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Aus Camo Abrams
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Aus Camo Abrams
By Garry Wait
On Saturday 11th November 2023 I was fortunate to attend a reunion at my old Regiment, 2/14 Light Horse Regiment (Queensland Mounted Infantry). In the WWIII: Team Yankee period this regiment was an Armoured Personnel Carrier regiment with three “Saber” squadrons (or combat squadrons), each capable of lifting an infantry battalion of four companies along with providing M125 mortars.
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In addition, the Regiment had a Headquarters Squadron capable of providing separate armoured command vehicles and support for those three infantry battalions along with a technical support squadron. I can recall the pristine condition of the M125 mortar tracks as we never took those out in the field much. NO tanks held sadly, the only unit to have Leopard AS1 MBT were 1 Armoured Regiment.
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Originally the Regiment was painted in olive drab (see pic below) and this changed around 1989/1990 to current Auscam paint scheme you can see here. As this is applied by crews in the field, there can be a variance in camo schemes. Each sabre squadron was lettered A through C with a nickname allowed for each vehicle. For example, the Abrams shown here is nicknamed Crash as it’s C Squadron vehicle. I once drove a B Squadron vehicle named Boomerang for another example.
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Nowadays the Regiment (QMI as we call it for short) is known as an Armoured Cavalry regiment with a combination of M113AS4 (stretched M113 with a new powered turret), ASLAV-25 Light Armoured Vehicles and Boxers in reconnaissance roles and M1A1 Abrams as MBT.
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As I understand it, the structure is currently A Squadron with ASLAV 25 and variants, B Squadron with Boxer variants and C Squadron with M1A1 AIM Abrams MBT’s. ASLAV are currently being replaced by Boxers which are an amazing piece of equipment.
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To assist the avid painters amongst us, I have enclosed royalty free pics I took personally (you can even see me in the turret). Sadly I wasn’t allowed to take pics inside the Abrams but it has a white paint scheme inside apart from the hatch colours.
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For those who are older like myself or after less of a challenge, I have enclosed a pic of the Leopard AS1 as it existed for most of the 1980’s and a pic of the M113A1 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle (known as the M113 T50 in game) and what it looked like when debussing infantry in the 1980’s.
Happy painting.
~Garry Wait
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