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Has anyone heard from Joe D in while? I have someone from the US Army in Germany with some questions about a display M60A3 they - appears to be a new build M60A3 (as opposed to a rebuild) with SN 079, which would appear to make it a very early M60A3 new build?

Neil

That should be this one:
www.afvregister.org/De...137&Page=0

and here too: www.com-central.net/in...grafenwohr

michel

Yep, that's it!

- Neil_Baumgardner

Has anyone heard from Joe D in while? I have someone from the US Army in Germany with some questions about a display M60A3 they - appears to be a new build M60A3 (as opposed to a rebuild) with SN 079, which would appear to make it a very early M60A3 new build?

Neil

He's around, has scaled back presence for reasons of his own. PM or email would likely find a response.

I have emailed him, but wasnt sure if he's deployed or what...

Neil

If thats the tank at Graf, there is a lot of 'chatter' on the Brotherhood of Tankers FB page. Joe has answered a bunch of info on it.

He hasn't been online much. Actually that has been going around a bunch, I've been offline for a couple of weeks.....

Regards
Don

Neil,

Sorry for the late response, closing on winter and been busy around the homestead.

This tank is an original build M60A3 RISE/Passive. One of the initial batch of 296 funded for in fiscal years 76/77. Based on the serial/registration there is a very good chance this tank might have been in 1-32 Armor Battalion, 3rd Armored Division. They were the first operational A3 Battalion in West Germany in May of 1979. Around 1983 she would've been pulled from the line along with all other A3 RISE/Passives in Germany and converted to TTS standard at Mainz Army Depot. Then re issued to a unit that hadn't transitioned to A3's. This tank used to be a static display in Weisbaden on the parade field and sported the Unit markings of 1st Armored Division, HQ-66. That would make sense because 1AD converted to A3's later. A good indicator that an A3 tank was converted from Passive to TTS would be the DATA plate in the hull and turret. An original would have the acceptance stamp and build date, a converted tank would have a newer plate changing the designation of the tank from A3 RISE/Passive to A3 TTS with the date the conversion took place and not have the acceptance stamp. Initially only the turret plate was changed out, leading to confusion for a while. Same problem happened when the Army converted A1's to A1 RISE/Passive standard. Took a bulletin and order from TACOM to fix this, some units actually having a contact team show up and change out the data plates.

The only sure way I know of to track this tanks history would be to contact Watervliet Arsenal and hope they kept the 2408-4 Gun Cards. These cards were maintained by the unit and sent in every 6 months to WVA. The card would have the unit and tank bumper # along with all rounds fired and maintenance procedures done. Unfortunately there is a good chance they were all disposed of once these systems were classified as obsolete. I doubt anyone would've digitized them. There is a chance they might have been converted to micro-fiche, but still who would keep this stuff. At one time when I was deep into researching the M60 I planned to contact WVA and see if they might still have those records. Who knows, there might be that proverbial storage room stacked with these cards in boxes gathering dust up there. The historical info would be priceless, since they would include earlier tanks and the USMC. This is about the only way I know of to track where a US tank was over it's history.

I just received some pictures for this M60A3:

Nice pictures Neil,

Notice the turret data plate is for an A3 TTS with a build date of JUL 83. It also doesn't have the acceptance stamp. This plate was applied when converted to TTS standards. The hull plate is the original with the build date of JAN 79 and has the Government acceptance stamp. Notice the plate is for an M60A3 and doesn't have the TTS designator. Instead of changing the plate out they just applied a decal/sticker with the new National Stock Number (NSN) that applied to TTS tanks. The original NSN would've been 9-2350-00-148-6548. Didn't know they did that. Stateside A3 examples I've seen that were converted to TTS all had the plate swapped out. Most likely because they had been thru refurbish at Anniston prior to issue to the Guard. That's a rare plate, since only 748 A3 Passives were issued to the Army.

Been a good week between Neil and Rick's pictures for me. Might just start working on my project again, although Fort Knox's archives moving and now no longer accessible to me was one of the reasons I quit.