About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

T is for Two - Taffy Toy and Twin

When I said on Thursday (Friday's post) that I'd post the gun I thought I'd posted, I wasn't considering there might be a reason for my having not posted it in the first place! Anyway, we'll look at them as I said I'd post them and it adds to the on-blog Taffy archive!

Taken on the 24th February 2007 (just over a decade ago!) in poor light with my nearly-new, first-ever, digital camera (the first shot is DSFC0220), I still hadn't worked out how to set Macro, didn't remember the flash and seem to have lost any pictures I took of the whole of the other gun!

This is cropped out of the original on the old Taffy post and turned to give a vague idea of what the Taffy 5.5 Inch Howitzer looks like, a staple of the late war and used through to the 1970's by the British Army before being replaced by the 105 of Falkland's fame.



But there is another one out there and I can't call it a copy or clone, pirate or usurper; as it may have come first, indeed the fact that the Taffy one is non-firing would suggest it's the interloper? The 'twin' is the field-grey'ish one in each shot.

The muzzle is obviously different, the wheels are a little smaller (only a mm or so, all-round) with a deeper tread pattern, there are changes to the breech between them and the loading-tray. Otherwise there is little to tell the two apart. Given the similarities between the two AFV's - Taffy's Patton/Pershing and Kleeware's M55 SPG - which I mentioned the other day (and which ended-up with Tudor Rose in primary colours), one wonders if there is a connection between the two manufacturers and whether the firing-gun is a Kleeware piece?

To be honest, the wheels (of both) bear more relationship to Poplar's oeuvre, but while that makes sense - location/name wise - it takes u away from the similar firing mechanisms the other day! There was a lot of cross-pollination back then, and some interbreeding?

2 comments:

Terranova47 said...

Never saw these versions of the 55mm but do have fond memories of the Dinky version being released at the same time as the Mersey Tunnel Police red Land Rover with a towing hook. It led us Londoners to wonder how exactly the Scouse Police removed broken down vehicles?

Hugh Walter said...

Ah, yes, the incongruities of carpet wars - when Indians attack missile batteries with the aid of sentient trees!

H