a quick introduction from the armoured heritage group

hi folks
i'm rick a builder from manchester and before that i was a mechanic in the REME for 14 glorious years. i turned 40 in 2009 and decided that my midlife crisis would take the form of an epic challenge/fools errand, this challenge was to single handedly raise awareness of british ww2 afv's in the north west and to recover and preserve as much armour as is humanly possible from the army ranges. it all seemed quite straight forward at first, all i had to do was find the wrecks which i did by visiting a couple of army ranges when they were open to public access, this was the most interesting part as i found all sorts of ww2 armour still sitting up on the ranges churchills,achilles, rams, covenanters and a valentine or 2 but mostly churchills as their heavy armour protected them well. the next stage of the plan was to contact the training commandant for that area and ask him for a tank, this is where my plan began to unravel, the first guy i spoke to laughed at me and the second guy was fairly abrupt, as i seemed to be on a road to nowhere i decided to change tack at least for the time being and buy the armour instead. in april last year i bought a bren gun carrier from the states this was followed by a mk 4 churchill, a centaur and a cromwell(charioteer), i also bought a fordson wot6 but only so i could use the engine for the carrier. unfortunately i wasn't born rich so all of these vehicles are wrecks and require restoration which is where the armoured heritage group comes in, basically i want to get a group of likeminded people together to restore and display ww2 armour as i couldn't hope to do this on my own not even if i had 10 lifetimes, although the carrier and cromwell are being partially restored by professionals at least to running condition to give me a bit of a headstart and that's pretty much how the story goes so far. i recently bought a piece of land to act as the workshops but the council planners weren't as enthusiastic as i'd hoped so that might be a bit of a white elephant and until i get something sorted i can't really begin the work of restoration, although i should add that originally my plan was to collect the armour and restore it once i'd retired but i somehow got caught up in all the excitement and went off a bit prematurely (that happens a lot to me)
so there you have it folks if you'd like to get involved let me know, i'll post some pics of the vehicles in the next few days.

all the best

rick

 

Hi Rick and welcome - Can't wait to see the pictures !

Good luck
Andy

 

Hi Rick, welcome to WW2Talk. You will find loads of AFV enthusiasts here, hope you can work something out. Look forward to seeing the photos.
Best of luck,

Mike

 

Welcome to the forum,


Cheers
Paul

 

Very best of luck Rick, I do hope you find some support for this worthwhile project.

 

Welcome, look forward to the photos!

 

Great to see you over here mate! Will get the stuff off to you asap.

Jonny

 

welcome to the forum
a good luck with your project

 

Rick,

Hello and welcome to the forum.

A great project and I wish you luck on your endeavour.

Regards
Tom

 

Hello and Welcome Rick

 

Hello Rick, welcome to the forum and good luck with your project.

 

hi folks
thanks for the warm welcome, i can honestly say that so far this looks to be the friendliest forum i've been on, if the welcomes are anything to go by.
the pic below is the last vehicle i bought but by far the most complete (and expensive). this tank started it's life as a mk6 cromwell which is the close support version mounted with a 95mm gun which was intended to take on soft targets as opposed to other tanks, after the war, around 1950 it was converted into a charioteer (wiki link Charioteer tank destroyer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )which basically involved replacing the turret with a larger but more lightly armoured one however it did have the addded bonus of being able to fit a dirty great big centurion gun, the mk1 20 pdr making it into what was known as a tank destroyer, however it was always considered more of a stop gap than anything else and as such was only issued to TA units, when the army had no further use for them they were sold off to finland, austria, jordan and lebanon. my charioteer came from finland when they sold off a large amount of ex reserve/ surplus kit in 2007 it then went through a couple of dealers until i ended up with it in september, i also bought a centaur from the same guy which will be used as a donor vehicle to get the charioteer up to cromwell spec hopefully in time for beltring this year so if you see a cromwell driving into the arena don't forget to give me a special welcome, eggs and flour are optional .

all the best

rick

 

Well done Rick. Can't wait to see the Cromwell when it is finished.

 

A very hearty welcome Rick. Excellent project you have there keep us well posted. I, for one am very interested in seeing them running.

 

Rick, Looks like you will have a busy few months so! best of luck with it.