Bovington
Bovington RE Wing
From Mike Collins - member of this unit
RE WING BOVINGTON was formed 50 years ago, in September 1961, to train Armoured Engineer crewmen (drivers and gunners) for 26 Armoured Engineer in BAOR, and all subsequent squadrons as they were formed; 2 Sqn and then 31 Sqn. It is now called the Combat Support Wing of the RAC centre.
From Ron Beat - also a member of this unit
Formed in 1961 and formal title was Independant UK Troop, 26 Armoured Engineer Squadron. I was the first Chief Clerk
RE Support Troop
I've had this from BlueGeorge today (Jan 2012) which is hopefully a bit of a personal insight into the unit -
The unit (I use that description very loosely) was the 'RE Support Troop' based at Bovington, it was as you suggest a stand alone troop managed by a troop commander (Captain) and a troop Staff Sgt and approx 20 other ranks (3 x CPL 3x L/Cpl and a rabble of other ruffians.
They were under the day to day management of the regiment running the RAC centre at Bovington but came under the RE wing D&M School for admin purposes etc.
Their task was to manage all the AFV's used for teaching all Armoured Engineers Class 3 up to Class 1 as well as CET operators/crewmen.
We ran 4 separate sections, CET( with 6 CET's), Chieftain (2 x Training Wedges and 3 x AVLB's) and a Centurion section (2 x Cent' Mk5 Wedges, 1x Mk7 105 Gun Tank and 3 x Mk 5 165 AVRE's) as well as having a 2 man MT section who ran an LWB land rover and a Scammel Bridge transporter for the Chieftain AVLB N08 and No9 bridges.
A great bunch of lads who were the best at what they did in Armoured circles.
In 1982 RE support troop sent 2 Cet's and 4 crew attached to 59 Ind Cdo Sqn RE on Operation Corporate (Falkland Islands) where they performed admirably and were credited with shooting down an A4 Skyhawk using small arms fire!
RE Trials & Development Unit (RETDU)
I know nothing about this unit, so feel free to email me with some information to put here.
UKTI DSO EST (B)
I heard about this unit from Rob Daniels - the Export Support Team was a sub-unit at Bovvy apparently. I have no idea what they did though!
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