Guild Webinar – Cold War Tankie

One of the series of Guild webinars, given by Alan Wood, will take place on Wednesday 9th December commencing at 1930 (UK time).

 

On the 24^th February 2022 hundreds of Russian tanks drove across the Ukrainian border.  This was a scenario that many believed would never happen in Europe again. This thinking had been prevalent in Western European politics since the ‘Cold War’ ended with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.  Those same politicians then sought a commensurate ‘peace dividend’.  Those policies saw the reduction in national tank fleets to levels that are now perceived as dangerously low and many nations rebuilding their tank fleets.  Such is the benefit of hindsight.  

 

In the British Army today there are three Regular regiments trained to fight on Main Battle Tanks (MBT) with not enough MBTs for all their trained crews.  At the height of the Cold War there were some 15 armoured regiments, all fully manned with either 62 or 47 MBT’s each, and spares. But what was life like for the soldiers who crewed those tanks and would they have been able to hold a Soviet invasion fi it had come? The answer to the latter we thankfully never had to know, but we can take an insight into what life was like in those tank regiments.  Allan Wood, aka Chippy, served in an armoured regiment in Germany for the latter years of that ‘Cold War’.  He has prepared a talk for the regular series at the Union Jack Club and will give that talk to the Guild on 9^th December as a webinar.