Com-Central.net

Dontos,
The three interior pictures I posted already, is that the TC "stand" thats all rust covered in the picture? What exactly is the large, square opening, that I am sticking my arm through that is situauted right in front of the TC hatch? That seems to be the only location that I can access the inside through. Maybe after I get back from my ANCOC course, I'll hit up the museum to see if they will let me inside of this particular tank.

- SFC_Jeff_Button

Dontos,
The three interior pictures I posted already, is that the TC "stand" thats all rust covered in the picture? What exactly is the large, square opening, that I am sticking my arm through that is situauted right in front of the TC hatch? That seems to be the only location that I can access the inside through. Maybe after I get back from my ANCOC course, I'll hit up the museum to see if they will let me inside of this particular tank.

That is the 'Doghouse' that the GPS (Primary Sight) is mounted in.

If you orient the camera straight towards the rear of the turret, and then turn it a bit to the left, you should get the area of the Data Plate.

HTH
Don

I spoke with Mrs. Stratton, the 4th ID museum director today about the two M1's that are in her inventory. The tan one, serial number D739 that sits in front of the 4th ID HQ's, and the XM-1 that sits at East Gate entrance. Here's the rather interesting scoop on these two tanks.
They both arrived within days of each other, around 30 Sept 1999. The tan tank came from Aberdeen Proving Grounds and she said she had it's serial number as 120-9?
However here's the good part, that concerns our one of eleven built XM-1. The serial number according to her is JZ0009PV1. I'm guessing the "PV" stands for Pilot Vehicle. So is it number 1 or number 9? Secondly, and this gets good. This vehicle came from San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston, Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC)! This XM-1 was used as a trainer for medical personnel to learn how to extract wounded tankers from tanks without further injuring them. I never would have imagined such a use for an XM-1.
My big question still remains as to what number this tank is of the 11 built. OK esteemed CSI panel, hit the lab and tell us what you find!

Jeff,
"JZ0009PV1" sounds to me like a combination of the RN and SN - ie RN JZ0009 and SN PV1... Of course the the Knox XM1 has a claim to the latter number... I wish the Army still painted RNs on its tanks like it did with the M60 series and before so I could check that RN against other XM1s...

Maybe Geoff can help - didnt you say you had a listing of the original XM1s somewhere stashed away?

Neil

I hope "Geoff' answers. Mrs. Stratton was reading off of her computer screen,(which I couldn't see) and that's only as accurate as the person inputting the data. My limited experiance with museum folk (Ft Irwin and Ft Hood) is that they "record" the first number that they see, anywhere on the vehicle, as the serial number, whether it is or not, for their records. These college educated museum directors and assistants simply have no clue as to what they are recording or where to look. Dont get me wrong, I have 4 years of college as well but while I may not know what material cloth can be stored with what type of wood in a controlled enviroment, I at least have made an effort to know mt armor. Since these are the main/large items of most museums. you'd think they would know what they have, esspecially for inventory purposes.
Maybe once I get back from Ft Eustis the museum will let me get into the XM-1 for a few pics as well.
As a side note; when the tan M1 in front of the 4th ID museum arrived, it was a complete runner. The 4th ID gutted this vehicle, (per the museum director) for its engine due to lack of funds for its many ( perhaps hundreds?) M1's with bad packs.

- Neil_Baumgardner

Yes, its pretty rare. Its a "true" XM1. XM1s include the original XM1 competitor vehicle (the turret exists, not sure what happened to the hull), and the 11 Full-Scale Engineering Development (FSED) pilot vehicles (PV).

PV1 is in front of the Patton Museum at Fort Knox
PV4 has the Chrysler competitor turret on it for some reason & at least was in storage at TACOM in Warren, MI
PV11 was used for live-fire testing & may or may not still exist "behind the fence" at APG...

There's another "XM1" at TACOM.

The Fort Campbell "XM1" could be FSED PVs...

The APG "XM1" is probably an LRIP vehicle - these were sometimes called XM1s as well...

Neil

I would "guess", that if the above is true, that this XM-1, with JZ0009PV1 as its museum serial number per their records, might be the 9th one built?!?! I sure hope Geoff finds his mentioned listing of Pilot Vehicle M1's. I'm anxious to know what I have here at Ft Hood. Again, this is a vehicle that will have to wait until I get back from Ft Eustis around 15 April for me to get into. It may be moved by then because they are adding a second entrance to Eastgate and will be modifying that intersection. That might be a good thing, because they will probably move it to the storage building while construction is done and that will give me much easier access to her.

Possibly, I'm not confident RNs start at any particular number for any rhym or reason... Best chance will be to find an Abrams RN and try to figure out the numbering scheme...

Neil

- Neil_Baumgardner

Possibly, I'm not confident RNs start at any particular number for any rhym or reason... Best chance will be to find an Abrams RN and try to figure out the numbering scheme...

Neil

Short of a documented list, the best way I've found to establish a comprehensive SN / RN listing is to use any official video or photographs.

Quite a bit exists (that I have actually seen ) on the XM1 test & development variants as well as pre-production testing and fielding.

Guess I need to do some digging,..... huh?


Don