Wednesday 10 October 2012

Bollocks all round

The Telegraph and the Herald both managed to over-sensationalise a pretty simple story this week when an Army Unimog rolled at Holsworthy Barracks.

First to the Telegraph: Army Mog truck known for rollovers - that's despite a handful of fatal rollovers during 30 years of service. I drove a Mog in the Reserves for a few years after my back packed it in - they were exceptionally hard to roll. In fact, you could drive them across the most amazing slopes without any fear of them tipping. During our training, our instructors literally had to force us scared-stupid trainees to drive them across slopes that we were certain would lead to our early deaths. You had to wear a seatbelt to stop yourself from falling out of your seat sideways! They are the most awesome vehicles, and I totally loved driving them.

We had one local rollover that I know of - an artillery crew were towing a gun somewhere off road and the gun flipped, taking the Mog with it. That's not supposed to happen - they are fitted with towing gear that rotates - but it did happen.

Which brings me to the SMH: Due to their four-wheel-drive capacity they have a high wheel base and are more prone than other vehicles to tipping. 

That's total bollocks. Yes, they have a high wheel base, but the portal axles allow the drive train to be mounted relatively low, so the centre of gravity is low. Just because they look tall to a stupid, never-driven-one, never-sat-in-one journalist, doesn't mean that they are more prone to tipping. The most "prone to tipping" vehicle I have ever seen is the Toyota Hilux, and you could drive a Mog straight over the top of the average Hilux.

During my service, there were quite a few vehicle rollovers in the Army. However, most of them were suffered by the (as it was then) newly introduced Landrover Perentie - they were a lot speedier than the Series 2 and 3 Landrovers that they replaced, and quite a few unsuspecting drivers who had grown up in the old gutless petrol Landies rolled them when cornering. It got so bad, the Army was circulating special pamphlets on the danger of rolling the Landrovers - I think there were a few fatalities.

I managed to avoid rolling a Landrover - mainly because I flipped a Landcruiser, and that scared the crap out of me. We were issued a batch of Landcruisers as a stopgap measure, and they were even faster than the new Landrovers (the Army never got around to fitting a governor to the Landcruisers, so they flew). I went over the crest of a sandy hill at the Lancelin bombing range with a section in the back. The road totally fell away to one side just over the crest, so when the wheels on that side disappeared into a rut several feet deep, over it went, throwing me and 9 or 10 troops over the side. I'd almost rolled one a day earlier whilst speeding on the beach - I was so busy putting it into the incoming surf that I didn't realise I was about to run out of beach, and when I turned, it  went up on two wheels. That was pretty exciting, in an unpleasant way.

During my time in the Reserves, my friends and family managed to survive numerous civilian rollovers. We've had three in the family, and there were plenty of others when I was at Uni. At one B&S that I attended, I watched an old Renault roll several times during the morning-after circle work. Each time, a gang of drunken spectators would flip it back on its wheels, and off it would go again (unless a tyre went off the rim, and a tyre change was required). I won't say that any particular model of car was prone to rolling - the most prevalent feature was a drunken and/or tired driver. Idiot civilian drivers roll cars every day - a Mog rolls once every 10 years, and somehow Mogs are prone to tipping???

One last comment about the SMH story:

The trucks, known throughout the army simply as "Mogs", have been in service since 1982 and feature almost nothing in the way of safety measures for troops sitting on bench seats in the back.

Wrong. They don't "feature almost nothing in the way of safety measures". You can get rid of the "almost" - they have absolutely no safety measures. None. Nada. The troops in the back are totally reliant on a well trained driver up front keeping them safe and sound.

4 comments:

1735099 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1735099 said...

I well remember a trip from Canungra to Wyangaree in August 1969 on an ACCO. We were last in the convoy, and the driver was obviously having problems maintaining station. We were thrown from side to side, on a road that followed a ridgeline with drops that seemed to go all the way down to the coastal plain on each side. No amount of banging on the cabin and swearing at the driver had any effect.
He locked himself in the cabin when we arrived at the end of the track.
I still reckon that was the closest I cam to being a casualty during my two years in the army, active service included.

Bruce said...

Not being Transport Corps, my experience as a driver of Mogs is limited, but I like them as a vehicle; MUCH nicer than the old Mk3 and Mk5 Internationals. I must say, however, that a GOOD driver could get those 6x6 Mk5s in and out of some very interesting places. In fact, the signals type used to borrow them whenever they needed to put equipment on the top of some nasty-looking hill.

Agree about the land Rover thing. I saw a steady stream of VERY broken 4x4 and 6x6 Rovers unloaded in our workshops over the years, especially in the early days.

The problem was that the new, turbo-diesels were NOT your Grandad's Land Rover. On a long convoy drive (or any drive, really) in the old, gutless petrol powered workshop wagons, it was literally "pedal to the metal", just to maintain highway speed and keep up with the main convoy. Try that in a Perentie and you'll be airborne before you know what's going on.

The 6x6 Land Rover "GMV" workshop vehicles were issued as a replacement; underpowered for their weight and very "interesting" to take "bush-bashing", but they were a huge improvement as a repair facility.

Finally, in the transition to the Diesel Land-Rovers, we had a bunch of Land Cruisers on trial. Quite a few of them got seriously bent because people tried to drive them like the old Land-Rovers; ie. flat out.

Anonymous said...

The standard of drivers went to hell in a handbag when they got rid of the crashboxes.