incidents involving the armoured sqn in berlin

can any one help me in the next fortnight i am due to attend a battlefield tour in berlin,and i have to give a talk on incidents involving the armoured sqn,to date i have drawn a blank.
i know there were a number of cars crushed on the crash out route from smuts has anyone got photos of this or the parking restriction signs and any info what so ever on any incidents

 

sorry mate can't help you. Could you let me know who organises the Berlin tour. I would love to jump on one.

 

One incident i was told involved Centurions,as you know Cents did not have pads on their tracks.Well a Berlin highway worker was resetting curb and coble stones on a road,when down the road came a Cent it got to close to the curb and flipped out a few curb stones that had just been reset.Needless to say the worker was not a happy camper.Cant remember what regimental Sqdn. was stationed in Berlin,it may have been one of ours 15th/19th H.

 

British Cents did have pads (most other nations did not bother), they were in 3 single square blocks per link. The old curb stone trick is routine for most tracked veh's with spud and horn type tracks. Image of Cent ARV below shows classic example of Brit Cent 'Hush Puppy' tracks to be used on roads (never seen any of our versions in Germany without them on - 80's an 90's though):



Used to do it all the time in our Chieftains with their single track pad per link, the GCP and civvy councils must have hated us in the Stapel training area part of the world as we used to wreck the curbs every time we went there - oh and that was 15/19H too!

If memory serves though during the 70's when the last of the Cent gun tanks finally left the ORBAT the normal did travel via naked tracks as most of their road travel would be on the back of a low loader.

 

It was 15/19H. i was the driver of the OC's wagon at the time and we, along with another Panzer were sent to the Brandenberg gate to be the backdrop for a Sqn fot. There were road works along the ku'damm that the escorting GCP sent us through resulting in wrecked roarworks. Once at the gate i did a neutral turn and ripped up most of the stone kerbstones. If you stand looking at the gate, on the right hand side of the road, you can still see the scars along the kerbs that weren't ripped up. the fot was a good one as you can see the Stasi guards standing on the top of the gate bino's in hand. the picture is in the book "The Light Dragoons". i beleive that this was the last time NATO tanks went to the gate area as the wall came down very shortly afterwards.

 

I don’t know of any “incidents” although the East German DM at four marks to one West German DM which in turn was four to the pound meant that you got an awful lot more your money in the East. The only inconvenience being you had to wear full No 2’s when you went through CC to visit East Berlin, at least you were dressed smartly for dinner.

 

Think you are right there, they even brought us a lovely bit (16' tall by 5' wide) of wall back to Detmold - remember it just outside of the Officers Mess in Lothian Barracks!

 

Definitely no pads on Berlin Cent tracks in '65 (11H relief Sqn.) or Hohne come to that,tho'cloggies in Hohne had them on their Cents.

 

British Cents did NOT have track pads. I was on Cents 1967-73. All over BAOR including 2 years in Berlin, saw hundreds of Cents NO pads. Plus the tracks were on backwards so that they did NOT bite into the roads.
The Dutch did but we definately did not.

 

It would apppear that the Eric's must have gotten fed up with us Brits spoiling their lovely ashphalt roads, cant remember ever seeing any version of our Cents with bare tracks from the late 80's onwards, saying that most photo evidence of the MK5 gun tanks onwards would support the theory that sans track pads was the norm back in the day. Interesting, other nations I have seen using Cent's in Europe certainly shod their tracks in rubber (Cloggies, Danes and the Swiss come to mind).

 

Joint RAC/Sapper Officer's Mess burned down!

 

I was in Fally 71 to 75 we had 5 Dry clad cents before we got mk5 chieftains in to replace them in either 72 or 73.so i know they did not have pads on there tracks,even got to drive a cent in Tidworth 68 with the 15th/19th/H

 

Heres a piccy to prove it.

 

This is a mk13 with a 105mm L7 Gun.

 

If you've got to give a talk on that and can find nothing useful about the Sqn (except its odd camouflage), why not adjust the title and talk about the battle for Berlin from a russian or Wehrmacht perspective? The actions around the Seelow heights were fascinating and had a huge impact on the state of that part of europe for the best part of a century.

Some time ago a bloke called Tony Letissier took us on a fascinating tour which included listening to an old boy who had been a Panzer Bn Comd during the battle - I was riveted by his tales of where he destroyed T34s and how his luck eventually ran out.

Letissier has written a couple of books about it all I think.