitler Confronts England. Duke University Press, Durham (NC), 1960 Fleming, Peter. Invasion 1940. The Akadine Press, New York, 2000. ISBN 1-58579-014-1 Grinnell-Milne, Duncan. The Silent Victory. Bodley Head, London, 1958. Klee, Karl. Das Unternehmen "Seelöwe": Die geplante deutsche Landung in England 1940. Musterschmidt-Verlag, Göttingen, 1958 (Studien und Dokumente zur Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges Band 4a) Klee, Karl. Dokumente zum Unternehmen "Seelöwe": Die geplante deutsche Landung in England 1940. Musterschmidt-Verlag, Göttingen, 1959 (Studien und Dokumente zur Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges Band 4b) Schenk, Peter. Landung in England. Oberbaum Verlag, Berlin, 1987. ISBN 3-926409-44-4 Taylor, Telford. The Breaking Wave: The German Defeat in the Summer of 1940. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967. Wheatley, Ronald. Operation Sea Lion. Oxford University Press, London, 1958. Not Sealion, but closely related: Kugler, Randolf. Das Landungswesen in Deutschland seit 1900. Oberbaum Verlag, Berlin, 1989. ISBN 3-926409-52-5 Schneider, Gerd-Dietrich. "Plattbugkreuzer": Artillerieträger der Marine im Einsatz. Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg, 1998. ISBN 3-8132-0555-X

Just be very careful all this planning doesn't start to seep into your day-time job or your boss will be making some pretty peculiar statements during Defence Committee proceedings!

Upcoming decisions: 1. Participation in the Korean War? 2. NATO membership? 3. The future name of your entity. In the bi-polar world that is developing post WW2, calling yourself RussianAmerica is a bit wishy-washy and sitting painfully on the fence. How about something positive, forceful even, pointing to the future like, say, Alaska!

I wondered what was so bad that you call it 'atrocious', so looked it up. From what I've found it was underpowered, with unreliable (too weak?) transmission & suspension, & a poor cooling system. But these were fixed eventually. One big design flaw: engine could only be accessed from below, so engine maintenance needed a pit. That last seems to me to be the killer, the thing that couldn't be fixed. Was there anything else? Yes, it was built by British Leyland!

Aah, NOW you've got the idea! Yes, she certainly has the sharpest tongue of ZDF's blond battalion - I can't quite picture Petra Gerster conducting an interview in quite the same manner.

Isn't this where the Royal Navy minesweeping force is supposed to sacrifice itself on the altar of the Special Relationship?

In 1996, during the definition phase of POLYPHEM, Aérospatiale ran out an optical fiber cable 60 Km from a spool mounted on a C-22 target drone. This was, at the time, a record; I suspect it still stands.

Here are the details of the three that I have Griffin, Rob. Conqueror. The Crowood Press, Marlborough (GB), 1999. ISBN 1-86126-251-5 Griffin, Rob. Chieftain. The Crowood Press, Marlborough (GB), 2001. ISBN 1-86126-438-0 Griffin, Robert. Chieftain Main Battle Tank: Development and Active Service from Prototype to Mk 11. Kagero, Lublin, 2013. ISBN 978-83-62878-52-9

You're a very naughty boy!

Sorry, gentlemen, a touch of "British" humour. It stems from the 1987 libel case between Jeffrey Archer and the Daily Star where his wife Mary gave evidence. During his summing up at the end of the trial, Mr Justice Caulfield (referring to Mrs Archer) asked: "Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance?"

Are we supposed to re-arrange the letters to get a well-known word or phrase? I'll go for "slow"!