Com-Central.net

The final blog posts went up and I'm now home safe in England:

www.preservedtanks.com

Neil, just to clarify, I went looking for the Sherman in Oshawa that's in your list for Oshawa with the address of 535 Simcoe St N. My satnav got pretty confused in that area (which it regarded as being Columbia rather than Oshawa) however it did eventually get me to what appeared to be the correct place on Simcoe St N. However, the buildings there are numbered in fours, not twos, so I found a 533 and a 537 (then there was a 541, etc.). There was no 535, nor the space where one ever existed. I cruised the area in the little time I had, but there was nothing that looked remotely like a candidate.

If anyone wants to see particular photo's let me know, otherwise I'll be uploading them all over the next few weeks and months (some thousands). In the meantime, one of my favourites from Bordon:

Trevor,

I see you like using the camera pole method still, did you fabricate one or are you still using the "Tri-Pod above the head" method? Very nice pictures.

Joe D

Sorry Trevor, dont know what to say, thats where the Canadian government says it is. See the link & pics below:

www.forces.gc.ca/dhh/c...5572&cat=7

Neil

Hi Neil,

Nothing better than a GPS location, that way you can plot it on a map and verify the address. I have found some addresses are nowhere near the actual location of the AFV. I always carry my GPS now when documenting tanks.

Joe D

- Joe_D

I see you like using the camera pole method still, did you fabricate one or are you still using the "Tri-Pod above the head" method?

It's the latter, and I'm still looking for a good name for it. I'm so grateful for the idea. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say it has revolutionised my tank pictures.

Uses so far:
1. Taking better high view pictures (ok, obvious).
2. Looking over barbed wire fences (examples below).
3. Taking pictures of the sides of vehicles that are not accessible from a public area (e.g. M18 at Danbury).
4. Taking pictures inside vehicle hatches (a number of vehicles at Muckleburgh).

Here are some barbed wire examples:

Barrie Sherman
Without:



With:




Oshawa Patton
Without:



With:




And in the tradition of keeping the best until last, here's me trying to get a picture of the M39 at Danbury:

Without:



With:



Need I say more?!

I'm so impressed with the idea I plan to write up a page on my website to evangelise the idea (with credit to you and this forum of course). It'll probably look rather like this post, with a bunch more example photo's.

- Neil_Baumgardner

Sorry Trevor, dont know what to say, thats where the Canadian government says it is. See the link & pics below:

www.forces.gc.ca/dhh/c...&cat=7

Neil

Don't worry, I didn't mean to imply it was your fault. I originally worked off Alf Adams' list which has it at 53, and it's not there either. After a quarter-century of tank hunting I'm absolutely used to it. Back then, before satnav or even a general concensus that stuff should be preserved, I could easily spend half a day looking for some tank in a ditch next to a side road in the middle of nowhere and no-one could tell you where it was, you had to find it yourself (Belgium particularly comes to mind). In my books I used to work hard to put very detailed location details in so that no-one had to go through the same pain again.

So, as I often do to clarify a location, let's do some Google research. This is 53 Simcoe St N:

maps.google.co.uk/maps...h&z=19

This is 535 (it looks right, I parked my hire car under those trees further up and walked back to look between those houses on the right in the hope of finding a hidden entrance):

maps.google.co.uk/maps...h&z=19

If I had to put money on it, I'd say this is could be the general location, about halfway between those two locations:

maps.google.co.uk/maps...h&z=20

It's a guess, based on the brick building in the background of the second photo off that link you just gave (a church?), though I don't see the tank itself - maybe it's under those trees:



www.forces.gc.ca/dhh/c...&cat=7


So...

- Joe_D

Nothing better than a GPS location, that way you can plot it on a map and verify the address. I have found some addresses are nowhere near the actual location of the AFV. I always carry my GPS now when documenting tanks.

is the correct answer! I took my GPS everywhere with me during this trip, having installed US & Canada maps into it before leaving home. Everywhere I went I grabbed the lat/long and I'll post them on the website as soon as I sort through all the data. I did the same around Normandy, I'm doing it around UK, and I have a friend doing it around Poland, so I'm building up an extensive database. That should mean that no-one should have any problem revisiting the places I get to.

The actual method I use is Navpix, currently I convert these into lat/long text but I'm planning to make them available directly on the website.

BTW, this was my final itinerary for the trip (though I had hoped to get to more places):

Tuesday 12th: Flight to NY, coach to Bethlehem PA
Wednesday 13th: M42 at Easton PA, M60 at Bath PA (taxi)
Thursday 14th: choir stuff
Friday 15th: coach to NYC, went to USS Intrepid to find it gone (taxi)
Saturday 16th: New England Museum, Danbury (hire car)
Sunday 17th: choir stuff
Monday 18th: sightseeing around NYC including Empire State & Statue of Liberty (couldn't get to the tanks on Staten Island unfortunately).
Tuesday 19th: coach to Albany
Wednesday 20th: coach to Rochester, T72 in Chili (taxi)
Thursday 21st: coach to Niagara, then Toronto
Friday 22nd: Shermans at Yukon armoury and York Cemetary (hire car)
Saturday 23rd: Sherman at Barrie, CFB Bordon, Oshawa Museum, Oshawa Sherman not found (hire car)
Sunday 24th: choir stuff, flew home

Every fully tracked vehicle I saw had a complete walkaround, plus I photographed every potential serial number I could see - though I now have a few thousand photo's to go through so it'll probably take half the winter to get them all sorted and online.

Oddly enough, the GPS was just as useful when I went by taxi as in the hire car - the cab drivers didn't know where they were going in Bethlehem, Easton and Rochester so in each case I just plugged it into their dash and away we went (and no doubt saved some time/fare too).

Fortunately I got away with it - taking two cameras, a complete GPS and car kit and charger, and a big tripod, without my wife realising that was why my suitcase was over the weight allowance!

- Joe_D

Hi Neil,

Nothing better than a GPS location, that way you can plot it on a map and verify the address. I have found some addresses are nowhere near the actual location of the AFV. I always carry my GPS now when documenting tanks.

Joe D

Yeah, sorry, call me a stick in the mud I guess... But I have lots of locations without GPS, including the one above... And frankly, addresses are universal...

Neil

Many thanks for confirming the Danbury M39 (one of only five or six surviving examples!) and M3 Stuart, Trevor!

Although Danbury is supposed to have 2 M39s...

Any other pics from Danbury? I still have the following unconfirmed:

Three "M4 Carriage"s, that's what the TACOM Registry calls them...

An additional 2 M22 Locusts in storage?

An M60 and an M60A3?

An M1917?

And an SPz Lang mortar carrier

BTW, you should know better than to call an M60 a "Patton"... tsk, tsk...

Neil

- TrevorLarkum

If I had to put money on it, I'd say this is could be the general location, about halfway between those two locations:

maps.google.co.uk/maps...h&z=20

It's a guess, based on the brick building in the background of the second photo off that link you just gave (a church?), though I don't see the tank itself - maybe it's under those trees:

I agree, I think that's it... I believe that's the Militia Armoury for the Ontrario Regiment - its rather typical of the Canadian militia armoury architecture.



But oddly enough every reference to that armoury I can find says 53 Simcoe St N... I'll probably list it as the corner of Simcoe St N & Adelaide Ave W.

Neil

- Neil_Baumgardner

BTW, you should know better than to call an M60 a "Patton"... tsk, tsk...

Neil

We all know the proper name for them now is a

Joe_D or a Daneri

- Neil_Baumgardner

Many thanks for confirming the Danbury M39 (one of only five or six surviving examples!) and M3 Stuart, Trevor!

You're welcome.

- Neil_Baumgardner

Any other pics from Danbury? I still have the following unconfirmed:

Three "M4 Carriage"s, that's what the TACOM Registry calls them...

An additional 2 M22 Locusts in storage?

An M60 and an M60A3?

An M1917?

And an SPz Lang mortar carrier

I took 300 pictures, so you'll need to be patient until I get through them.

There was an M22 inside, and various SPz outside. There was also an M48 and M60 outside.

There was no M1917 so I asked about it, and it had been taken back (sounds a bit reminiscent of when that happened before).

- Neil_Baumgardner

BTW, you should know better than to call an M60 a "Patton"... tsk, tsk...

Have I stepped on toes? I'm going by Hunnicutt.

Taken back? By the US Army? My info says it was it "belonged" to the State of Connecticut.

Neil

Neil,

I guess "Patton" or "Super Patton" can be forgiven since many references use the term. Mr. Hunnicutt's work only helped to confuse, making "Patton" the title of his book and leading many to believe all the tanks in it were Pattons. Officially none of the M60 series had a name like the M1 does. The TM's only call them:

TANK, COMBAT, FULL-TRACKED: 105-MM GUN

and then followed by the designator

M60, M60A1, M60A1 AOS, M60A1 RISE, M60A1 RISE Passive, M60A3, M60A3 TANK THERMAL SIGHT.

(M60A2 was TANK, COMBAT, FULL-TRACKED: 152-MM GUN/LAUNCHER M60A2)

Even the M48A5 was not called the "Patton" by the TM, using the same above description followed by M48A5.


Bob,

I believe the idea of tagging the M60 with my name reeks of Hubris, and now that my real name is out (Unique that it is), I do not want a bunch of Former US Army and Marine "Sixty" Tankers (Many who have far more time on them than I) forming a mob to get me .

Now looking over my shoulder,

Joe D

- Neil_Baumgardner

Taken back? By the US Army? My info says it was it "belonged" to the State of Connecticut.

That's all the info I have - I was asking the guy on the front desk, and he had to ring someone in the back to answer each question, so I gave up. I bought a bunch of their museum magazines, though, so I might know more once I've gone through them.

- Joe_D

I guess "Patton" or "Super Patton" can be forgiven since many references use the term. Mr. Hunnicutt's work only helped to confuse, making "Patton" the title of his book and leading many to believe all the tanks in it were Pattons. Officially none of the M60 series had a name like the M1 does.

I understand, though by that token presumably the same would apply to most of the US vehicles given names by the British (Grant, Sherman, Stuart, Priest, etc.) though these are now in common usage.

I did notice an interesting line in the Hunnicutt forward by Starry: "In Vietnam it was comforting to join a unit equipped with Pattons - M48A3s this time. It was further comforting to report, in 1973, to command Fort Knox knowing that while there were many new faces among the soldiers, the tried and true faces in the motor parks were Patton tanks - M60s, M60A1s, M60A2s and, later, M60A3s." There's more in a similar vein. This seems to be an example of a serving soldier who was comfortable with the name Patton for M60s, though I wouldn't argue that necessarily means it was widespread. Did any of you guys who served on or near them ever use the name?

Nomenclature is always interesting. It is often a very politically charged topic. If anything it is even worse with aircraft. In the last generation or so it has also become an area for lawyers.

I was lucky on the F-15 it seems to be one of the last non controversial aircraft names. Just before that we had teh F-111 which never got an official name but eventually became known as aardvarck. The A-10 which got officially tagged with Thunderbolt II (one of the few II names I thought was deserved) but is generally known as Warthog. The F-16 was going to be named Falcon (goes well with Eagle) but the French lawyers got involved and claimed that they had trademarked the name for their bizjet and people might be confused. So it was changed to Fighting Falcon and it became a punishable offence to refer to it without using both words.

And I've told the story of the first name for the MX ICBM a few times.

Joe_D - I understand, I guess the Lingle will remain unique

As far as controversial AFV names

Besides the infamous G%$#n fiasco there is the M-36 Tank Destroyer. Somehow about 15-20 years ago I started seeing it refered to as a Jackson. I have no idea where that came from. I have also seemn it refered to as Slugger. That was the name given to teh M36 at Aberdeen at some point but how it made the jump to the series name I have no idea. I have also recently seen the M-8 HMC tagged with a name that I immediatly ignorred (The Scott? If anything the M6 Heavy tank should have been given that name)

I'll agree that I have seen some references to the M60 as a Patton but I never bought in to that to me the Patton was the M-47 and M-48 series. I never really thought about the M-46 series much so never made a decision as to whether it had a name.

Except for the misuse of a name for the M-113 I don't think any of them are bad enough mis-steps to worry about.