Beulah MT7 AFV Techniques Video

Peter Brown

MT7 AFV Techniques Video from Beulah, 18-20 St Dunstans Road, London, SE25 6DU, England
Available in VHS and NTSC formats, price £16.95 plus postage direct from the manufacturers. Email beulah@enterprise.net   Web site http:/homepages.enterprise.net/beulah/

This series use complete original training films from Imperial War Museum archives. All in black and white with full, original soundtrack commentary. They offer modern viewers the chance to see vehicles of older generations in use, while those who used them way back then will find they bring back memories. Modelling ideas abound in all three, and all are recommended.

Film on this tape is mostly of Centurions, taken in and around the main British training areas at Bovington and Lulworth in Dorset on the south coast. The first part dates from 1949 and shows early Mk 1 and 2 tanks with the original 17pdr demonstrating the various techniques of cross-country driving using real vehicles in the field as they cross trenches, marshy
ground, rivers, ridges and sheer drops and animations showing how and how not to operate, stressing the need to maintaining a stable gun platform. This is followed by two films showing gunnery techniques. Both were "restricted" in their day, but it should be safe to view them now! The first from 1960 shows the use of machine guns, this includes footage of the Saladin armoured car but mostly covers the Centurion Mk VII. All three use the .30" Browning, which is shown mostly in use as a coaxial gun against ground targets with short sequences on using the commander's gun against fleeting targets such as snipers and aircraft. The final film dated 1961 covers the main 20pdr gun and methods used when firing high explosive rounds, including the various set drills for ranging onto a target with footage inside the turret as the tanks takes on, of all things, a PAK38 50mm anti-tank gun. Total running time is just over 80 minutes, and these films show the methods used then to good effect, which may well interest those who used earlier and later generations as much as those who used the vehicles then.