Danish Army 109 Sylvania Telephone Exchange
A Royal Danish Army Series III 109-inch, registration 51.258, carrying a tall rounded-roof shelter body fitted with a Sylvania automatic telephone exchange — a field switchboard on wheels — in the Danish three-colour camouflage of olive, black and green, with a spare on the bonnet and a Dannebrog emblem on the wing.
History
The Danish Army bought the Series III Land Rover in quantity after its October 1971 introduction, and had it bodied by outside contractors in a long list of specialist forms — radio relay, teletype van, ambulance, bus, station car, pick-up, mortar fire direction centre. This one carries a shelter body fitted with a Sylvania automatic telephone exchange: a mobile switchboard that could be driven to a headquarters or signals node and patched into field telephone lines, so that a formation's command posts could talk to each other without waiting for a permanent exchange to be built. The shelter is heated by an Eberspächer D4L heater for the operators inside.
The documented vehicle, 51.258, was photographed by Henrik Clausen in Copenhagen and is recorded by the Danish Army Vehicles Homepage with the type's figures: 4.56 m long, 1.63 m wide and 2.41 m high with the shelter, 2,700 kg, the 2,286 cc four-cylinder diesel of 59 hp, a four-speed gearbox with two-speed transfer case, 12/24-volt electrics, 90 litres of fuel for 350 km, a crew of two and a prepared fording depth of 0.7 m. Its camouflage is the Danish three-colour scheme applied to the army's vehicles from the 1980s: an olive-green base with large black and lighter green blotches over cab, bonnet and shelter alike, the registration stencilled on the wings and carried on a black plate at the front, and the small red-and-white Dannebrog emblem on the right wing. Who built the shelter, and how many exchange vehicles the army fielded, are not stated in the source.
Imagery
Registry record
- Manufacturer
- Land Rover; shelter body by an outside contractor (not named in the source)
- Manufactured
- Series III from October 1971; this vehicle's build year not recorded
- Engine type
- 2,286 cc Land Rover four-cylinder diesel, 59 hp at 4,000 rpm
- Production run
- Unknown — one vehicle documented
- Country of origin
- United Kingdom / Denmark
- Operated in
- Denmark
- Status
- unknown
Catalogue data
- Record kind
- Named model
- Model line
- Series III
- Wheels
- 4
- Nominal wheelbase
- 109″
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Sources & citations
Researched sources
- Landrover 109 S III — Danish Army specific: fitted with a Sylvania Automatic Telephone Exchange; dimensions, weight, engine and equipment (photograph courtesy Henrik Clausen, Copenhagen) ↗ — Danish Army Vehicles Homepage (accessed 2026-09-11)
Catalogue references
- https://www.armyvehicles.dk/lr109syl.htm https://www.armyvehicles.dk/lr109syl.htm ↗
Registry record updated 2026-09-11T05:54:41.729Z · status: researched