1st Assignment, Hq&Hq Troop, 3rd Recon Sqdn, 8th Cav, 8th Inf Div. 1958 - This uniform is better than those of today.
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Army Times - First and Third Assignments I started here, jumped for a couple of years then came back here as Motor Sgt then with promotion became HQ Platoon Sgt. |
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1st Assignment, Hq&Hq Troop, 3rd Recon Sqdn, 8th Cav, 8th Inf Div. 1958 - This uniform is better than those of today. |
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Having a break after fueling our M59 and
waiting to move out, on my first tour in Germany, I don't remember where.
We get maybe 6 mile a gallon with the M59. It had two 6 cylinder GMC
engines. We could work on one while staying with the convoy using the
other. Notice the fuel truck in back ground, those are 5 gal cans you see. We only had one powered pump fuel truck and it was sent to the tanks first, although I have refueled my recovery vehicle from cans as well. |
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Our M-74 Recovery
Vehicle: Ed Ogle, Rudi Haug, and Bates. For
the life of me I can't remember Bates first name. Bates is driver
- on the right,
I am machine gunner - on the left, the 30 is not mounted, you see the mounting
position under the star, Rudi is TC - above by the 50-MG.
If I remember right this one had a
Ford V12 in it - the pistons about the size of you head. A really
bad thing about this one, when starting - if you touched the accelerator
before turning over the engine the damn thing would hydro-lock on us.
That requires pulling every plug, turning the engine to clear the excess
gas - bloody pain. We got about 4 gal per mile in it. It held about
360 gallons of gas. We could no longer get the correct fan belts
for it so we used 5 ton truck belts, and they popped off the pulleys
often during shifts. Yes it was a stick shift. What a god-sent when we switched to diesel powered
vehicles with automatic transmission on my second tour. |
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As Cavalry Recon, I wore a shoulder harness with the 45, or I carried a submachine gun, and the pack and entrenching tool was in a bag stored on my vehicle. The M38 Jeep was still in use on my first assignment. We used the same configuration as you see here except the windshield would be locked down when off-road. One extra thing we had on ours was a "cutter bar", this was 3" angle iron with a hook slot cut at the top end and sharpened. Mounted to be higher than any one seated in the jeep, it was attached to the towing hook pins and tied back to the grill. This bar would grab and cut any commo wire strung across the road at neck level, meant to decapitate the riders. Look closely for the MG mount, it and the mounted gun protected the gunner, more or less (who rode on the spare tire). |
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The M-75 was in use by the Cav when I arrived at my first assignment. It floated like a rock and was as warm as an open refrigerator in the arctic. The one thing that was good about it was you didn't have to walk and it did give protection during an infantry assult, another was the engine would pull out on rails, made it easy to work on. |
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Son-of-a-gun it really does
float. The M-59 was a very nice Personnel Carrier (PC) it replaced the
M-75s. In winter while the two 6 cylinder GMC engines were running it was toasty warm inside. If one engine went out you could disconnect it immediately and continue on the other. The army made a mistake when they got rid of this one. This was an exercise to familiarize our crews with an actual river crossing. |
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The M48 Patton was issued to the 3rd Recon Sqdn
replacing the M41 recon tank some call the Bulldog, I do not remember that
name for the M41 and altho I have searched everywhere served as an
interim tank in U.S. service until replaced by the U.S. Army's main battle
tank, the M60. The M48 served as the U.S. Army and Marine Corps's primary
battle tank during the Vietnam War. It was widely used by U.S. Cold War
allies, especially other NATO countries. |
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M24 Chaffee - Looks very much like the M-41 |
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M2 Light at the Ft knox Museum |
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M2-A3 Light on Parade |
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