Quote:
Originally Posted by Expat Canuck
Rusty, thank you very much for that post. I found it informative and entertaining.
Do you have any more good tanker stories? Please please post them!
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Well, perhaps this one that persuaded me to consider joining a tank outfit. I was a senior in high school when this first hit the newspapers. The incident happened only a couple of miles from where I live now.
This M41 assigned to the Guard unit in Long Beach was cut off at an intersection, by a woman driver of course. The tank driver (ironically from Milwaukee as I was) hit full right laterals. Taking out the stop sign was no problem but when he hit the telephone pole he was jostled out of position and missed the brake pedal that is on the LEFT side of the steering post (you have to use your left foot for braking as the steering post prevents your right foot from crossing over).
As you can see from the pics below (that I saved all these years because I like the look of Studebakers) he did a bit more damage.
On top of that, 3 years later when we were up at Camp Roberts for training, that same tank was hauled up by low-boy to put it through regular paces (each tank battalion had to take one of their own tanks each year).
Coming back from Hunter Ligget Military Reservation (where our target range for tanks was) the tank trail paralleled the paved road. Some smart-a** MP thought he was driving too fast and kicking up too much dust. So the MP became a dumb-a** and pulled his jeep onto the tank trail, around a curve at that, to tell the 25 ton, 500hp tank to stop.
Well, fortunately the MP was a good long jumper and only broke an arm on landing. The jeep was unrecognizable.
Two years after that, my battalion was in a parade in Long Beach along with the Long Beach Battalion. As part of the organization of the parade, I was to drive a jeep -- in front of THAT tank. On the side of the turret were painted in white sillouettes were: a stop sign, a telephone pole, 5 cars, a camping trailer and an MP Jeep.
Ah. The good old days.