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For the open days of the army the battalion did a carcrush demo twice a day. Unfortunately the weather was very bad when taking this pictures.

They removed the light armoured plates protecting the track and the light unit back. In the past when doing such demo's those parts were sometimes damaged.

Reminds me of a unit fund raiser,

They'd raffle off tickets to the troops and the winner would be able to drive a tank (M60A3) and crush a car pulled from the Impound lot. Quite a few troops PCS'ing home would abandon their beater car so there always were candidates. I doubt the "New" Army would ever consider this now, I had suggested it later in my career. This was at a time when we weren't allowed to start our tanks but once every two weeks because of the fuel and parts budget, Bloody Clinton years. Obviously it never happened.

Joe D

Hello Joe,
Never imagined that it was so bad with fuel and spare parts in the US army.

In my eyes (and others here in our army) the USA had an almost neverending budget for everything. I once read an article that a jet engine maintenance depot (dont know the name anymore) had a bigger yearbudget that the complete NLD yearbudget.

I will suggest your idea at my unit. Maybe we can finance our BBQ with it Old cars are here also not a problem....


His old brakes needed replacement, so he removed them and did put the new brakes in the trunk to repair it at a later moment. Unfortunately when driving from the parkingplace for the tanks he encountered a 10 ton truck of the engineers.....

Lesley,

It all depended on where you were at. I was at Fort Riley Kansas which had a much lower priority for funding than the overseas divisions (Korea and Germany) and the Prima Donna outfits at Fort Hood. Fort Carson Colorado suffered the same fate. Would start a gunnery exercise with 14 tanks in the company and were lucky to have 3 operational after 2 weeks. Really stinks to share your tank with other crews and sure messes up your firing order. You really learned to fix things literally with tape, wire and tin. We had a saying, "If your lame, your Lunch". If your tank broke and could not be fixed in a timely manner, the mechanics would strip you to keep the others going. At the end of the exercise they'd tow what was left of your "Baby" and it sit forever waiting for parts until the next exercise, then stuff would come in 3 days before roll out and you'd work your butt off prior to movement.

Joe D