Your Letters
Ifound the Myth Buster piece on the Austin K2/Y military ambulance ( CCW, 24 December) very interesting. This particular vehicle was apparently issued to the Royal Navy and spent its life in the UK. And because it spent its life in Portsmouth, not on the front line, it was repainted Royal Navy blue.
I understand that when a vehicle is made to military contact it is delivered to a central depot and then issued with a CES (Complete Equipment Schedule) to its owning unit.
If, for instance, the vehicle is going to a tactical unit, then it would be repainted in an appropriate camouflage scheme, whereas if it was attached to a base hospital it would be painted white and fitted with British Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force registration plates.
A lot of vehicles that are used for admin purposes, minibuses, for instance, could indeed be sent straight from the manufacturer in the same range of standard colours as would be seen on civvy street, but then given appropriate military registrations. I remember that
when the Army used Morris Minor Travellers as vehicles attached to recruiting offices they would be sprayed in gloss bronze green with varnished woodwork direct from Cowley – basically, the same vehicle that you’d buy from a Morris dealer.
The same thing happened when the Austin and Morris 1800 was used as a staff car – it would be bronze green, the RAF had theirs in RAF blue, and the Navy in naval blue. Car-makers would send them direct to the armed forces, then they would be issued from a central depot to the individual units – including left-hand-drive ones for those based in the Federal Republic of Germany.
I think also that the armed forces lease a lot of their non-tactical vehicles. Obviously, tactical vehicles like tanks, aircraft and so on are owned outright, but it makes a lot of sense for them to lease vehicles like cars, minibuses and trucks.
❚ JE Kirby, Stoke Newington, London