Now driving along (or stuck in traffic on) the M1(A) just about everyday, I have become slightly used to seeing military vehicles as they go their way.
Landies, Bedfords and low-beds carrying an array of items, usually Warriors, Scimitars and the odd Challenger and AS90, are seen quite often. To date the strangest has been a ZSU-23/4 Shilka in Desert kit (Iraq?) and a Lynx Helicopter.

This morning (whilst travelling north) a low-bed passed (going south) with this on the back:


Yep, a SA-8 Gecko, in nice new dark green paint to boot. Ex-Soviet items travelling along British roads still seems very odd to me.

Hi Eric,

was it on an army low loader?

i know for a fact both the RAF regt and a RA air defence unit have geckos captured in the first gulf war

they sometimes take them to airshows/open days etc

other than that could be a museum peice being re-located?

regards

joe

Hi Joe, welcome back - you rested enough? :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Sorry Joe, only got a glance at it (corner and all) and did not look at the carrier! I thought it might be a display piece for a museum or such.

It was just eerie, last time I saw one of these up close was in Angola (after it was captured).

yeah all that sun and beer works wonders!

i think it would be most likely a museum peice, most AFVs encountered on op telic have more of a cheesegrater appearence to them(courtesy of both the RAC and RAF!

regards

joe

I've seen an SS1 Scud launcher complete with rocket and a supporting 'Soviet' origin command truck once, it was the huge 8 wheeled vehicle that has the twin cabs either side of the vehicle with the rocket on the launcher in the middle (made famous in the 1991 Gulf war). It was on it's way to a show, which I also went to see later that day, it was an ex-Eastern European one.

Hi- although not Soviet or any malign foreign power, I did see a British MLRS parked by the side of a road in Wallsend one day. Cor!
I'm not sure if the crew who were milling around it had stopped for a snack or if the thing had broken down having just come up quite a steep hill. Unfortunately as I was dropping No. 1 Son back at his mother's I didn't have time to enquire further...
Other weird ones was an old RN Wasp helicopter going past Stonehenge on the back of a flatbed (presumably something to do with Yeovilton) and a Dodge Beep playing with rush-hour traffic in Gateshead!

Not something I saw, but I read a funny story not so long ago about an armoured regiment driver who drove his APC home to show his mum. I think it was a Warrior or the older 432 or some similar large tracked APC, and he drove along the main roads, into his housing estate and parked outside his family home to show his mum. He was apparantly reprimanded for the action, I don't know how severely though, but i think his superiors saw the funny side.

--- "Hi mum"

you might find that these could be ex-east german army I used to drop stuff off at an RAF place just off the Hexham road A69? place was used as radar/lowflying bombing run area quite a few Shilka's were left about the area along with some other odds and sods strange place to vist it was

Although not foreign unusual or anything, I was stuck on the A3 last week whilst a large civil recovery truck came up the road, five minutes later we set off to find a Foden recovery vehicle had been recovered!