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Having a break after fueling our M59 and
waiting to move out, on my first tour in Germany, I don't remember where.
We get maybe 6 mile a gallon with the M59. It had two 6 cylinder GMC
engines. We could work on one while staying with the convoy using the
other. Notice the fuel truck in back ground, those
are 5 gal cans you see. We only had one powered pump fuel truck and it
was sent to the tanks first, although I have refueled my recovery vehicle
from cans as well.
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Our M-74 Recovery
Vehicle: Ed Ogle, Rudi Haug, and Bates. For
the life of me I can't remember Bates first name. Bates is driver
- on the right,
I am machine gunner - on the left, the 30 is not mounted, you see the mounting
position under the star, Rudi is TC - above by the 50-MG.
If I remember right this one had a
Ford V12 in it - the pistons about the size of you head. A really
bad thing about this one, when starting - if you touched the accelerator
before turning over the engine the damn thing would hydro-lock on us.
That requires pulling every plug, turning the engine to clear the excess
gas - bloody pain. We got about 4 gal per mile in it. It held about
360 gallons of gas. We could no longer get the correct fan belts
for it so we used 5 ton truck belts, and they popped off the pulleys
often during shifts. Yes it was a stick shift. What a god-sent when we switched to diesel powered
vehicles with automatic transmission on my second tour.
I was trained to repair all of them including the 76
MM gun and hydraulics on our M41 light tanks. That was a fast tank
but the 76mm would not penetrate Russian heavy Armor. We were a
recon outfit, not intended to engage the heavy stuff.
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As Cavalry Recon, I wore
a shoulder harness with the 45, or I carried a submachine gun, and the
pack and entrenching tool was in a bag stored on my vehicle.
The M38 Jeep was still in use on my first assignment. We used the
same configuration as you see here except the windshield would be locked
down when off-road. One extra thing we had on ours was a
"cutter bar", this was 3" angle iron with a hook slot cut at the top end
and sharpened. Mounted to be higher than any one seated in
the jeep, it was attached to the towing hook pins and tied back to the
grill. This bar would grab and cut any commo wire strung across
the road at neck level, meant to decapitate the riders. Look
closely for the MG mount, it and the mounted gun protected the gunner,
more or less (who rode on the spare tire). |
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Son-of-a-gun it really does
float. The M-59 was a very nice Personnel Carrier (PC), in winter while
on the move it was toasty warm inside (no heat except on the move). It
replaced the M-75s.
This was an exercise to familiarize our crews
with an actual river crossing. |
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Baumholder Germany, Near the town there is a training
area for NATO troops that was not rebuilt after the war, so there are a
number of blown bunkers and houses still there. We spent about 30
days a year there doing tank maneuvers and infantry assaults exercises.
During the time I was a paratrooper, Baumholder was the
testing grounds for the latest Experimental Vehicle infantry Individual Assault (XVIIA). Here I am coming in over the roof tops while testing
the latest model. It was not adopted because they could never power it
well enough to carry sufficient ammo for the MG. :-) |
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The M88: This baby was awesome compared
to the M74, it even had a heater. As far as I know it was the first
heater armored troops ever saw. About this time they came up with
water heaters for the newer trucks that we adapted to all our other trucks
and jeeps as well.
The Army found that troops worked better when they weren't
frozen solid.
The news (20041212) showed one
burning in Iraq. Since then I have seen pictures of M88s with
upgraded active armor. |
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The M-75 floated like a rock
and was as warm as an open refrigerator in the arctic. The one
thing that was good about it was you didn't have to walk, another was
the engine would pull out on rails, made it easy to work on. |
