ID of the John Belfield - now Colin Jones Vickers Light Tanks
G'day everyone,
I just stumbled onto the Border Raiding thread, and then this one, concerning the Australian Vickers Light Tanks. I was very serious about obtaining the two hulls and remains that John had, but in the end I just couldn't justify the costs/logistics of moving these over 5000kms.
However, I did do a lot of research and took a lot of pics of the two. The cut-down hull with the mechanicals still has the original English and Aussie numbers faintly visible on the lower front plate. These are "CMM 978" and "DD^274" respectively, which identifies it as "Wombat" according to the info Roddy has posted.
The second hull is fairly well stripped and was buried in a dump and was hunted down and dug out by John many years ago. On the upper left side of the hull can still be seen the faint but legible name "Bower Bird".
It is interesting that they are from the two different Light Tank Coys:- Wombat from the 2nd Light Tank Coy (VIC), and Bowerbird from the 1st (NSW), but both ended up in Melbourne.
Richard, the two turret baskets on Doug's site were found by Ron Fry (armour collector) and ended up with John as he had the only two hulls still known to exist in Australia. These are pictured on Colin's "Truck of Treasures" on the Border Raiding thread.
Although a very interesting project as 'between the wars' tank technology, knowing their identities, and researching their history and service, makes the efforts all the more interesting.
Jared
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