Com-Central.net

Hello,

We’ve added a gallery of photos from the Fort Douglas Museum in Salt Lake City, UT.

www.vgbimages.com/AFV-...879_Drn4qz

It’s a terrific museum with fabulous exhibits inside and a number of rare and unusual items displayed outside - including an M4 Sherman Composite and lots of interesting artillery pieces!

According to the museum docent, they have a photo of this very M4 in service on Okinawa.

Great work, Paul.
One note: The piece described as a Type 90 75mm field gun did not look "right" to me, the barrel being too short, lacking the distinctive muzzle brake and being of obviously bigger caliber, and in fact reminded me of a different piece with a similar carriage. I did some digging to refresh my memory and came up with the Type 91 10 cm howitzer.

The equipment looks like it's had more attention than when I was there in 2004 - that's nice!

Question - There is an M4 at Ft. Douglas with the late DTA hull ("composite") and I have seen photos of one in the collection down at Tooele, UT. I just wanted to confirm - are these two different M4s? I think the crew at Tooele did the comsmetic resoration of the Ft. Douglas tank and I wanted to make sure that they are not the same tank.

Thanks.

Yes, they are 2 different M4 Composites.
The guys at Tooele did do the restoration for Ft Douglas.

The day after we saw the Fort Douglas museum, we were granted access to the Karl Smith collection in Tooele and were given a tour by the resident restoration genius, Roger Condron.

The M4 composite in the Karl Smith collection was present at that time, but had been sold and was awaiting transport to the new owner. I do not know where it was going.

I worked at the Univ. of U. Med. Ctr. back in the early '80' s and have been back many times over the decades to ski. That Sheridan is definitely on a slide to beyond saving. Of course, it's tough maintaining an outdoor exhibit up there on "the bench" of the Wasatch foothills...buried by snow in winter and scorched in the summer.

I wonder how much of a future that little museum there still has, having long been closed as a active or even reserve military installation. The university may some day swallow it up for expansion. That's some pretty prime real estate for privatization as well. Hopefully, the presence of a cemetery on the grounds and it's "historical" landmark status will keep it preserved.


The John M. Browning Firearms Museum in the Union Station in Ogden is also well worth a visit. Also in Ogden is the Aviation Museum at Hill AFB, which has an interesting collection.