What I did on my Holidays

Overlord has asked me to do some more articles for this site. Now I have my Day job to do, and these articles actually take a bit of time, so I said I would try to stick up the odd piece on a Wednesday. These will likely be shorter and a different format to the Sunday article. They will not be a regular feature either. So without any further ado, lets get on with it.

On the 14th I had special (written and signed in triplicate) permission from my other half to disappear down to Dorset. To visit the Bovington Tank Museum. This would be my first visit, and thanks to a nice chap named Ed, and a very nice lady called Roz (who was too shy to get on camera), they agreed to open up the Vehicle Conservation Centre so I could have a walk round some of their rarer pieces.
As I had my camera with me I figured you lot might like to see some of the results.

First up we have this Vickers light Amphibious tank:

You can see the usual Carden Loyd running gear. More interestingly its got a Vickers HMG in the turret. Much like early Cruiser tanks and the Matilda. So it could theoretically mount a .50 cal Vickers HMG, meaning you might in the far future see it in game.

Next we have the D3E1 Wheel-cum-track:

An idea that was all the rage in the inter-war years. The idea is you can use the wheels on road, but when you need it as a tank you raise the wheels up and off you set. So in theory the best of both worlds.
However you also get twice the complexity and it is likely to break. That said the Germans did use a wheel-cum-track design in the Second World War.

Next we have the Excelsior:

A tank that you all will know from World of Tanks.

Next a very fetching Stridsvagn L-60:

Hopefully we'll see it somewhere in either the Combined EU or a separate Swedish tech tree.

Now we come to a Saladin:

As I've long been joking: World of Armoured Cars, you all know it makes sense. What better advert for it than something this cute?

There was also this little oddity:

Now it was defiantly Canadian, so either a Ram or a Grizzly (I forget which) but it has a gun with a muzzle brake. So I guess a US 76mm.

As I pressed deeper I found a real prize:

As you can see this is the QinetiQ ACAVP. QinetiQ is what's left of the UK Governments defence research department. The tank its self was a technology test vehicle, and is made out of plastic. Yes that's right, its really made out of plastic armour.

Now those of you who are in the UK know that the week I went down to Bovington parts of the UK were doing a passable impression of a submarine. As I was clicking away I didn't know it but my camera had gotten a bit wet and the pictures weren't being recorded. This was the last picture that I could recover from my camera before it gave up the ghost completely:

So can you ID the tank?

After Bovington I got back to my hotel only to find the water from the river already washing over the road, and the hotels garden was submerged. So I quickly grabbed my gear and checked out despite me being due to stay another night. I timed it just right as I had to drive through three floods on the way home, one of which was on a motorway!

The Good news is I have a much better camera now, and I'll have to make plans to go back.