Friend of mine was a STAB commander of a Fox troop and he didn't have any of the tip over problems the Fox had when he commanded it. I saw the prototype Vixen on the tank park in Catterick when I was on driver training in 77 and it looked dead sexy. Given how much we depended on the Ferret in Command Troop in BAOR I thnk it would've been still in service now, unlike the Fox

But we never suffered from a shortage of FSC, which meant no slot for Vixen, although with the benefit of hindsight, there might be a place for both Fox and Vixen today.

Originally Posted by StumpyHussar

Friend of mine was a STAB commander of a Fox troop and he didn't have any of the tip over problems the Fox had when he commanded it. I saw the prototype Vixen on the tank park in Catterick when I was on driver training in 77 and it looked dead sexy. Given how much we depended on the Ferret in Command Troop in BAOR I thnk it would've been still in service now, unlike the Fox

My bold - he would have if he'd done a bit of X country, they probably stuck to tarmac most of the time!!!

Originally Posted by StumpyHussar

Friend of mine was a STAB commander of a Fox troop and he didn't have any of the tip over problems the Fox had when he commanded it. I saw the prototype Vixen on the tank park in Catterick when I was on driver training in 77 and it looked dead sexy. Given how much we depended on the Ferret in Command Troop in BAOR I thnk it would've been still in service now, unlike the Fox

Well if he was a STAB, he'd never have left barracks would he?

Only ever used Fox on 30mm Conversion or IG ing Yeomanry. However I believe it to have been a better gun platform. The provision of a traverse lock saved a lot of wear and tear on the traverse gearbox. BTW it was a slicker mover on SPTA than our Scimitars. So whilst it may have had a higher centre of gravity, if used correctly, it was equal to if not better than the tracked option.

I crewed it in NI on a 4 month tour in Belcoo in ´79 and found the Night/Optical Sight a fantastic piece of kit that was sadly never really used to its full potential.There was a fatal accident with another unit in Belleek with Fox but was probably down to the driver as he nearly had another accident a few days later.
For some reason QDG who did a 2 year tour from 1980(after I´d left) decided to mothball them and use other tactics,as X Country wasn´t an option in NI due to the boggy ground I think a GPMG strapped to a X10 image intensifier might have turned the border area into a turkey shoot as there were lots of roads near the border.There might have been more roadside bombs planted to counter the threat but they were being used anyway.The IRA would have had a big problem IMHO moving anywhere in large ASU´s with Fox´s whizzing around,Ferret´s were blind at night and were used for many years so why mothball Fox?Politics?

My OTC had two fatalities in two years with Fox, one rolled en-route to Otterburn and another when the traversed barrel of a moving vehicle hit the commander of a parked Ferret. I think that was the end of Fox in the OTC. ...a question I've asked before was what happened to the Fox hulls when they stripped the turrets off for Sabre ? No-one seems to know.

The army never intended to adopt Fox in the first place. It was forced on them by the government. B Sqn 1 RTR (Aliwal Bks Tidworth) were the first unit equipped with Fox (1975) simply so it could be sold to Nigeria and hopefully other commonwealth nations. "In service with the British Army" was the export phrase required, and the plan was to have this single Sqn based on Salisbury Plain in order to help export sales. Things changed and Fox entered service in greater numbers but like I say, originally there was to be only a single Sqn in the entire army. The only Vixen I ever saw was at the Tank Museum and I've always wondered how much money was actually saved by the cancellation of what must have been a relatively low cost vehicle that appears to have been developed and ready for production?

I seem to recall an article in a Sunday mag back in the 60s. extolling the virtues of Vixen. So if it came first, as a Ferret replacement, and Fox was an afterthought, that may go someway towards explaining the high centre of gravity.

<Depressed at lack of women in thread>