Conger Carrier restoration, Overloon The Netherlands

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Rick,

Great gesture

I'm sure Alex can give you the contact details of the museum. I can help with transportation on this end of the pond.

Hanno

[eddy8men]

thanks hanno, I'll pm my mob number for you to paas on. cheers

merry xmas

rick

[Alex van de Wetering]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for bringing this old thread back to the surface after so many years; I can't believe it has been almost 6 years! I can get you in touch with the museum if you like, or contact them on your behalf.

I also saw the thread on HMVF with the mistery A-frame and I have to be honest...it does look somewhat different when compared to the drawings of the provisional working instructions of the Conger. The open ends of the "A" look exactly the same, but the towing end looks different; the drawing shows a triangular shaped plate wth a hole, in stead of a fancy towing hook like in your pictures. The length adjustment has also got me puzzled; it isn't covered in the drawing, nor is it mentioned in the instructions itself. The pictures I have aren't very conclusive on this subject.
These are my observations, but as mentioned the info I got from Nigel Watson are maked "provisional", so the drawings might have differed from the real setup! I hope Nigel doesn't mind me displaying a small piece of one of the drawing (?). I think it's also displayed in the second volume of the universal carriers books.

regards,

Alex

p.s. Overloon also has an AVRE with 95mm Close Support, Cromwell and a number of carriers! Well worth a visit

[eddy8men]

hi alex

I must admit it was only an educated guess as to it's true purpose and I did wonder why it had adjustable legs but it is too small to tow a tank and looks to have been build for a specific task so it's quite possible it's for the conger, I will measure the centres between the pin attachments in each position and if one is the same as the conger then we might be on the right track.

rick

[David Dunlop]

Interesting thread. Still trying to wrap my head around the whole concept. First thought this vehicle was similar in concept to the WASP: an autonomous special weapons carrier, but now suspect it was basically a tracked engineless weapons trailer, towed by another tracked armoured vehicle.

The other part I am having trouble with is the rocket launcher. It looks like it is a fixed position launcher with no, or limited, elevation. Also, the related appearance that the rockets themselves were loaded with either propellant or explosives just prior to use. Seems this would raise serious questions about the consistency of the loads under combat conditions. I would think it would be all too easy to either overload or under load either fuel or explosive. Variations in fuel load would seriously affect range/accuracy. A similar situation loading explosives would affect the effectiveness of the weapon if it hit it's target.

Probably more terrifying to the user than the recipients.


David

[eddy8men]

the theory was quite sound and we perfected it after the war and came up with the giant viper, which is a 275yd rocket propelled hose fitted with plastic explosive, if I remember right they were deployed and used in the gulf war.
the trouble with the conger if I read it right was the hose was fired and once in position was then filled with nitro glycerine which is not squaddie proof and not a great thing to be doing whilst under mortar and machine gun fire. there was also an incident where 41 men were killed whilst loading the congers ready for a mission at a farm in Holland after that they were declared unfit for use !

[Lauren Child]

Originally Posted by eddy8men

the theory was quite sound and we perfected it after the war and came up with the giant viper, which is a 275yd rocket propelled hose fitted with plastic explosive, if I remember right they were deployed and used in the gulf war.
the trouble with the conger if I read it right was the hose was fired and once in position was then filled with nitro glycerine which is not squaddie proof and not a great thing to be doing whilst under mortar and machine gun fire. there was also an incident where 41 men were killed whilst loading the congers ready for a mission at a farm in Holland after that they were declared unfit for use !

Here's a video of it working.

http://youtu.be/zHszRV5-bd4

[eddy8men]

sorry guys but I was wrong about the towing frame, a fella on another forum pointed out it's true purpose which is to tow the jcb 410 rough terrain forklift behind a wagon (usually a Bedford TM) it's definitely not for towing a conger carrier

[Alex van de Wetering]

Rick,

Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Pity that it's JCB, but it does confirm my presumption. I mentioned that the open ends of the "A" were spot-on, but later I realised the Conger ones are straight and the JCB ones are slightly angled....so the ends are also different.

The original towing frames used for the Conger, were also the ones used to tow the "gutted carriers"...stripped carriers to carry material. There is a series of pictures of two of them during the liberation of Culemborg, towed behind Churchills. Rick....you can modify the JCB frame and throw a canvas cover over a stripped carrier, tow it behind your AVRE....and.....

Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

Oeps....it was Coevorden not Culemborg, my bad.

source: http://www.herdenking.nl/nieuw/index...en/bouwedeboer

Note that the carrier in the pic still has the rear armor......it was not removed (well at least not on this one) as often seen on drawings and scale models.

Alex

[eddy8men]

lol back to plan A

thanks for the info on the stripped carriers, I hadn't heard of that before (seems like a waste of a good carrier) the good news is I don't need to modify my carrier to represent a conger I can just tow it behind the avre as a trailer. all I have to do now is restore the avre

all the best

rick

[David Dunlop]

With a little work, Rick, it would make a great portable beer cooler at events.

David

[eddy8men]

now that is a worthy reason to tow a carrier

[Alex van de Wetering]

By the way....Rick, thanks for making the reference to the Giant Viper and Lauren, thanks for posting the youtube link. That video shows in a few seconds, something that otherwise takes minutes to explain!

The Conger did indeed use "Explosive 822", which was basically Nitro Glycerine. The large tank was filled with jerrycans by hand! and the hose, once deployed, was filled under pressure with the aid of two air cylinders.

It's still not sure what happened at IJzendijke exactly. One of the possibilities is that a truck drove over a mine, when others were refuelling the Conger. But, the fact is that the blast was unbelievable and 37 British and Canadians were killed.
Some of them were buried at the Adegem War Cemetery, others at the Bergen op Zoom war cemetery. Attached pictures are of the monument on the outskirts of IJzendijke where the disaster took place.

Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

I hadn't heard of that before (seems like a waste of a good carrier)

Rick; I guess they just used carriers that were somehow lost in battle and quickly converted for another role.

The Overloon Conger started life as a Mortar carrier as mentioned in this thread. There was some evidence of fire damage; we presume this could be wartime damage and could be the reason the carrier came available to be converted to a Conger by Chubb in Wolverhampton.
After the IJzendijke disaster, some of the Congers (at least one ) were reused as trailers or "gutted carriers", after all of the Conger stuff was removed. There is a picture of one of them being towed by a Churchill Croc. This picture clearly shows it's an ex-Conger as the extra armor panels on the sides of the former drivers compartment were retained, allthough the rear armor plate was removed to create enough room for equipment.
To me it seems the two in Coevorden are not ex-Congers, because the extra armor is missing. Of course this could have been removed, but.....this was welded in place and I don't think there is any need to remove this for the role of trailer.

Rick, an AVRE towing a gutted carrier loaded with a fascine would look awesome! You know.....everyone has a Cromwell, but nobody has this combo

Alex

[eddy8men]

thanks for the info alex, I have found a few more pics of congers and one of the scene of the explosion (although it doesn't show the avre's that were wrecked or any other vehicles to prove this actually was the ijzendijke blast).
it's hard to imagine the forces needed to destroy a tank by blast alone. I have been on many ranges and seen many tanks still in one piece after years of direct shelling, so to destroy a tank by just being close by shows the force that was unleashed !

alex I would love to tow the carrier behind the avre but I just don't know if I will ever be able to restore it to running condition. I suppose I could fit the tracks and pull it behind the Cromwell.

[Lauren Child]

I've been reading The Story of the 79th Armoured Division and A.R.E. The Story of the 1st Assault Brigade Royal Engineers, who ran the AVRE's within the 79th Armoured Division. Both really interesting books.

There's a note in A.R.E. as follows regarding Conger :
"It was filled under pressure with a ton of liquid explosive known as 822C and detonated. This explosive was dangerous, and a serious accident to 284 squadron, when several tons of it exploded in the Squadron concentration area, made the Conger very unpopular. During the journey across France a jerrican full of 822C was stolen by a French civilian, in the mistaken belief that it was petrol. So far no reports have been received on its success as a motor fuel."

[eddy8men]

worlds fastest citreon

[Tim Bell]

Noticed this in the UK National Archive while looking for other bits...

WO 195/7838
Description: Land Mines Sub-Committee: effect on "probability dip" of altering nature and weight of conger filling

HO 196/26
Description: The effect of depth of burial Tellermine 42 upon the probability of its detonation by the 2" Conger. Author: D.C. Brettel and Dr. F.N. David



What's in it... that's another matter... generally a case of luck to find something in the file which noone's noticed because the subject appears too boring!

This company could grab the document if you wanted it - www.arcre.com - I've used them for stuff, they're reliable.

Tim

[gordon]

Originally Posted by eddy8men

lol back to plan A

thanks for the info on the stripped carriers, I hadn't heard of that before (seems like a waste of a good carrier) the good news is I don't need to modify my carrier to represent a conger I can just tow it behind the avre as a trailer. all I have to do now is restore the avre

all the best

rick

Seems like a plan;

cheap, no nitroglycerine involved, and you don't have to tinker with those dreadful flathead Ford V8's

[eddy8men]

lol the flatheads not the problem. the state of the avre is what scares me