Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Circuit breaker Day 2 pix: Singapore Army Armour Formation AMX-13 SM1 Tank Crew


Social distancing? What's that?

One of the last batches of Singapore Army AMX-13 SM1 trainees gather in front of their French-built light tanks at Sungei Gedong Camp in early November 2006. This was the day then Minister for Defence, Teo Chee Hean, announced that the army had purchased Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks. The German-made Leopards were acquired second-hand from the Bundeswehr (German armed forces).



At the time, the APFSDS-T round (Project Spider) was still classified. I was allowed to write about it 10 years later (!) for one of the books that marked the 50th anniversary of Singapore's Defence Technology Community. I wrote two chapters (development of armoured fighting vehicles and development of small arms) for the book on Land Systems.

The young SM1 tank crews, then serving their full-time National Service, would have completed their NS obligations by now. I wonder what they're up to now.


3 comments:

D-Boy said...

David, thanks for providing a nice daily distraction through this difficult period. Will be looking forward to your posts.

Please stay safe!

Cyril said...

Yes, more stuff please David.

Callsign 24S

Foo Mun said...

My brother was working in ST Engineering then. He was one of the assistant engineers involved in the conversion of AMX-13 using a semi-automatic gearbox in the mid 80s.