Thornycroft Nubian 4x4 Airfield Crash Tender

As Lang said, welcome to the forum. As an ex-Nirimba MOBI from the '60s, I remember the unit being required to fight a fire in the Officers Ward room, but by the time they got it started, the local town brigade backed up by Blacktown had arrived and gone to work.

Wiching on the Nubian
@ the Melb Tank Museum





cya

Thanks for the responses. I have a picture of the Schofields Bush Fire Brigade Blitz at the Wardroom fire (was a member of the brigade for many years). In the course of chasing down further information on the unit I have had replies from a couple of others who were at Nirimba and remembered the old girl. One actually supplied the image of her in 1957 whilst the other said that there were a number of interesting stories (but did not expand). Hopefully it will be no more difficult to start now.
As a rare unit the contact at the Thornycroft Register at first said that they were a common unit but, later, realised that it was the Mk5s he was thinking of. This unit design was found to be underpowered and they moved to the Rolls Royce B80 engine (also used in many Dennis fire engines). Also (I believe) that they tended to be a little unstable. I believe that the move to the 6 wheel Nubian versions overcame the issues (as can be seen by their longevity in service). Morris, thank you for the offer but this is definitely a one off. With regard to units found, the RAN Fleet Air Arm Museum supplied copies of the one that was at HMAS Albatross and another image of the one at Nirimba. I have since found a similar unit at the RAF Firefighting Museum in the UK and a Royal Canadian Air Force unit. This design (with the steel shutter doors in the area of the pump) appears to be a design for the Royal Navy. This one at Nirimba ties in with its history as a Royal Navy aircraft maintenance facility and, later HMAS Nirimba, Royal Australian Naval Air Station Schofields (1953 to 1956) being retained after the establishment recommissioned as HMAS Nirimba (the RANs trade training establishment).

Just as an update: I have found no further information to support this unit being offered as a Nubian. From the factory register held by the Hampshire Cultural Trust it was a TF/AC4/1 chassis supplied to Sun Engineering on the 7th May 1953.

On the 31st of Jan 2019 Nirpro shared his story about the Thornycroft Nubian crash tender he owns that came from the Nirimba air base, we own a truck that came from the Albatross air base but missing the fire fighting gear from the back . I would like to contact Nirpro as we might be able to help each other as we hope to do a similar type of rebuild.

memory refresher for you really old farts.... n me:-
www.hcvc.com.au/forum/truck_Chat/17868-t...-fire-tender?start=0



not sure I got that link right, getting older by the minute.

Them fire trucks were actually based at a particular base for their term of service ??

Via auction, I picked up one of the old Titans last year and it appears to have been everywhere...



.

I've just spliced these two threads together. Gary, Nirpro hasn't logged in fro some Time.. I'd suggest you join the Forum & send Him a PM..


Here's a link to enable you to Join the Forum.. forum@hcvc.com.au

Hi,

I sent an email to Nirpro this morning to let him/her know there was someone looking for them, so they may respond.

Terry

More than happy to assist where I can just need to work out contact process. One matter from the much earlier response, I was remiss in attributing the image of the Nirimba unit taken in 1957 on the airfield. It came from the photo album of Tom Shaw (apologies to Tom for not offering that information at the time).