Hi,
while I am thinking of taking the old Tamiya´s LR Ambulance out of the stash I look for photos of the real vehicles in British Army service. Unfortunately there are not many available. Could you help?
Doesn´t matter if it´s SII or SIII based Ambulance since I am willing to convert the kit to SIII if needed.

No close-up photos are needed.

Thanks a lot in advance for your help!

There are very many pictures on the web: SII, SIII, Army, RAF, Dutch, preserved. Search Land Rover Ambulance in Google.

I made an SIII RAF Mountain Rescue ambulance many years ago by cross-kitting Italeri and Tamiya kits, mostly by swapping front end parts. There are better resin wheels available now. I don't have any pictures of it, unfortunately, and I no longer have the model.

Here's a S3 used by the RAF :



H.P.

Hi guys,

thank you for your comments and for the photo.

I searched, but it´s mostly preserved vehicles and the Dutch ones what I found.
However, the yellow-gray RAF Mountain Rescue vehicles look very nice and worth a closer look. There were also green or green-black SIIIs with reflector strips. These look cool as well.

The photo above is typical of an RAF SIII at an airfield, along with a TACR1 fire truck. The brush guard was normal on RAF LR ambulances and fire trucks.

I think these 2 might be supporting a Harrier landing site as they don't have the yellow stripes typically carried at fixed bases and there are camouflaged tents behind. Their colour is most likely plain "NATO" IRR green.

The yellow stripes were not retro-reflective, just yellow paint to aid visibilty of ground movements. Actually more like Zinc Chromate, yellow with a hint of green. Airfield vehicles in Germany and at most bases in the UK were IRR Green with the yellow stripes. Army vehicles would mostly have been green and black, although a few were plain green.

Hi Peter,
This is actually what I meant...



And here another interesting camo...

Those two look like ones used for the ambulance strikes in different parts of the country, the tape was a requirement to be seen on the road and extra blue lights as civilan requirement for emergency vehicles.

Interesting. I've worked in and around the UK military including a large garrison and airfields for 30+ years and never seen any marked quite like that. I've seen orange stripes, but not the white front.

They could be ambulances based at UK major bases. These were often fitted by local workshops with blue lights and 2-tone air horns, especially when they might have to go out on public roads. Both are probably Army: in those days most RAF vehicles carried Equipment Registration Marks where the 2-letter part began with A (as in the photo with the crash truck).

The one with the reflective check markings is probably at a civilian hospital: the sign says parking reserved for cardiac arrest team. We had some ambulance strikes many years ago and the armed forces were deployed to cover. I'm wondering if these markings were applied then. Could be the same for the orange-striped one.

I'm not 100 % sure this one belongs to the RAF (but the Hercules does ) I wish the picture would be larger... :



H.P.

Most of the ones I remember seeing at Catterick when I lived there were actually overall IRR Green. Camouflage is of limited value with those big red/white crosses.

I have seen a colour shot of one at Suffolk’s though, which had the BATUS sand/green scheme with crosses. That looked quite interesting. Think it’s in a Tanks Illustrated book.

Here's a link to photos of a Series 2a Ambulance on our Warwheels site via John Tapsell:
http://www.warwheels.net/LandySeries2aAmbulanceTapsell.html .

Something like this ?











This picture must have been taken on another occasion :



H.P.

The white one with the green stripe in front of the Herk isn't an RAF vehicle. It's an ex-RAF one that used to belong to a civilian volunteer ambulance service near London which has now shut down. It's been sold to someone else since then and modified with the light bar, A/C unit on the roof and orange beacon (possibly indicating that it's an an airfield vehicle). The location looks like a RAF station (green hangars): perhaps it was being shipped overseas for an NGO - but it wouldn't fit in a C130. I wondered if it might be at Marshalls of Cambridge, the UK C130 civilian maintenance centre, but I don't remember their hangars being green. Here's a photo of it before the later modifications.

So my doubts were justified Thanks for the info.

H.P.