FV603 Saracen

[Richard Farrant]

Hi Ed.

Here is picture of a British Saracen with a Decca radar mounted on it. It is the higher version, the FV610 ACV, used by Gun Positioning Officer (GPO) in Artillery units. This pic is from 1962.

[Robin Craig]

Only ten years on but here we go updating this thread, bear with me as we are re posting Ed Storey's pictures from earlier that are not accessible as photobucket got a hole in the pail. I have important info after the repost of the pictures.

And also the Prefair picture just added.

So here we go, with thanks to Ed Storey of Ottawa.

[Robin Craig]

So the nugget of information that the Saracen was alleged to to be at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology (CMST) in their reserve collection has rattled around my head for a good number of years now.

I no longer live in Ottawa and trips to that town are less frequent and making appointments and travelling for a specific purpose gets awkward so I have not ferreted the vehicle out, until recently.

I was waiting for a supplier to perform a task and I was spinning my wheels, so I dropped by the CMST admin office and defeated the impervious exterior and the no doorbell ploy and made multiple phone calls on the provided office phone in the lobby (who can afford a reception desk these days) until I reached a human and pleaded my case.

Human first person interaction was quickly achieved with Gordon Perrault who is the Director of Conservation and Collection Service. He was very pleasant and despite my lack of an appointment was very willing to help me as he realised that being from out of town and my employment vagaries hindered that.

He arranged for staff member Phillip Craig, an Artifact Handler to escort me through the reserve collection and show me the vehicle, which while he wasn't sure about Phillip reassured him they very much had and he knew about it.

I then went to the storage facility and met with Phillip who was a very pleasant and knowledgeable gentleman, not surprising as he shares my last name.

The CMST is in a state of change and rebirth as the new museum has recently opened and the reserve collection will also move there into a new storage facility in the coming months / year.

We passed many significant artifact as we walked and squeezed past items under wraps I recognised many from visits many years ago. He switched lights on as we went deeper into the depths. Finally we arrived at a very dusty lump under plastic. It was the Saracen.

I was giddy as the proverbial school boy and started discussing and explaining the base vehicle as Phillip wrestled with the huge sheet of plastic and the the cover under that. Obviously it was fairly hemmed in and photos were not the best. However Phillip said he had at least one picture in the online museum catalogue but there may also be other shots on the museums own data base he could let me have for use on the forum and elsewhere with credit.

Once back in his office he found the photos and emailed them to me.

These pictures were taken during a shuffle a few years ago and the vehicle was not running. So, with credit to the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology and with my most sincere that to Gordon Perrault and Phillip Craig, here is the radar Saracen.

[Robin Craig]

The big number on the bottom of the images is the museum asset number which starts with the year of acquisition, formally now it is 1970.0157 but in those days photos didn't have the first two digits of the year, now they do.

My impression is that this was a very overloaded and cramped vehicle with the system mounted on top and all the technical bits stuffed inside and in the boxes on the sides.

To say overloaded and cumbersome would be accurate. What I did note was not one trace of any kind of CFR and the clear evidence of the Vehicle Registration Number from the UK MOD, 80 BA 52 on the nose and on the data plate.

[Robin Craig]

The pictures of the Saracen at Cohens and then later at Prefair are not very clear but Ed Storey had noted that it was 30 BA 07 and I have confirmed that through another means. Add to that the clearly visible 80 BA 52 for the one at CMST.

I spent some time once I got home cruising the net with Google and came up a winner unexpectedly.

The National Research Council of Canada has images online. Here are 80 BA 52 the one in CMST

[Robin Craig]

And more, this shot is quite important as it shows something significant, in my view, an Ontario licence plate 5559F.

[Robin Craig]

Also on the NRC site are pictures of the other Saracen, bingo, this is the Cohens / Prefair vehicle, which had the radar removed. More on that later.

So this is 30 BA 07 and has the Ontario plate of 11584F.

These Ontario plates explain why there was no CFR visible or holes for a CFR plate.