Dingo, Ferret & Fox

[Mossie]

Thread for the Daimler armoured cars, anticipating the new 1/35 Airfix Ferret kit.

First thoughts:
Irish Ferret
Fox was designed to replace both the Ferret & Saladin, so maybe one with a 76mm gun
Fox with a Scimitar or Scorpion turret (reverse of the Sabre).  This also would give you a 76mm gun in the case of the Scorpion.
Daimler Dingo with a turret.

[Pellson]

I have an old Matchbox 1/76 Dingo, in serious need of upgrading. I like your thinking.

[Mossie]

I was unaware before I posted but apparently some Dingos had Ferret urrets, especially those used in Malaysia.

[Captain Canada]

Always liked the Ferret. Used to see a few scurrying around Camp Borden when were was boys.

[zenrat]

Kid in my school used to get dropped off in a Dingo.

[Weaver]

The Fox turret ring was smaller than Scorpion/Scimitar, so the latter's turrets wouldn't go straight on: that's why the Sabre needed an adaptor ring.

There were Ferret-ish variants of the Fox proposed at various times called the Vixen or the Panga, which only got as far as prototypes AFAIK. It had a 2-3 man crew, and a flat roof over the fighting compartment which was open at the back above the engine deck in some versions. A variety of turrets were trialled, including the Peak GPMG turret seen on some FV432s, and various Helio FVT-series one-man turrets with various guns going up to a 25mm chain gun.

There were two ATGW versions of the Ferret, one with the standard turret fitting with a Vigilant box launcher on each side, and one with an all-new, very flat turret with a 7.62mm MG and four Swingfires in elevating boxes. The former saw quite extensive use with the British Army, but the latter was only used for a brief time in small numbers. The problem in both cases was the number of reloads that could be carried. The Swingfire version could only carry two, and those only at the cost of the spare wheel.

You could, therefore, do a what-if version with other ATGWs, possibly for an export customer. A TOW pedestal is probably too big & awkward for the space, but MILAN seems very doable, with a standard firing post on an open ring mount in place of the turret. Alternatively, SS-11s were fitted to just about everything else, or you could have a vehicle from a west-gone-east country retrofitted with Saggers. Both of those would probably carry the missiles on the sides of the standard turret. You could probably get a HOT Compact Turret with four missiles on it, but I doubt whether you'd be able to find room for any reloads.

The problem with finding alternative roles for the Ferret is that it was so damned small. It was ideal for recce-by-stealth, but it was so tightly tailored around that role that it couldn't really function as a multi-role 'platform' in the way that an armoured Hummer or a VBL can. Ironically, the modern solution is the take the 'armoured car' moniker even more literally than they did in the past and produce a 4-seat vehicle with about the same form factor as a civilian SUV but with armour and a remote weapon station.

[Weaver]

Bit more info:

The Vixen had a revised hull that filled out the space between the wheels, a lower roof and could seat upto four (although it looks pretty cramped). Vixen was fully developed and intended to replace the Ferret, but it was cancelled in 1974 due to lack of funds. You could always do a what-if Ferret version with a similar mod.

There were also standard Fox hulls fitted with the Peak and Helio turrets which were called, variously, Polecat or Stoat initially, but then just seem to have been renamed 'Fox-<calibre>' or Panga for export.

Vixen:













 

[Weaver]

South African Ferrets fitted with 106mm recoilless rifles. From what I read, these conversions were made for the South African parachute regiment, but they were only ever used for training. As with the various ATGW variants, the problem was on-board ammo supply: they could only carry about 4 rounds. Apparently .50 M2HBs were trialled as well.

[Rheged]

Useful data and pix.   Thank you gentlemen!

[Weaver]

Fox with various export turrets. None of these entered production.


Fox/25. This had an FMC one-man turret with a Hughes 25mm Chain Gun and a 7.62mm co-ax:




Fox/MILAN. This had a turret with a 7.62mm MG (either a chain gun or an FN MAG) in the front and an independently rotating twin MILAN launcher on the roof. 6 missiles were carried in total.




Fox/Scout. This was just the Fox/MILAN with the ATGW turret removed.




Panga. This was an export variant aimed specifically at Malaysia. It had a Helio FVT800 turret with a 12.7mm and a 7.62mm MG. These Helio FVT-series turrets were common to many AFVs bought or considered by Malaysia at the time.

[Weaver]

Ferret 80.

This was a proposed major update of the Ferret for the export market in the early 1980s.
It had a revised superstructure in 2 or 3 man versions, and a variety of cupolas and turrets with weapons up to 20mm.
A prototype was built, but there were no takers.

Note that the 3-views & specs below are from two different brochures (I think) and show some design changes from one to the other.
I've compressed some of these brochure pages: there was a lot of graphic-designer blank space in the original.

[Weaver]

Ferret Mk.2-3 with extra stowage at the rear. This illustrates another practical problem with the very small size of the vehicle.

[Weaver]

The website where I got these two images had zero information about them, but the image titles describe them as "Harimau scout car prototype". 'Harimau' means 'Tiger' in Indonesian and Malay, so I presume that this was either another attempt to sell updated Ferrets to one of those countries or a local upgrade programme. In either case, it doesn't seem to have got beyond prototypes. The turret looks similar to the ones fitted to the GKN Simba 4x4 APCs sold to the Phillippines, in which case the gun is a 12.7mm M2HB. The engine deck's modified too, which implies a bigger (almost certainly diesel) engine.

[Weaver]

More images with little background info, sad to say.

The first is a Ferret with a 20mm Oerlikon cannon in an open mount trials installation:




The next two are of a Ferret with a US machine-gun turret. I think I'm right in saying it's the one off the LVTP-5:

[PR19_Kit]

To show how little I know about AFVs, the turret on the left hand one looks just like one I scratchbuilt to go on top of an Airfix Buffalo, and that is an LVTP-5 isn't it? I modelled it after an article in Airfix mag in the late 60s, and until now it was the ONLY AFV I'd ever built. 

Somewhere I still have it too, amazing.