This building is basically
a steel-reinforced concrete frame, a series of uprights and then beams
joining them together. And then all the gaps are filled in
with these things, which are pot bricks. These are not structural.
They're there simply to... Okay. Yes! You are history! Oi! Not yet! Throughout the rest of the day,
there were some issues. I, for example, was not
that accurate with the digger. Oh, no, no! Hang on, hang on. Oh, God! Jeremy nearly caused a power cut. And when Richard stopped off
in town to buy some tea, he got a bit confused
with all his lorry's levers. Do you do tea?
English breakfast tea for workers. But the biggest problem we had
was the house itself. Come on! May? -What?
-It won't fall down. You try. If I'm honest,
that wasn't a great suggestion. Everything else we tried failed as well. Back! Give it some welly. In fact, by the time Hammond
got back from clearing up his mess, it was almost dark and the house
was still pretty much intact. Baffling. Absolutely baffling. Clearly, clearly, it wasn't our fault
that the house was still standing. No, which left us with two possibilities. Either Albanian houses
are built superbly well, which seems unlikely, or those diggery
things and the pecky thing, that equipment was no good. We very quickly concluded that
it was the equipment that was no good. So, for our challenge with the experts,
we decided to use military equipment. This is the Witham Army
Disposal Yard in Lincolnshire. It's a giant toy cupboard. And everything you see here is for sale. -Can we use this to demolish the house?
-No, you can't use any weapons. -Really?
-Just the vehicle. Hammond, I suspect the driving position
has got you in mind in a Scorpion. -Is that what this is?
-Yeah. £30,000. That's what it costs. Already, I'm seeing buildings
just fall down of their own free will. Didn't James Blunt
use one of these in Kosovo? -It's got peddles! There are peddles!
-I thought he had a guitar. -It's the Stormer.
-Yeah, the Stormer. -Come on.
-Twenty grand, maximum. -Stormer! That's a good name.
-£20,000. So, this or a Ford Focus. Inside, there was more
and soon, Hammond started to lose focus. This is your absolutely bog standard
British Army Land Rover, cupboard for either, like, you know,
parking ticket money or bullets. Oh, he's found a Land Rover. 94,000 gentle miles... in a war zone. Richard, not really what
we're looking for! -Please don't look at Land Rovers.
-Okay. That's the fuselage of a Harrier. These are fantastic. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Come on, chaps.
Yeah, there's nothing else to see in here. -Oh, my...
-Bloody hell. -Hammond's found the helicopters.
-Gazelles. Hey! Well, that's it. That's my life over. With both my colleagues now
otherwise engaged, I went off on my own to find a vehicle that might be suitable
for our demolition project. Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the Saxon. It has an eight-litre,
six-cylinder diesel engine. Top speed, 30 miles an hour. Or 60 if the tyres
haven't been shot through. It has all the things you need,
power steering, automatic gearbox, selectable four-wheel drive,
grenade launchers. Side windscreen wipers. Oh, yes. James, meanwhile, had decided
that a Willys Jeep would be ideal. Although he was finding it
quite difficult to explain why. The problem is that while you could
drive this through a hail of petrol bombs and small arms fire and you'd be fine, I'm not sure you could drive it
through a building. Oh, Hammond! This is a 1977 Westland Gazelle
helicopter. One of the fastest helicopters built. Top speed, 193 miles an hour. We've got to get us one of these.
We need one of these. Eventually,
I nailed some sense into my colleagues and we all selected the vehicles we'd
be using for the demolition challenge. This is a 434 Armoured Recovery Vehicle. I've gone for it in this spec,
because it's got a crane, which could be very useful to us. But if all else fails, it weighs 15 tons, so, I could just use it
as a sort of battering ram. As you would imagine,
mine is much bigger than Hammond's. This is a CET,
a Combat Engineering Tractor. and they're all very encouraging words. It has a bucket on the front
and many other things besides. Unlike James's, mine is white.
It's also absolutely excellent. The tiller on the front
is used for mine clearance, but it can also be used for pulling down
houses... in my mind. What? -Why is it white?
-United Nations. Yes, this very vehicle has just come back
from the Middle East, where it cleared 100 anti-tank mines. It's kind of focused on one thing,
isn't it? Mine clearance. -It is a mine clearing...
-Yes. You aren't clearing mines.
We're knocking a house down. You've focused on one thing
and we are not doing that thing. It's a very, very specialised piece
of equipment, this. Incredibly specialised.
The cab is on hydraulic rams. -Hm..
-It senses your weight, raises it to the correct height,
so that if there's a blast underneath, you're cushioned from that blast. Again, amazing. But it won't be,
'cause we're not clearing a minefield. We're knocking houses down. You wait till you see
what happens to a house when it is presented with this
moving at 400 rpm. If the house explodes,
you'll be okay, but that's about it. That's what it does.
Just goes around doing this. It's like a mechanical cat. It's a military machine
with some white paint on it. It isn't military! It's for clearance and saving lives.
Princess Diana had one of these.
