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I saw two auctions recently that had me wondering how I could rig the PowerBall lottery so as to be the big winner.
The first auction was covered by Wired and features a 1976 Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR Mk3 jump jet. The jet, which saw service with the RAF in the Balkans and the Falkland War, comes with a Rolls Royce Pegasus Mk103 engine and its original ejection seat. It is missing some of its avionics but the auctioneer says that it could be made flyable rather easily (if you had the money).
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| From Silverstone Auction catalog |
The second auction features Jacques M. Littlefield Collection of armored vehicles including tanks, armored cars, personnel carriers, and a SCUD missile launcher (with missile). There are over 200 lots in this auction.
The include a South African Eland wheeled armored vehicle with a 90mm main gun.
If the Eland with a top speed of 53 mph is too slow for you, then how about a British FV721 Fox Armored Car with a 65 mph top speed. In exchange for speed, you do have to give up some firepower. You are trading the 90mm main gun for a 30mm Rarden cannon.
Now the question remains, would you chase after the Eland and Fox with the Harrier or would you use the Staghound shown below? I’m thinking the Harrier might be the better bet.
A few weeks ago I played tag from Holbrook, AZ to the middle of Oklahoma with an eastbound big rig fromolbrook, AZ to the middle of Oklahoma that was hauling a Chieftain tank. I'm assuming it was from this collection.
And if it were me, I'd go with the M42 Duster. It's not an M163 VADS, but it does have twin 40mm Bofors on it.
Either of them would make a nice addition to my home security!
That was a Sweet Collection. Too Bad it's being broken up.
My gun-club and some family members went to see the Littlefield collection and met Jacques before he died. One of our guys (ex-Navy, now a cement-truck driver) poured the concrete foundations and footers for a couple of of the big outbuildings.
It was in an improbable location, up in the very exclusive and ritzy Portola Valley Hills, but he was a humble guy with an Engineering degree from Stanford, who just happened to have inherited a huge boatload of money and was indulging in a hobby that most other people couldn't simply afford. He and his wife had a boy who had a chance to grow up with the "toys" – just before the cancer showed-up and took him, but he wasn't much older than my big-sister…
At least a lot of it is going to the Collings Foundation – but he used to do fun things on the 4th of July – like gather his friends together for a picnic, buy three old cars down in Redwood City and paint them red, white, and blue, park them around on the hillside – and then they would drive-over them with the one of his tanks!
Tanks are cool but like a friend said, despite being bullet-proof they can be bullet-magnets (and ordnance magnets), and the reason they all have shovels on the outside are not to dig-out the tank from a mud-hole (so heavy, can you imagine?), but to the bury the dead crew… One word: spalling, and after that it's just a mess inside. So they (Army-X) hose 'em down, re-paint stuff and fix broken instruments – but only after Time intervenes does The Smell go away. Seeing the collection was a bit of an eye-opener, since you can figure that all the tanks at one time had crew, but they were collected in a "vacant" condition.
That must have been a very fun day for you and your friends. Mr. Littlefield sounds like he was one heckuva' nice guy. Great post BTW on the visit.
Thanks! I should have taken more pictures! Also interesting to see the Panther in mid-restoration and learn about how freaking complicated the German tanks/engines were…
I left the auction site a couple of hours ago; it's hard to take it all in; well over 100 vehicles to be auctioned Friday and Saturday, another 60+ vehicles to go to the Collins Foundation. Some in fully restored "like new" condition, others…not so much. Today was open to the public and for bidders to inspect (and there were a lot of those). Certainly the largest private collection of military armor and vehicles; perhaps even larger than some of the governments museums. Remarkable what a man with a vision and money can do. Over 100 pallets of "parts" (tank treads, electronics, demilled ordnance, engines, etc. and etc.) all left over from his maintenance and restoration facility. Some vehicles were so completely restored that the ATF has required it to meet NFA rules. There's going to be happy buyers this weekend.