- blackdog

The pictures I've seen of those particular tanks don't indicate that they'd really be feasible for such a trade given their condition (ours is operational). Plus, it's a private museum - an exchange between them and us with an armored vehicle isn't possible as far as I know.

There is one M60A1 with reactive armor, supposedly with Desert Storm combat history, at 4th Tank Battalion in San Diego. However, given who they are, and that they have a concrete pad underneath it, it's unlikely that they would be all too supportive of a swap. But the day that some officer decides that they no longer want it rusting in their front yard is the day we'll be there with a 9-axle truck to pick it up!

In addition, it pains me to think about some of the opportunities our museum missed out on in its infancy: for at least a decade, and up until about five years ago, there were at least 5 M60A1's with reactive armor sitting in a range storage lot on Camp Pendleton. The hatches had been left open, rained into, and surrounding brush had caught fire more than once... but overall, they were still great museum candidates. Unfortunately, at that time, we did not have the resources, the equipment, or the connections to recover them. I think that they were pulled out and trucked to 29 Palms as target vehicles. In the end, we did end up with an AVDS1790 from one of them though...



Our eventual goal is to acquire a DODX flatcar to put between our locomotive and (soon-to-be-ours) camouflage caboose. We will be putting the gutted-but-presentable M60A1 that we do have on to it, to represent the movement of equipment off of Camp Pendleton by rail during Desert Storm.