Oxford Diecast 76K2001 1/76 RASC-Katy Western Desert Austin K2 Ambulance

 

A brand new World War II Ambulance joins Oxford’s 1:76 scale Military series and it has wartime Royal connections. It has also featured in several media roles of the period, notably  the film Ice Cold in Alex starring John Mills, where it was called ‘Katy, Our model brings back to life that vehicle as it appeared in the movie.  Many images of the then Princess Elizabeth in her wartime ATS uniform show her either under the bonnet or behind the wheel of a K2 Ambulance which she was trained to drive.         

 

The Austin K2/Y Ambulance, affectionately known as KATY, was built between 1939 and 1945 by Austin at their Longbridge plant in conjunction with Mann Egerton - well-known for their bus body manufacturing expertise. It was quite a large vehicle, 18ft in length, 7ft 5 inches wide and just over 9 feet high. To save as much space as possible for the wounded, the crew was limited to 2-3 personnel. Weighing just over 3 tons, the K2 came with a 6-cylinder 3462 Austin D-Series engine with four speed gearbox and had a top speed of around 50 mph. The vehicle featured two petrol tanks, one on each side holding 12 gallons of fuel each. Just over 13,000 K2 Ambulances were built and proved very popular with British and Commonwealth troops as well as US forces. Two large doors across the back opened up to enable the K2 to accommodate ten casualties sitting or four stretchers. The rear body had been designed specially by the Royal Army Medical Corps and built by Mann Egerton. The driver’s cab did not have doors but folding canvas sheets instead.  Similar access also meant that the patients could be reached from the driver’s cab through a small internal door with a seat. The exterior of the vehicle comprised mostly painted canvas. A feature which helps date the variations of the K2 was the shape of the roof vents. Early ones were round and later ones square. Our Oxford tooling is based on the early version with round roof ventilators.