RAF vehicles

[Lynn Eades]

Great photos Leon! Thanks for posting. Good luck with you query!

[Larry Hayward]

Out of interest the wheels and the radiator look very much like a Rolls Royce. Also this type of vehicles was built for the RAF in 1938 on a Fordson 79, 30 cwt 4x2, of 1937 vintage and were known as Fordson Armed Tender Type F.

BTW - Did these come from this site?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3941174...n/photostream/

[Bill Murray]

According to Bart Vanderveen's excellent book on pre-war vehicles, such armoured tenders were built on the RR Silver Ghost chassis beginning in 1917 with single rear wheels and in 1921, upgraded to dual rears.

Not being a researcher on armoured subjects, I don't know much about them.

However, during the Palestine/Arab conflicts of the late 1930's, they re-appeared in the configuration shown in your photos, upgraded once more with modern pneumatic tyres of a larger size.

I have found one photo in my files, appended here, and it looks like a sister to yours with a very close registration number. I will continue to look for these tenders "in the background" in some of the many other Palestine conflict photos in my files.

I also have a fair amount of similar Ford Tender photos and even a couple of Israeli CMP home made A/Cs after 1948 if it is of interest to the group.

Bill

[Bill Murray]

Found a few more.

Bill

[Larry Hayward]

What about my Mack then Bill? Which sub type is it?

[ted angus]

Bill, I believe the question was refering to the ARMED TENDERS not the armoured cars ; The Armed Tenders acted as the support vehicles to the armoured car patrols, some of which lasted several weeks especially in Trans Jordan Iraq etc. Firstly were the Rolls Royce versions as in Leon's post containing the request, Then there were some on Morris chassis followed by Commer Raiders and finally the Fordson 79s. Before any of the RAF's Armoured cars were fitted with wireless sets some of the Armed Tenders were converted to wireless tenders.
Turning to the Armoured cars, The RAF appear to have used all the versions used by both the RN & Army plus a number manufactured at No 1 supply depot RAF Kidbrooke that appear to be unique to the RAF. The RRs of No 2 ACC were remounted on to Ford commercial chassis in early 1940 under contract at the Thomas Cook garage in Cairo.
These pictures are all downloadable from The National Congress Library in USA search under Palestine some cracking RAF & Army shots. Many of these have now been uploaded to FlickR and last month there was an article containing some of these pictures and a potted political history of the times in Classic Military Magazine.
Regards TED

[Bill Murray]

As far as I can tell Larry, it is an ex US Mack NM6 with a completely new body from the cab on back. Post 1945.

AFAIK, these Mack trucks were not provided to the British forces during the war but like many other US vehicles of the 1939-1945 period that were not part of the normal "sharing", they ended up on strength in various British units.

A quite smart looking vehicle, by the way.

Bill

[Bill Murray]

Hi Ted:

You are indeed an honourable man in calling my obvious mixing up of the subject matter in such a kind and gentle way.

As I have posted here and on other Forums of late, at the tender age of 74, my mind doesn't focus the way it used to 5 or 10 years ago. I read "Rolls Royce", I saw two armoured cars and that is what I jumped on, not the armed Tenders.

I do have some photos of "real" Tenders that I will post later but in the meantime, the group does now have some interesting RAF armoured cars to look at. As you point out, the Tenders do appear to be based on the same RR chassis as the armoured cars, an interesting development.

Thank you for the correction and for not making me look foolish.

Bill