My Favourite Military Vehicles
The 1 tonne land rover
When I was first posted to the squadron, each rapier kit had two of these and one regular three quarter tonner. The one tonnies though, were the absolute dog’s bollocks (that’s Britspeak for really good). They looked sexy as hell, they had four wheel drive capability and a cool winch at the front, which I never used. If the eight man crew was ever at full strength, each one tonnie had to have room for three men. The driver and front passenger were the lucky ones, as they had proper seats. The third guy? Well, if you were in the fire unit truck, you at least got to sit on the tracker’s seat, provided it wasn’t buried beneath everyone’s webbing and Bergen, and if you were in the radar tracker truck, it was a case of pick a spot and hold on tight. This was also before the days of power steering, so driving for a long time could get tiring.
English Electric Lightning
The last all-British supersonic warplane, and the ultimate interceptor…maybe. Maybe because it had the stats and the performance, but with just two missiles and not much fuel, could it have stopped the Soviet hordes? Who can say, but on looks alone, it was an absolute super-sexy winning piece of plane porn. With vertically stacked engines and hollow nose cone, it looked like nothing else. It could climb and sprint like nothing else on the block, and us Brits, well, we loved it.
HMS Warspite
This was a Queen Elizabeth class battleship which saw service in both world wars. It was never the biggest or the most modern of these big warry beasties, but as far as the Brit navy goes, it was easily the most celebrated. It seemed to pop up at every naval engagement where it would do some serious damage with those 15 inch big barrels of fun. On D Day, it was the first warship to open fire. Due to be decommissioned, she still put up a fight, running aground rather than rock up to the breakers yard. She couldn’t evade her ultimate fate though, and by 1955 was completely scrapped.
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