Rover Light Armoured Car

[Lynn Eades]

Early V hull, with some input by Pininfarina?
Great find Wayne.

[Wayne Henderson]

As mentioned, nothing to do with Rover Car Company but may have been some design influence on the Rover P5B...

Went and had a look at 4 other Rovers on the weekend for research purposes. Came home with some hatches, a bonnet and armour wheel arches.
Now have a better understanding of the changes between long and short wheelbase variants.
Bonnet is very crude but effective design, minus the farmers circle cut out.

[Lynn Eades]

Wayne, you now at least have a pattern "in hand".

[Wayne Henderson]

Laser cut plate to fill the holes.

[Wayne Henderson]

I ordered a photo in hi res of this Rover, from the Australian War Memorial Collection.
The caption says Puckapunyal in Victoria, but markings are 1st Armoured in WA and I think the photo was taken at Northam, judging but the bushland.

[Mike Cecil]

Hi Wayne,

The markings are 1 Armd Div (formation) and what looks like 65 for the Unit, which would be 2nd Armoured Brigade Reconnaissance Squadron of 2nd Armd Brigade. Those markings, both Formation, Unit, and the Recce Sqn inverted triangle just visible above the unit marking, were first promulgated in March 1942. That unit, 2 Armd Bde Recce Sqn, was effectively disbanded on 8 November 1942 when it morphed into B Squadron, 2/4th Armoured Regiment, and switched to tanks.

At the time, the unit was still in the Narrabri-Gunnedah area of NSW, having moved there from Puckapunyal, Victoria, in July. The unit sign '65' was used by the unit from March 1942 until November 1942, but had been disbanded by the time elements of the Division moved to Western Australia in 1943. No other unit was listed with the '65' code for 1st Armd Division.

I would therefore suggest that the image, if taken at Puckapunyal - and it certainly matches the terrain - was taken between March and July 1942. If it was taken in NSW, which I doubt, then sometime between July and November.

Mike

[Wayne Henderson]

Thanks for the info Mike. One photo below shows markings on the rear of a Mk1 C Squadron? Unit signs are too far gone to even guess at.
I will try to find Rover photos from either Northam or Moora camps using the State Library as a source.

The other shows repairs to cracks in the hull, you mentioned in Military Profiles that several hulls were rejected because of cracks. Someone welded and patched this hull, not to subtle either.