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101 Forward
Control Land Rover pages -
Military Service
(72 GJ 52)
We now
have much more information - very many thanks to Mark
Cook at the EMLRA for finding the stuff, and for the
interpretations!
The
vehicle was built in 1977 and entered military
service in 1982 (army registration 72 GJ 52).
Presumably it sat about in storage for the five
years in between.
It
began proper service in 1984, with the 250 Field
Ambulance which was part of the 15 (North East)
Brigade - probably based at Catterick, but
clearly didn't do very much since two months
later it went back to the vehicle depot.
Then,
in 1987 it went to the Ordnance Support Unit at
Burscough where it was non-operational for
another 5 years.
In
1992, it began to see real operational service
life when it joined the 19 Brigade Airmobile
Field Ambulance Unit, Royal Army Medical Corps
(RAMC). We are not sure what our vehicle did for
its first three years of operation, but the RAMC
was active all over the world, and since the
Brigade it joined was designated
"airmobile", the chances are it went
somewhere interesting. In 1995 it transferred
to the 5th Field Ambulance Unit of the RAMC and
became part of Operation Resolute - Bosnia. This
trip is confirmed by us finding, while cleaning
up the external paintwork, the legend 'IFOR' in
the side panels in large yellow lettering. This
means that the vehicle was part of the NATO
Implementation force in Bosnia, which took over
after the UN had left in December 1995, but
before the Stabilisation force (SFOR) was set up
in December 1996.
The Army says about the RAMC:
"The RAMC has a most
distinguished record both in the practice
of medicine and in the gallantry
displayed by its members. In the 3 major
wars (Boer, WW1 & WW2), the RAMC
dealt with 14 million casualties, was
awarded 14 Victoria Crosses (two with
Bars), one George Cross, 630
Distinguished Service Orders, 1,806
Military Crosses, 464 Distinguished
Conduct Medals, 2,375 Military Medals and
16 George Medals. The price was not small
with our rolls of honour containing 1,180
officers and 8,165 soldiers who died in
the service of their country. With such a
distinguished history, present and future
members of the Corps have an awesome
reputation to live up to. Moreover,
wherever there is conflict whether it is
limited war (Korea), Counter Insurgency
(Malaya), Counter Terrorism (Northern
Ireland), Task Force (South Atlantic),
Coalition Forces (Gulf War) or United
Nations and NATO peacekeeping operations
(Bosnia, Cyprus, Angola etc) the RAMC is
always there."
The British Army first entered
the former Republic of Yugoslavia as part
of a United Nations force to deliver
humanitarian aid during the Bosnian
conflict. This force was known as the
United Nations Protection Force
(UNPROFOR) and was highly respected for
the quality of the work that they
undertook. Once the conflict neared
resolution in 1995 it became clear that
an intermediary force would be needed to
implement the peace agreement that had
been brokered by Senator Dayton. The
multi-national force tasked with this
duty was called the Implementation Force
(IFOR). In December 1996 this force was
deemed to have successfully created a
peaceful environment so needed to be
restructured to ensure that the peace was
maintained. The British contribution
became part of the newly formed
Stabilisation Force (SFOR) which remains
the name of the force serving in Bosnia
Herzegovina today.
It
had a little more service with 5 Field Ambulance,
RAMC and was then passed to MVSL (the commercial
wing of the Army that sell off
"demobbed" vehicles) in 1998. They
auctioned it to John Craddock in 1999.
We hope to
find out more about it as time goes on, as we research
the activities of the various units at the time the
vehicle was with them. The information is taken directly
from Army records below. If anyone has any information or
interpretations, please let us know.
Clive
Lavery emailed us recently with the following:
Hi
Ian,
How weird - I was surfing the net in some random
sort of fashion and noted on a Google page the
title '19 Airmobile Field Ambulance' - a click
later and I am in your website reading about the
history of 72GJ52. The totally random yet fluky
point for me is that I believe that I have worked
on that LR when I served with 19 AMFA as their
only Vehicle Electrician REME (therefore am
confident that I have worked on it) from 1992 -
1995 (I then served at 4 Regt Army Air Corp up
the road in Wattisham.)
The REME LAD (Light Aid Detachment) consisted of
only 6 of us REME chaps, an Artisan Staff Sgt
(Mechanical) three Corporals (2 mech and 1 elec)
and the three Craftsmen / Lance Cpl - all of a
mechanical persuasion. I remember when we
exercised in the UK some of us REME chaps would
have to drive the Ambulances to the exercise
areas due to a lack of Medic/MT drivers - they
were incredibly hot, damn loud but sounded sweet
when running correctly mainly due to that lovely
V8 3.5L petrol lump it had. An absolute mare to
work on though, and they were always breaking
down - the reliability of the ambulance fleet
must have improved by factors of thousands when
the diesel variants were introduced.
I also note from memory that during the period
1992-95 I went nowhere on operational tours - I'm
99% certain that the unit didn't go anywhere as
well so it is totally possible that all your
Landrover did for that period was drive between
Colchester (where 19AMFA was based - Goojerat
Barracks), Thetford and Salisbury Plain. If
memory serves me correct - the formation of 24
Air Mobile Brigade was pretty recent (before it
was 19 Inf Brigade) - When I went to 4 Regt AAC
in Wattisham it was under the command of the same
brigade as 19AMFA and at that point the
operational tours started.
I seem to remember that in nearly 15 years I
never ever saw the IR system work. (Forgive me if
you already know) the IR switch was flicked
having placed great big IR filters on the
headlamps. Using appropriate IR sensitive goggles
or what-ever, the IR light was visible and
allowed you to drive effectively in the dark. I
think that it was fairly short lived as all the
enemy had to do was don some similar goggles and
they could see you.
Whenever we could we would repair / replace cable
and components as per the manufacturers specs
though it has to be remembered that the vehicles
had a hard life and were normally battle damage
repaired to ensure that they kept rolling. As
with everything else time to repair properly once
back in camp was sometimes limited so a lot of
army vehicles had all sorts of 'bodges' sorry,
technical repairs to keep them roadworthy. I can
remember that a favourite fault was the wipers
inop which occurred when the cam nets were on the
vehicles and someone inadvertently caught the
wiper switch causing the motor to get hot which
heated the brass worm gear which then melted the
teeth on the plastic gear - the number of
araldite plastic gears that were made, cured over
the gas stove and filed back to gear teeth using
a needle file was quite high. The other option
was a piece of string that manually made the
wipers work - the drivers used to hate it and we
had some pride in our ingenuity and ability so
that was avoided at all cost.
Anyway - seeing and looking at your site
certainly provoked a thought or two - I hope that
you find the info useful. If I remember any more
I will drop you a line.
Kind regards,
Clive
And Mark Ridge adds:
Hallo Ian,
just having a surf and came across your pages.
Thought this may be of interest:
I was a Combat Medical Technician (RAMC) in
250 Field Ambulance in 1984. At this time the
Unit was a Hull based TA unit which, in Sept
1984, deployed to W Germany on the largest
European exercise since WW2 - Excercise
Lionheart. As I recall we went by ferry to and
from, Hamburg. It would seem that the
vehicle was probably part of a unit upscale for
Lionheart only.
Cheers
Mark
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The Land Rover Forward Control 101 (the 101
refers to the wheel base in inches) was designed for the
British Army as an air-transportable heavy duty four
wheel drive/gun tug. Production ran from 1975 to 1978.
Some were converted to ambulances - and we've bought one
of those. The engine came from the Range Rover of the
day: alloy 3.5L V8; transmission is the LT95 gearbox with
4-speed gearbox, 2-speed transfer box and full-time four
wheel drive with centre differential (and diff lock).
Salisbury axles (much stronger than Rover axles) were
fitted front and rear, with 5.4:1 ratio differentials -
which makes it very low geared. Suspension is by leaf
springs (parabolics) and is surprisingly comfortable. It
had an anti-roll bar fitted to the front axle, so it's
quite stable for a vehicle of this height.. Tyres are
9.00x16" on 6.5x16" rims with six studs. Bar
grip tyres were fitted (although we've replaced them) -
which don't help it go round corners very quickly.
A really good overview of these vehicles can be found on
the ex-military
Land Rover association site.
Vehicle
History Card Data
|
Notes
|
| 30
Jul 1982 |
Hilton
|
Commissioned
to the Hilton Vehicle Depot |
| 4
Aug 1982 |
ADPCON
|
|
| 6
Aug 1984 |
250
Fd Amb(v) |
Began
service with 250 Field Ambulance, 15 (North East)
Brigade |
| 18
Oct 1984 |
VD
Hilton |
Returned
to to the Hilton Vehicle Depot |
| 4
Aug 1987 |
OSU
Burscough |
Transferred
to the Ordnance Support Unit at Burscough |
| 7/8/87
|
VBQ |
|
| |
UIN
CHANGE |
|
| 26
Jul 1988 |
TMP
Burscough |
|
| 1
Sep 1992 |
OSU
Burscough |
|
| 25
Sep 1992 |
19
(AIRMOB) FD AMB |
Began
service with 19 Brigade Airmobile Field Ambulance
Unit, RAMC |
| 4
Dec 1995 |
BRITCSSBN
|
Went
to the British Combat Service Support Battalion |
| 12
Dec 1995 |
OP
Resolute - 5 FD AMB |
Began
service with Operation Resolute - Bosnia, with
the 5 Field Ambulance Unit of the RAMC |
| 19
Nov 96 |
TDU
|
|
| 7
Jan 1997 |
5
FD AMB RAMC |
Continued
service with 5 Field Ambulance, RAMC |
| 4
Nov 1998 |
MVSL
(Disposals) |
Disposed
of through Military Vehicle Sales Limited |
Images of the data
sheets are here (use 'back' to return here).
Sheet 1
Sheet 2
Sheet 3
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