Please find the following information on the lightweight land rover club forum with regards RN Lightweights
Regards
Paul
Hi all.
Been looking over at the EMLRA forum in particular at this thread The Half Ton Military Land Rover book. In the last paragraph of this reply (Clicky) there is the quote...
It seems there is now a possibility of unearthing what a real Royal Navy Lightweight looks like.
...and in this (Clicky) reply there is the comment...
There is no photograph at all of a Royal Navy livery L'wt that I know of, but it should be possible to shake out.
Now this kind of surprised me as I have a Royal Navy 24V Lightweight with Royal Navy Livery sitting on my front which is complete and original except for having 750 tyres and a hard top plonked on instead of a soft top as it hasn't been used for years. The Original Reg was 03 RN 23 and I have the key card for it which shows the following.
28/11/74 Despatched to CVD Hilton
16/12/74 into service
13/05/83 Enhanced Shore Support Hermes
16/04/84 Stock vehicles Portsmouth
25/06/85 HMS Invincible
19/08/85 Stock vehicles Portsmouth
17/04/86 BCA Blackbushe Auctions
Wally Dugan did suggest that in his experience there was probably another key card for my Lightweight somewhere as it would be rare for one to be in storage for 9 years and it possibly existed on a previous registration.
Now value is irrelevant to me as I plan on keeping it a fair amount of time but I must admit it's history intrigues me. First I've never seen another Lightweight with Royal Navy livery on it, the livery is restricted to the top removable panel on the rear tub. The quoted thread from the EMLRA forum seems to suggest it is something of a rarity so does anyone know how rare it actually for a Lightweight to have Royal Navy Livery? Second does anyone know if it's at all possible to work out what happened in it's first 9 years of life?