Mechanics keep the lifesaving Mastiff on Helmand's roads

The Mastiff has only been in Afghanistan for five months, but the protection its heavy armour affords troops, notably against mines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) is already becoming legendary.

Attached to the King's Royal Hussars, who are currently operating the Mastiffs in Helmand, is a nine person team of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), amongst whom is vehicle mechanic Corporal Barri Penrose from Tonypandy in the Welsh Rhonda Valley.

The REME team run a workshop in a huge canvas horseshoe-shaped grey dusty hangar in Camp Bastion (the main British support base in Helmand), with one side open to the sun and dust. Outside are a handful of dirty Mastiffs, one or two missing their front wheels, while a couple more are being worked on inside.

The unit's job is to provide support for the troops running operations and patrols in Helmand by repairing the Mastiffs and inspecting them when they return to Camp Bastion:

"The Mastiff has made a hell of a lot of difference to the operation here," said Corporal Penrose. "We would have lost a lot of guys if they'd been in other vehicles so the amount of lives the Mastiff is saving, especially if you take into account the girlfriends and families back home, that would be affected, the vehicle is having a massive impact."

The REME team also actually go out on operations as vehicle fitters with the Mastiffs, making any repairs that can be made there and then. And when Corporal Penrose first arrived in Afghanistan he was a flying fitter, which meant he would be flown out by a Chinook helicopter to where a vehicle had been damaged in order to repair it.

On one occasion he was flown into Forward Operating Base Arnhem when they were taking incoming mortar and small arms fire. He has been in Afghanistan since September 2007 and during that time he says that no mine strikes against the Mastiffs have caused any serious casualties:

"Anyone going anywhere in Helmand wants to be going in a Mastiff," he added.

The hull of the Mastiff is V-shaped, as opposed to a normal flat shaped hull, which pushes the force of any explosion outwards. The armour on the Mastiff also gives it a lot of protection but it means they are heavy, weighing about 23 tons, and that's without the people, weapons, water and other kit that go with them out on patrol:

"You need to know how to drive them," says Corporal Penrose. "When we first came out here we were getting a few problems, but with experience the guys are getting used to them."

That experience is gained when on operations, where the vehicles are also a lot heavier with extra armour than they are at the Defence School of Transport (DST) in the UK, where troops who will be using the Mastiff in Afghanistan or Iraq are trained prior to their deployment.

The driver's course at DST is eight days long and, for the Commanders, ten days. Staff Sergeant Hugle, from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, who has been to Iraq with the Mastiff in a training role, is the Mastiff team leader at DST:

"It's a very intense course," he says. "We do get the odd failures, but the majority of the guys do pass and we get them up to a good enough standard, where they'll be able to use the vehicle on operations safely. The vehicle itself isn't that hard to drive. It's learning to drive it using the indirect vision system, that's hard."

The indirect vision system is another safety measure of the Mastiff which means it can be driven at night time without using any lights. Cameras at the front, back and sides of the vehicle use infra red to see in the dark and the driver uses a small TV screen to see where he is going. It's a bit like playing a computer game.

Speaking about the strength of the Mastiff, Staff Sergeant Hugle added:

"You can blow a complete wheel station off the vehicle and it will keep going."

Replacing those wheel stations is just one of the many repair jobs the REME team undertake, along with fixing the armour, changing engines and gear boxes, and just about everything else any other vehicle might need doing to it:

"The mine strikes can blow the wheel axles off, but it's nothing irreplaceable, we can fix an axle in about two hours. The vehicle is designed to be taken apart. Any decent mechanic could get on with these," says Corporal Penrose who is not only a mechanic but is also a trained commander, driver and gunner on the vehicle, and has ridden top cover in Helmand.

"I'd rather be out on the ground," he says, "but if there's no-one here to fix the vehicles, then they don't go anywhere."

And for the lifesaving Mastiff, it is an imperative that they are fixed and back out in the thick of it as soon as possible:

"In Afghanistan and Iraq, the vehicle is second-to-none," said Staff Sergeant Hugle back in the UK. "For what they are using it for, whether that's a force protection role or a fighting patrol, its armour can take most things, if not everything it will come up against."