Die deutsche Prüfung von Alvis Stalwarts

Hi, thanks for the add. Sorry that this is in English, but Chrome can translate it for you.

There must be some German soldiers out there who remember the trials with the Alvis Stalwarts.

There must also be someone who knows the dates that the three Stalwarts were disposed of.

Germany bought Stalwart chassis number PV14. PV stands for Private Venture, as the British Army had not asked for this type of vehicle when Alvis started developing it. This was made to the same Standard as an FV620. The official FV620 starts at chassis number 16, and has the chassis number STAL 16

Germany then bought two FV622D Mark 2 Stalwarts in 1966. They were chassis numbers STAL II / 16 and STAL II / 17.

You're probably all thinking that I'm talking about the fake ones that the Technik Museum Sinsheim got fooled into buying, but I'm not.

This pair are both ex British Army Over the Rhine Stalwarts.

The German authorities requested a few difference. Germany asked that the sideboards and tailboards be slightly higher than the standard height.

They also requested that the front indicator and side lights be changed to the Hella combination lights, and be fitted to the side of the cab rather than fitted to the front. This makes the pair FV622D.

For clarity

D = Deutschland

O = Österreich

S = Sweden

Here, we see one Stalwart is well and truly stuck on the river bank, with German troops transferring Jerry cans from one Stalwart to the other. On both vehicles we can see that the sides are higher than the cab, and we clearly see the combination side and indicator light on the side of the cab.

Austria also bought what appears to be five FV622O Stalwarts, two being bought after the sideboards had been revised and hung down vertically instead of sticking out. They changed the hinges, so that the sideboards didn't sit on the tyres at the top.

I know a man who bought 4 Stalwarts from Austria in the mid 1980s, and shipped them back to the UK. Sadly, their destiny is currently unknown.

The Austrian ones had standard height side and tailboards, but it had the same Hella combination lights on the front.

People talk about the Saladin, Saracen, Salamander and Stalwart all having the same hull. They do not. The material is all the same, the components are the same or similar, but the actual hulls are different for each vehicle.

This is the Saladin hull.

And the Stalwart hull. Note the flat ledge, and the width of the area.

Al of the area with the blue mask is the thicker composite metal. All of the metal above this level is either aluminium or thin plate steel

People talk about the Stalwart being armoured.

The Stalwart empty of cargo, but with a full tank of fuel, etc is around 8.5 tons, and carried around 5 tons. There was discussion for it to be armoured to the same level as the vehicles that it supports, ie FV433 Abbot Self Propelled gun. Also to give it smoke dischargers, and some other bits. But they decided that it was already heavy. This is the main reason that they didn't fit the K60 multifuel engine, because of its weight.

But the actual hull plating where the drive comes through is the same material as the Saladin and Saracen.

Stalwart was deployed to Aden in the 1960s, and a number suffered from driving over land mines. This mine damage was captured in a British documentary about Aden. The FV620 had the vehicle batteries at the front of the cab, on the right side. The only injury from these mine strikes was of the driver receiving acid burns from battery acid.

I hope you found this of interest. I have lots of information on my website. And Roland has been most helpful in my research on these amazing vehicles.

I used to drive them in Germany, when I was based in Osnabruck back in the 1980s.

Mrk

The Alvis FV600 drivetrain is not the same as a conventional lorry, that has been modified to military purpose.

The design stems back to Hungarian designer Nicholas Straussler, who brought a 4x4 armoured car to Britain.

After WW2, Alvis helped what became the Fighting Vehicle Research and Development Establishment (F.V.R.D.E.) to design a 6x6 punt hull, for an armoured car. From that design work came the Saladin, Saracen, Salamander and Stalwart. Most of that design work was created by Alvis Chief Engineer Willie Dunn.

The FV600 drives all six wheels by the engine powering the gearbox, transfer box, and then all wheels.

The wheels on each side are connected to the other ones on that side of the vehicle. There is a central none slip (Detroit locker) differential in the transfer box, which allows one side to go faster than the other side when going around corners.

The myth that it was necessary to bump them off the kerbs is not true, as one needs to ease the pressue front to rear, and no side to side.

The issue with the Stalwart was the transmission windup between the front and rear wheel on each side of the vehicle, separately. This transmission wind up also applied to the other FV600s, but they didn't usually do the same milage that a truck would do. B.A.O.R. instructed that Stalwarts were not to be used on Garrison Duties, to reduce the on tarmac driving time. However, if it is ensured that the front wheel is larger than the rear wheel, then the rear wheel will not try to overtake the front wheel - and the transmission windup does not occur.

Personally, I've driven from Osnabruck to Munster, and back to Osnabruck all on Autobahn - without issue.

This diagram explains the drivetrain

And these GIFs show the transmission wind up

The best way to remove the transmission windup is to get the front and rear wheels off the ground.

I read on one forum of how we carried railway sleepers in the back. Not quite sure of where the sleepers were supposed to fit when we were fully loaded with fuel, ammunition, or land mines.

I hope you enjoyed this read.

Mark

LAndyP, thanks

I should have mentioned. The Matchbox model was introduced in 1966. BP never bought any Stalwarts direct from Alvis, but did buy 2 second hand vehicles many years later.

if you look closely at the Matchbox model, you will see that the hatches are actually octagonal - whilst all the Stalwarts have round hatches.

But that's not 100% accurate. Sweden bought chassis PV4 and PV5 from Alvis in 1962. Both of those prototypes had octagonal hatches, and are the only two Stalwarts to have octagonal hatches. We know that PV6, bought by Italy, had round hatches

PV4 came back to England around 1984/85, along with 15 other Swedish Stalwarts. Sweden bought 26 between 1962 and 1967.

These first two photos were taken at Duxford museum some years ago.

P4 is now in the north of England, parked in a shed. Here's the inside view of the hatches

The original drawings seemed to suggest that the Stalwart had lights on the front of the cab. Matchbox appear to have presumed that they were actually headlights, and made the lights bigger.

But the second position for the front indicator lights was half way up the cab, on the sides. They were later put on the waistline, at the front of the cab.

Below is the two Stalwarts that BP bought second hand in the 80s.

BP bought them for cleaning up oil spills in the water.

The first was PV3, which had an automatic gearbox. The top half was all yellow, which may have been painted that colour by the previous Marine services owner.

The second BP Stalwart was a Late mark 2 model, which stayed green.

Mark

Friedrich

Alvis helped F.V.R.D.E. to design the 6x6 punt hull, for an armoured car. They were then instructed to use that technology on as many vehicle types as possible, to allow common components to be used on all vehicles.

The allies of WW2 realised that not only did they individually as countries have components and parts right down to bolt threads that couldn't be used on vehicles of other countries, or even other brands of their own country. But there was also the issue of parts being different on different batches of the same vehicle from the same manufacturer.

So Britain was keen for all vehicles to have parts of commonality. That's why the early British Army Land Rovers had the Rolls-Royce B40 engines instead of the Land Rover engines.

So after designing the Saladin, the Saracen and then coming up with the idea of the Salamander crash foam fire tender, the three Salamander driver training vehicles looked like this -

You can just imagine someone looking at those and thinking, "We could make that in to a load carrier". And they did.

The original idea was to make a 5 ton off road load carrier, which would make Alvis more money.

Alvis made this prototype, to see how well the punt hull could handle carrying 5 tonnes off road. Bear in mind that the Stalwart can go anywhere that a tank can go thanks to the spacing of the three wheels, and it's ability to go over knife edges.

This is the first Stalwart, chassis PV1. A Salamander with a cheap drop side body. It was literally just built to prove that the hull could handle that 5 tonnes when going over knife edges on 2 wheels.

Having learnt lessons from D-day, the army had been playing with how vehicles can wade ashore from landing crafts. They tried wading the Saracen, by adding extended air and exhaust pipes for the engine.

So the army took the first Stalwart to look at, and decided to stick it in the sea.

They spent some 16 man hours preparing PV1 for wading, by applying special wrap, sealants, etc.

After 20 minutes in the water, they drained 30 gallons (126 litres) out of the hull

Alvis staff saw this, and decided that Stalwart should swim. So they designed the Stalwart so that it was a permanent 6x6, that could quickly and easily swim across a river if really necessary by having a hull as watertight as possible.

Alvis sold the Stalwart more as a boat that could go on land, rather than a truck that could swim if necessary.

Alvis made 15 prototypes, including the non swimming first one.

126 mark 1 FV620

and 965 mark 2 - which includes the FV622, FV623 Arty and FV624 REME.

Note. The difference between the Arty and the REME is that the REME version has anti creep valves in the crane's hydraulic pipe work. With pallets of ammunition, it doesn't matter if the load drops down over time as it is not used for holding loads in the air, whilst the REME crane has to suspend a gearbox or engine in the air whilst things are fitted/disconnected - and the item has to remain that that exact height whilst the work is being done.

The sales figures for other countries is low because America and France wanted their own brand of vehicle that was in the pipeline. Germany was due to buy 100 Stalwarts, but then dropped out.

But also remember that other countries did not have the large commitment of troops deployed to Germany to fend off the Warsaw pack like Britain and America had.

The mark 1 Stalwart cost £16,000 in 1964, that's 177,439.98 1964 Deutsche mark

The mark 2 Stalwart cost £20,000 in 1966, that's 222,740.00 1966 Deutsche mark

The Stalwart was an amazing thing off road, and could get just about anywhere in Germany to supply the tanks, artillery guns etc.

We stopped swimming the Stalwarts in 1983. The Medium Girder bridge (MGB) was a whole lot quicker to construct than the old Bailey bridges, and other bridging styles (BR90) was in the pipework.

This photo below shows a Medium Girder bridge being constructed. You can see that they have just finished constructing the far bank tapered end, and are about to start adding panel sections to the bridge.

But in the foreground, a BR90 bridge was started at the same time, and they're about to land the bridge on the far bank. The MGB is going to be some hours before they get to completion.

The other thing to consider with using vehicles for river crossings, is how do you get them into and out of the river.

Any invasion spends hours in advance checking the beaches for suitable locations to drive on. If the river bank is too steep, or the ground too soft then it will cause more problems.

They looked at ways to resolve how the RCT could get into and out of water if the Royal Engineers are tied up building bridges, laying mines, or other works.

They tried this matting, called MOMAT, but found that the structure blocked the cab hatches from being used, had problems deploying it, and the tyre grip wasn't that great on it.

The idea was dropped.

The replacement for the Stalwart eventually was the DROPS system. The off road performance wasn't as good as the Stalwart, but it was more suitable for tarmac driving.

If they had developed the Stalwart further, then it could have been 6x2 with air lockers operating pistons to engage and disengage the drives to the front and rear wheels. Trevor Bailie of Ireland has converted his Stalwart with air lockers, and it happily drives around on tarmac in 2 and even 1 wheel drive. But it's not carrying 5 tonnes of cargo on it's back.

In the picture below - The piston in the yellow cylinder pushes the purple collar back into the copper coloured sleeve to give the drive. And when not needed, the cylinder pulls the collar back out, giving 2 or 4 wheel drive.

It would have been very easy for the British to have done this long ago.

I have a letter from Alvis to the MOD dated 1982, advising that Stalwart was a very expensive and technical vehicle, and if they wanted to order more then the whole project including the welding templates, etc would have to be made again.

See https://drive.google.com/file/…EZ8eSmlZ/view?usp=sharing

I also have a playlist of Stalwart films, which includes a number of old army and Press release films - here

I hope that helps to explain a few things.

Mark

Zitat von Bullitreiber

The Stalwart can also fly

Yes, they can fly.

But did you notice that it nearly went under when it "Belly flopped" onto the water.

And did you notice the long pause between it hitting the unforgiving water, and the driver engaging the marine propulsion system. Probably due to the shattered backbone that he just received

Better to jump as low as possible to the water