Snow Trac Anti Tank Vehicle

Hello
I am new to this forum but basically I am a model maker doing some research into the Royal Marines and came across the attached picture of a Snow Trac carrying a Wombat anti tank weapon. Does anyone have any more pictures or know any details?
Regards,
Paul

Paul, I've not seen one of those, but we have a member named "Tommo" who was in the British forces, stationed in Norway, who used Snow Tracs when he was in the service there. He is currently in Bagdhad, Iraq as a private security consultant, but OCCASIONALLY checks into the forum.

You might want to send him a "PM" and the next time he has a chance to check into the forums he may be able to help you out.

Cool!

Paul Ramsden said:

Hello
I am new to this forum but basically I am a model maker doing some research into the Royal Marines and came across the attached picture of a Snow Trac carrying a Wombat anti tank weapon. Does anyone have any more pictures or know any details?
Regards,
Paul

Click to expand...

Paul, what I think we are looking was made no earlier than the mid-late 1960's and probably is more current than that. From studying the photo, it has the 3 belt track design and the large front wheel. On the military verisons that I have seen all had the fuel tank positioned outside of the cabin and over the left track at the rear of the unit. I cannot tell from the photo if that is a fuel tank at the rear of the Snow Trac in your photo, but I suspect it probably is.

Below is an advertisement for an open top Snow Trac, which is very likely the same basic configuration as the one in your photo (although the one in the advertisement is an earlier model, probably dating from the early 1960's as it shows the old style drivers seat, and the old style small wheels, also different are the front fenders as the advertisement shows short fenders, which are very uncommon, and the one in your photo shows the traditional full fenders).

For your reference, here are a couple other threads that you should look at for information. You will see that each of the units shown have the fuel tank outboard at the rear left side of the machine. You will also see on the 2 camo versions that track splices were carried on the front fenders, this is common in all the camo configurations I have seen photos of. Also, there was a special NATO front hitch arrangement that is shown on the units in the attached threads, unfortunately the REME museum Snow Trac does not include all the parts to the front hitch.

British Commando camo painted Snow Trac Thread.

Here is another Royal Marines Snow Trac Thread.

Reme Museum's Snow Trac Thread.

I recintly donated an actual picture of one of these when it was new, from the factory photo collection. Warren Jones has it and said he would post it on his Snow Trac Web Site. The operator is dressed in a white snow suit just like on the above flyer, but instead of guns, it has a load of freshly cut lumber. Notice the smaller bogie wheels? They were steel, not pnumatic, with 2 in the place of every one regular rubber tire. The track was also different. It was a one piece moulded track with the cleats not exposed, that is moulded right in. The front sprockets were also different. It looked like 2 Wire rings with teeth recessed in closer to the brake drum. This represents the earliest attempts of Westermaskiner to build a snow machine. The small wheels were so much trouble and led to detracking, that the company immediately upgraded to the larger Pnumatic wheel for the bogeys. Perhaps only a half dozen were produced this way. A guy in California has one, but it's missing a track. The track incorperated a ridge running down the center that kept, or more correctly, was supposed to keep the track on. There were no cleat guides on this model. Tracks were made of UNOBTAINIUM.

Lyndon, just to be clear, you are referring to the small bogey wheels & tracks on the advertisement I posted, not on the top photo of the military unit that has the Wombat tank-killer mounted. Am I correct?

Yes, this is correct. The one in the first photo with the armmaments is what I call the British Military model. Bill Guthrie in Idaho had 2 that a guy here in Washington imported from england, along with a 3rd that he kept and 2 of the early Hagland/Volvo prototypes. The other Military rig that's much nicer is the NATO machine, and it had the spare track sections like a WW2 tank, a tall cab, the round pipe for a winch mount, front and rear, rear fenders, external fuel tank, fire exstingusher, shovel, knock down strobe light, real wing windows that open and was one single color of dark green.

The Early US Army ones were just like the civilian ones except that the upper cab was made of sheet brass instead of aluminum. Very early machines also had a teter toter arm roughly where the first shock goes and only one shock which was hooked to the second pair of bogey's. These machines all had the 36 Hp motor. The one in the flyer is probably one of these, putting it at 1957. A hunter in Alaska owns serial number 58, and it is somewhat original, with the shock arraingement as mentioned above, and a rebuilt 36 HP. Somewhere I have pictures of this machine. The owner had done a rather clever installation of a propane heater in the rear of the cab. A guy has one of the Brass cab's in North Pole and still takes it out once a year on hunts. The next to last dealer of snow tracs in alaska located the serial number 2 rig. It was at a fish processing facility in AK and was used to drag big fish nets up a ramp. Fish hooks in the tracks,pretty beat up, stank, but still ran as of 1994. It also would have been a brass cab. This would have been one of the original first machines that the US military purchased to "Try Out".

no idea but it would be kind of a quick way to clear the drifts from my driveway!

Re: Snow Plowing with Snow Trac

The 2nd owner of the snow trac dealership in alaska, Al Gartz, had a snow trac set up to plow driveways. He was in Delta Junction and said it did a great job but was a pain to move from site to site on a trailer. The year after I bought him out of all his spare parts, I got put up in Delta Junction as part of my job and spent about a month and a half there. The town has a very small population, and everyone there remembered Al plowing with his ST4. They all pretty much had the same comments "that thing plows snow better than anything they had ever seen"!

Bob
Thanks for the info. I went to see the REME snow trac as its not far from me. See it for real clarrified a few issues. I am fairly sure that the Wombat snow trak didnt have external fuel tanks but rather old ammo boxes on the fenders for storage. This would make sense as the back blast from the wombat would probably cause them to explode! Where would the internal fuel tank be?
Also the REME vehicle had a single swival drivers seat, is this normal? as I have read mention of a front bench seat.
I took lots of pictures at the museum but couldnt get inside. Do you have any pictures of the inside I could use with dashboard detail, steering controls, pedals etc?

PAUL,
I would ask the museum if you could be given a tour of the inside of the Snow Trac. Explain to them you are a professional model builder and want to do a detailed model of the military version Snow Trac. Explain to them how you wont touch anything and ask if you could just take a few pictures. Maybe even offer them a free model? Anyway thats how I would approach them. As far as where the tanks were located. Most were outside on the military version. On the Wambat version I would suspect they would have had dual tanks. one under each side bench seat. This would allow the Wambat to swing left and right. Ammo would be easier to reach if on the decks as well and were probably mounted on there sides to allow gun swivel. The drivers seat is a single seat all versions.

Paul
I posted every photo of the REME Snow Trac that I have, but I the photos on the website are of only modest resolution. I have higher resolution versions of the same photos, but they are not much higher resolution.

I really wish Tommo had some time to get onto the Forums because he may be the person who could actually answer you. As he has recently survived a Bagdhad shooting/ambush, I can't say as I blame him for not spending all his time here.

Ammo cans were commonly carried on the rails, but so were fuel tanks. I understand that the NATO Snow Tracs had dual tanks. I also believe they were outboard tanks. The Wombat equipped Snow Trac may be configured differently!

Bob,
In the photo above I only see the ammo cans (at least on the left side). I also feel they would have stored the tanks inside under the bench because of the possible ignition source of the weapon firing. The blast would be a huge almost invisible fireball to the human eye. BUT with a slow motion camera system there would be a huge muzzle blast!

The photo Lyndon mentioned above, and several other military Snow-Trac photos, can be seen at http://www.snow-trac.com/photos-military.htm

Special thanks to Lyndon for making these photos available. More of his Snow-Trac photo collection will be posted in the near future.

Paul,

Sorry i wiped of your email address so i will try to anwser your question from here.

Firstly, Wombat stands for Weapon of Magnesium Battalion Anti Tank.

Support comany of 45 Cdo, Royal Marines (UK) where using snow tracs around 1973-74 with the WOMBAT attached to them in Norway each year and they were stored and maintained in the hangar on the airfield at Condor, Arbroath, Scotland. Try writing to the Corps Museum for info. I think the museum is at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines in Lympstone, Exmouth, Devon, UK. You might be able to do a web search and find the Museum details and also try looking for the Corps magazine called 'The Globe and Laurel'. There will surely be old G&L articles on the web some where! The Royal Marines first went to Norway in 1969 (I think). The BV 202s came in around 1978/79, so the Snow tracs could have run from 1971/72.

I'm sorry i cant be of any further help at the moment but i'm in Baghdad, Iraq and can only do web searches myself for the info you may need! The Globe and Laurel magazine will be a good place to find snow trac photo's with them under helicopters, with men being towed behind them, towing all manner of equipment and things! I can find out more but need more time to put aside for this task and i'm not in that position at the moment.

Happy hunting and please send any other Q's and i'll see what i can do.

Bob, it's worth looking out for the 'Globe and Laurel' magazines for your Snow trac collection has they will have a lot of info on deployments to Norway with Snow tracs and WOMBATs etc!

Ok guy's and girl's gotta go, speak to you all as and when i can

you seem to have quite a bit of knowledge about the Booties Arctic ops do you know if 45 Cdo used Aktiv Skidoo grizzlies

Just thought you might like to know that the snowtrac that donated the new top for mine is being converted to carry a Wombat, hence it no longer needs its top! What do you want to know, exactly as I can ask Phil who is doing the conversion on his other snowtrac and has the Wombat to go on it?

Hi
I know its a bit of a late responce but I havent checked the forum for ages.
If your friend Phil is in the UK I would sure like to see his snowtrac wombat conversion.
Or at least see some pictures.
Regards
Paul

Yes, he lives in the UK.