Instead of slaving away at the blog, I have been working on an idea for a book on the "Snatch" Land Rover. If anyone is interested, the draft of the second chapter is posted here. For a blog post, it is a bit long (8,500 words) but there you go.

Comments and any additional information would be appreciated.

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Richard, I think you should see this

http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2008 ... astern-us/

A little before 'Snatch' but maybe of some interest.
Shortly after WW2 I joined a company which sent me to the then Gold Coast to help exploit a timber concession. We had nothing much to get around on except our feet...and first we had to build the access roads. Some motorcycles appeared, Triumph Twins I think...but maybe that was later A nice bike but totally unsuited to local conditions. I don't think cross-country bikes had yet been thought of.
Then Land-Rovers appeared (48/49 can't be certain) We were told they were a 'first' delivery but I cannot be sure...and they were brilliant. Chassis, motor, endurance etc. The aluminium bodies, especially the doors fell to pieces within weeks from the washboard effect & without doors, the insecure seating flew out of the vehicle if cornering sharply, usually taking the occupant with it.
Laterite is no friend to unprotected body parts.

Susan Smith whose son was killed when driving a Snatch in 2005, has recently called for a public inquiry into the continued use of the Snatch Land Rover in the light of the number of deaths and injuries. Please support her by signing the online petition:-
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SnatchLandRover/

_USA Today_ is not a "tabloid". "Tabloid" is an adjective that describes a newspaper's physical size more than its contents. Although the journalism in _USA Today_ is effectively "tabloid journalism", in that it consists of condensed stories with many pictures, the paper itself is a "broadsheet".

Seeing as many broadsheets aren't broad any more these days and comment on tat and trivia, the distinction is too blurred to separate them based on format alone.

In the US it's the broadsheets that are either going online or sinking. Their old market of the well-informed is finding plenty of alternative information sources and opinions. Richard is convinced that the lumpen-proletariat neither wish nor are able to take advantage of the 'net, but I reckon the 'man in the pub' is becoming better informed, if only 'cos it's so easy to google someone's ass. The sheer ease of research on the 'net means that a little motivation can lead to above average competence in a subject very quickly. An 'expert' who is sloppy in their use of logic, or dissembles with data will quickly find themselves refuted.
Twilight of the Experts, maybe?

Just to be clear. The SNATCH Land Rover comes in two varieties, known as SNATCH 1 and SNATCH 2. Both pretty good for their time and what they were designed for.
They are not used for 'Low Risk' Enviroments, they were designed for use in Northern Ireland (which if you speak to most soldiers, didn't consider low risk).

What is is designed for is for use in an urban enviroment and in Public Order operations. The armour is designed to defeat primarily Kinetic Energy projectiles, and is very good at it. It works best when provided with 'top cover' which is why it has a sunroof, this was as a result of the PRIG used by PIRA.
The problem with SNATCH and some other armoured vehicles is, the better the protection, the larger the bomb your opponents will use.

Probably why South Armagh was largely a 'no drive' area. But then, you lots of working helicopters to facilitate that.

This is the basic armour/AP escalation. Although prima facie the idea of more armour is to survive, the secondary effect is to require the enemy to bring a bigger gun, or use a bigger bomb. As an example, the best effect of anti-aircraft artillery was to make the bombers fly higher and thus reduce their ability to hit the target (in a WW2 context). If the 'taliban' need to bring a bigger bomb, their transport problem is increased, and their time to plant the weapon is increased, and so is the detectable footprint of the bomb and the chance of catching them at it. Thus increased protection alone does no good, but if combined with tactics designed to take advantage of the enemy's renewed difficulties can hurt the other guy. Although as I've suggested before, the best way to hurt him is to deny little victories. The sight of a vehicle driving off after the explosion is prone to discourage the less keen of the ragtag alliance ranged against us, and our best bet is to make the enemy lose interest, as defeating him militarily requires far more force than we are willing or able to employ.

Yes, I was a Sergeant in the REME, I took a couple of trips cowering in the back of a Land Rover, and a few more in Scouts where my greatest military problem was keeping my mars bars separate from my 9mm pistol magazines. Mixing them up can lead to trouble.

There are actually six models. First there was the Snatch-1. Some 278 (of 1000)were "desertised" with the addition of an air conditioning unit, and reclassified as Snatch-1.5. Many of these were upgraded to current variant standards. Of these, there is the basic Snatch-2 12v, a left hand drive version which is used for training, the Snatch-2A 24v, designated the "Rest of World variant", and the Snatch-2B, dedicated specifically for Northern Ireland. Then there is the Snatch Vixen, which is a 2A with upgraded chassis, tansmission, suspension, engine and armour.

As for the "bigger bombs", if you had read even a fraction of the posts on the DOTR blog, you would know that the argument is spurious.

I Used Snatch in Iraq on 2004 whilst serving as a team commander in the Royal Green Jackets tasked with Force Protection and it was totally useless!!-All the lads hated the things,they were top heavy,the air-con rarely worked,you couldn't get a signal for your sat-nav unless you opened the door and held it outside(There were remote antennas available in the stores apparently,but I could never get hold of one and I don't know anyone who did!)The damn things broke down constantly,normally in the worst possible places!(I remember trying to sign one out one morning from the MND(SE) Div MT at Basra Airbase and four out of the six available wouldn't start!)There wasn't enough room in the back for passengers and kit if you had two topcover in use,which you definitely needed when going into town!-The "Armour" was useless against IEDs,RPGs and 12.7mm which the enemy had plenty of,and towards the end of my tour they started using Conicle Shaped Charges which could take out a Warrior APC so you can imagine what it would do to the thin skined Snatch.All in all the thing was not fit for task,we all knew it at the time but we didn't have any choice but use what we were given,it was galling to see the Italians and Danish who were on base going out in their heavily armoured APCs whilst we were forced to make do with that piece of crap,at least they were better than the "Wolf" landrovers we used before,which had no armour at all except for the bits of scrap metal and Chicken-wire we found around the airbase which we "Cabletied" on ourselves!

Scipio

Thanks

R

Scipio, interesting view on the Snatch. I am not fab of the Snatch or of soft skin vehicles being used in high risk situations like Iraq and Afghanistan. However, I have raised these view on ARRSE recently and been shot down by many who are still serving and were defending it vigourously!!!

Salvador

I've been watching your labours on ARRSE. The trouble is, as I see it, that you get the same old commentators with the same old, unchanging views. Soldiers tend, as a rule, to be relatively ill-informed about kit and, at the same time, also tend to be rather conservative. There was, on an earlier thread, enormous resistance to the Mastiff ... now, those that ise it, love it. When - or if - we get a small, mine protected vehicle with good cross-country performance, they will love that as well.

Richard, you are not wrong. I found that out when I joined up, because I was genuinely interested in all things Military I seemed to know much more about the kit (who made it, its stengths and weaknesses) plus what the alternatives were, what other armies were using and so forth. Many of my colleagues had know idea nor any interest.

I found it strange then as I do know. the other thing was that it was almost considered bad form to criticise or even admit that there was something better, plus of course, we always got sh1t kit so we did not expect anything else. On a positive note, I do detect just a small change in this area. I hope its a permanent one and not just a passing phase.

Salvador