Paul Hazell has restored the only complete survivor of the 15 TAC-T crash tenders manufactured. John Blackman takes a close look

It has to be said that Paul Hazell is a bit of a sport. I hadn’t expected for one second that he’d agree to donning a fire-fighting suit and pose for this month’s front cover like some sort of silver Stig. But there you are; let no one suggest that serious enthusiasts don’t have a sense of humour. And Paul is certainly a serious enthusiast when it comes to crash tenders, owning both a TACR-1 and the superb TAC-T you see here.

Paul traces his interest in crash tenders to having seen the TACR-1 at air days (his father was in the Fleet Air Arm) back in the seventies. ‘I didn’t really know what it was at the time but tracked one down 30 years later and managed to buy and restore it. My interest is in crash tenders rather than fire appliances, and because of my existing enthusiasm for Land Rovers – I’ve had many of them over the years – the logical thing to do was to look at Land Rover airfield crash tenders. Hence I have a TACR-1, a TACT-T, and I’ve recently acquired an ACR-T which is another RAF crash vehicle that predates the TACR-1; it was a powder vehicle rather than foam. That’s the next to be restored.’   

There were only 15 TACT-T (truck fire-fighting, crash, tactical) ever constructed, so it is a particularly rare vehicle with or without the dedicated powered-axle trailer which, for reasons we will come to, frequently got separated. Paul acquired his example almost by chance, which is often the way. Having already got one TACR-1, he rescued a second from a field in Sussex, more to save it than anything else, and word got around the fire-appliance enthusiast community. Out of the blue, Paul got a call from Gordon Smith, an ex-RAF fireman, who was interested in buying the rescued TACR-1. During conversation, Paul learned that Gordon had a TAC-T that he’d owned for some 10 years and had dismantled but never got around to restoring.

For the full feature pick up the May issue of Classic Military Vehicle magazine.
Back issues available here