To paraphrase Mark Twain's 19th century observation on lawyers, "What do you call 10,000 M901s at the bottom of the ocean?.....A good start!"
Combst32 has obviously spent some time around the pigs.
Too top heavy and slow to keep up with the M113s, unable to hack the rough terrain and track divots to support the M1s, only survivable in over watch so the maneuver forces outran them and they couldn't catch up and the electro-hydraulics must have been designed by a Soviet spy!
That said, I'm glad you saved one. I'd enjoy working on any M113 varient again.
When we got our first batch of these I was the "Maintenance and Service Section Sergeant" for a mechanised infantry battalion. We had been authorized two turret machanics for six months or so in anticipation of the arrival of the M901s but because we hadn't yet got the ITVs (Improved TOW Vehilces) the school wasn't funded. Gotta love military logic!
Then we got a no-notice call to be at the rail head and fresh from Red River Army Depot, 24 of the beasties got de-trained and driven to the motor pool.
The rifle company anti-armor sections and the anti-armor company, who had been trying to support the M113s and M1s with M151 mounted TOWs and modfied M113s with a funky kind of shrapnel awning to protect the gunner were frothing at the mouth to get thier clean and "new car" smelling toys.
We had to perform the "Service on Receipt" before issuing the ITVs to the eventual owners and conducting the new equipment training (NET) and didn't have a clue where to begin.
I unpacked the components of one of our brand new turret mechanic's tool sets (we had those but no 45T Turret Mechanics.... go figure!), grabbed my sharpest wrench turner along with the -24P manual and headed out to the line of ITVs.
We climbed into one and started. Talk about the blind leading the blind!
Step 43, "Verify the function of the launcher left limit slew switch" or some such.
All-righty then....open the correct book of the -24P set, look for the appropriate exploded diagram, find out what the little bugger was bolted to and what it looked like, contort yourself into a kinky looking yoga position to be able to see the durn thing and stick the feeler gauge in.
What a hell of a way to make a living!
Needless to say the first few vehicles were painful to get out of our hands and on to the companies they were going to.
Overall, it was a great way to learn because we had no choice but to do things "by the book" and learn where every screw, connector, detent and switch was.
Not long after we finished the NET, the Army had several thousand TOW missles that were in storage and approaching the end of thier shelf life. The choices were to shoot them or destroy them due to deteriorting rocket motors. They had had a few launch motors burst and decided that for safety reasons they could only be launched from armored lauchers.
We were the only unit in the eastern US that had ITVs fielded (or nearly so) so we shot so durn many missles that we got sick of it.
If we could get a firing point for a day, the post ammunition supply point would release as many missles as the battalion wanted to "put on the wire" Hell, the Chaplain and the cooks shot a few.
The misery of walking all the way to the targets to reel up the control wires (very thin, hung up off the ground by the vegitation, and a safety hazard to any one walking or driving in the "manuever box" on the range) is vivid in my memory.
I hadn't thought about all this in years. "Tanks for the memories"
Lance
Rossi is there all the time, R. Lee will be at the shoot in the Pendleton area Thursday, Friday and maybe a few other days. Hopefully, so will I!
Wait till you break an erection chain on the hammerhead one day and it falls flat on the deck, I remember that being a lot of fun!