Ft. Lewis AFV display

[rufrdr]

Before we went to the PX to snarf junk food and buy stuff we stopped at the museum. Unfortunately for me the museum building was just in the process of starting up after being closed for 3 years for earthquake retrofits. The outside displays were pretty good. Ft. Lewis was the testing ground for light forces with the 9th Infantry in the 70s and 80s and several of the vehicles tested at that time are on display there.


Nice M3 Stuart light tank


M4 Sherman. Note the extra armor welded on the hull to protect the main gun rounds stored on the other side.


Early M60 tank with the M48 type turret


Two failures: the M114 ARV and the M551 Sheridan. The Sheridan's main gun was a dual missle/projectile gun and would fire either a guided missle or a caseless 152mm round. When the 152 fired the Sheridan would rear back on its suspension and then the breech scavenger system would roar to blow out any embers left from the combustable case. All that came out was the base stub.


The ancestor to the Humvee


Cool dune buggy assault vehicle that didn't quite work out


Yet another dune buggy assault vehicle! Must've been a blast to drive.


How'd the pilot manage to land that in there?


The Missus is about a bored as a person could be without dropping dead.

[JonC]

Here are a few of my snaps from this years War and Peace show in Kent.

[rufrdr]

Great photos! It must cost a fortune to transport the tracked vehicles to the show by the owners. Not a hobby for a wage slave like me.

[JonC]

Most of them are there for the week (or more), I live nearby and you start seeing kit arriving from all over the UK and Europe over a week before the show opens. The amount of stuff coming over from Easter Europe has increased over the last couple of years as well. Wonder what the ferry workers think?? The main arena show this year was excellent, the pyrotechnics crew excelled themselves. Will sort the video clips out at some point and upload them.

[rufrdr]

When I was serving in Germany in the late 70s a fellow LT obtained a WW2 German Hetzer tank destroyer from the Swiss government and shipped it back to the U.S. I wonder what the dock workers thought when it was unloaded at the port of Baltimore!

[ovenpaa]

I spent a cold Danish December morning in this a couple of years ago, the vehicle had just been finished and this was part of the turret test, I got to swing the turret around for a couple of hours.