Terry Anderson

Why buy them second hand? You can get 4 for the price of 1 F35. The Flanker is also much faster, flys much higher, is far more manoeuverable with a far greater weaponry payload and apart from that has been in production for years and was a development of the original SU27 Flanker so has a great pedigree. India has them & Indonesia is getting them. The F35 is just too late, too heavy, too expensive & isn't even in production yet with a total development cost so far much larger than the entire Australian economy.

The biggest problem is, you are not thinking like a politician i.e. How can I stuff it up by spending the most amount of money? I do have to say, it was pretty impressive at the Edinburgh air show.

The Bren Gun Carrier (or Universal Carrier) drivetrain is simply the Ford V8 truck drivetrain of the day (with the "big" 95HP flathead Mercury engine), dropped into a steel hull.

They used the truck radiator, engine, 4 speed gearbox, tailshaft, and rear axle from the truck, and steered them using the truck brakes on the rear axle, to slow the track on the side you wanted to turn to.

 

There were three models, the LP1, the LP2 and the LP2A. The LP1 was a shocker, they overheated and cooked the occupants, they threw tracks for the slightest reason - and they were deadly to steer at speed.

The Bren Carrier only did 50kmh flat out (30mph), but if you tried to do gentle corrective turns at road speed with the LP1, it was impossible.

It would jerk wildly to the side you braked on, at speed, because there was no ability to gently "feather" the braking action. The truck brakes were good for sharp turns at low speed, but dreadful at high speed.

 

So the experts redesigned the steering system on the LP2, to allow the front track idlers to "cant" (tilt) a little.

This meant that at higher speeds, when you turned the wheel, it canted the front track idlers first, which caused the track to run in a slight curve ("track warp").

Further movement of the steering wheel applied the rear brakes, which then caused a sharper turn. So at road speeds, you only made small movements of the steering wheel, which caused only small amounts of turning action.

When you came to a 90° corner, you then turned the steering wheel more sharply (as you would in a car or truck), and the rear brakes applied to steer the Carrier sharply around the corner.

 

The LP2 and LP2A also had improved cooling systems and a lower rear axle ratio for improved driving - as well as host of other improvements that made them more driveable.

Unfortunately, our blokes got thrown into major battle with Bren Gun Carriers, particularly in the Middle East. As you could well imagine, they were no match for any German tank, nor the 88mm field gun.

A lot of our brave blokes met a horrible death in this little machines, which were only designed to carry troops forward into battle against infantry armed only with rifles and machine guns.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Carrier#/media/File:Australians_driving_Bren_Carriers_towards_Bardia,_Libya,_January_1941_(24667819900).jpg

What a great engine. I rebuilt one and put it in a 14 speed boat. huge torque.

Yes, the PRU P38 was called the F-5 during WW2.

Thanks. I have learned something.

 

 

I believe the Lightning referred to was the P38, not the current F5.

 

 

The dreaded triple disease.I was fishing in a creek off the Murray one balmy night and heard the rumble of what sounded like a 4 cylinder car engine and an old Catalina hull slid by stately as the Queen Mary

I lived in Koondrook, Victoria in the early 1960s. A Catalina Hull propelled by a Ford 10 4 cyl engine was used to ferry sleepers out of the red gum forests in the floods. It sank and was refloated in 1962. In about 2000 in Mildura, I saw a houseboat, Rivercat 2, which had been built on the hull of a Catalina. I often wondered if it was the same hull. Anybody know anything?