What saddens me is all the information we have lost or didn't seek out when our veterans were still with us. We can sit in and operate these old beasts but there must have been hundreds of little 'tricks of the trade' that are lost to time. That said, there are times when you are operating one of these old vehicles and reach for, step on or otherwise do something and say to yourself "eureka, they must have done exactly the same thing back then!!"
The lamps...my 2 cents. I can see some red tab officer in his polished Sam Brown insisting on the lamps so he could more easily watch his troop of Vickers tanks keep in perfect, textbook formation while on maneuvers.
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Originally Posted by David Dunlop
Thanks for posting the diagram, Richard.
I think the problem we sometimes experience today, in understanding vehicles designed and built 80 years ago, is we evaluate them with far more experience and knowledge than the people who built and operated them 80 years ago ever had available to them.
We can look at a Signal Lamp like this today and wonder why you would want to use a Signal Lamp that is obscured in a very large radius by a part of the vehicle to which it is fitted, why said lamp would not be directional to minimize detection by the enemy in the field and probably a whole host of other observations. When this vehicle was designed and built, these issues may very well have been oblivious to all involved until the concept was put into real life practice. And things evolved from that point.
An interesting example of us being lucky enough to be where we are today, because of all the things that came before us.
Great to see Colin’s work in keeping all the amazing little details of these fascinating little tanks, alive and well today, and available for future generations to appreciate.
David
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