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Mark,
Can you get to the vehicle to examine the muzzle? It looks small for 152mm, but it could be the scale of the vehicle and bore evacuator placement. Does it have a "keyway" in the rifling?

Should have mentioned I found this on Flickr. It's at the Military Vehicle Technolgy Foundation (Littlefield's). Looks like it has the hydro-pneumatic suspension.

Also noticed it has the comp idler in the back so this must be an old gasser M48 or M48A1.

This is the second picture I've seen of this strange beast,

Chris "Toadman" Hughes posted one a while back, although it showed the rear end and not any front detail. He's been real busy so I haven't bothered him to check her out but...... Man, would I love to get some good pictures of her.

M48A1 hull and early Chrysler open cupola turret. Large drivers hatch and the brackets to the left of the gun mantle indicate each respectively.

From what I can tell the turret looks just like the one they used at White Sands to test fire the Shillelagh system. I've seen one very grainy picture of that tank, which was an M48A1 with the cupola removed (facilitated loading of the missiles) . The gun is about the same length and the bore evacuator is located in the same place. Problem is this hull has only three support rollers and the picture I saw she had 5. Possibly a lash up between the test turret and the hull used to test the three support roller system they introduced on the M48A2. Would explain the retention of the tension wheel in front of the sprocket. Either that or she's just missing the wheels. Picture isn't clear enough to tell. Looks like she has a few broken torsion bars too. Think she might be a lash up much like the tank in Armada Michigan. Then again, could be a fake gun like the CEV in Corinth Mississippi.

Wish we had more detailed pictures of her to really tell.

Chris......

It does not look to have hydropneumatic suspension. Is it not 105 mm gun cut just in front of bore evacuator?

- Przezdzieblo

It does not look to have hydropneumatic suspension. Is it not 105 mm gun cut just in front of bore evacuator?

If it is, the bore evacuator is short and the eccentricity is upside down.

I think the bore diameter most closely resembles a 105 as it just seems small to me for a 152.

Slightly larger photo at
farm5.static.flickr.co...0284_o.jpg

The gun looks like a fake to me.

The more I look at it, the more it resembles a cut 105mm with a badly broken up/rusted partial bore evacuator that is 180 degrees out of whack.

Then could it be an M48A4? The A5 had 5 support rollers. I e-mailed the Military Vehicle Technolgy Foundation. Hopefully I'll hear back from them.

Hi,

The end of that gun tube looks pretty rough. I'm leaning toward torch-cut vs. milled. The dimensions of the bore evacuator look odd, and it doesn't look to me like a standard 105mm evacuator. It's hard to tell, but the bore evacuator almost looks like a dummy made of sheet metal that is starting to come apart.

I can't imagine how other than age, but all of the torsion bars appear to be broken. The position of the last roadwheel in relation to the tensioning idler is too high, so either the idler is hanging down or the roadwheel is bottomed out.

More evidence for fakery is the pipe in place of the coax barrel on the gunshield.

Chuck

I heard back from the MVTF. The answer is: It's an M-48 prototype! That never even crossed my mind

Prototype of what though.

Pilots and T48's all had the small drivers Hatch an 5 support rollers. This one has neither. T48 didn't have the tensioner wheel in front of the sprocket either. Is she the White Sands Shillelagh Prototype then ??

The mystery continues

The guy just wrote that it was a prototype M48. I guess there could have been several different ones with different configurations. Here's what they wrote:

Hi Mark,

Good question! That vehicle is actually a very early M48 prototype. It has a lot of features that didn't make it into production including those that you spotted (gun, return rollers, etc). The interior is incomplete as you can imagine would be stantard practice for a prototype. It has seen it's fair share or use though and is pretty rough mechanically as a result. A few years ago (when the vehicle was stored inside our former shop), one of the torsion bars broke. I'll always remember that day. It sounded like a shotgun blast!

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best,
--
Jason Pietz
Mechanical Engineer
Military Vehicle Technology Foundation (MVTF)
www.mvtf.org