Having been trained as a tank crewman in the 110th Armor that was where I learned tactics but more
importantly the ethos of the community. In otherwords what positions were respected and why. Having
been trained as a tank mechanic in the Marine Corps gave me different persective. There were others in
the battalion. One had been a tank crewman in the Washington National Guard but was assigned to supply
and another had served as a tank crewman in the 177th Armored Brigade but was assigned to the
engineers.
This meant that my mind once overseas was really directed to maintenance because tactics and culture
was something I already understood.
The first issue was the MPS program. It had been great on paper but had not really been maintained since
inception in 1982 according to the gun books on the M60A1 Rise Passive Tanks we had. The vehicles still
used the air filters that had a moving brush that had been outmoded for years. This was the first step was
to convert these to the modern filtration system. Since there was only one tool box on the ships we had to
send for the equipment at Twentynine Palms. This delayed entry to the field until the first week of
September 1990.
First let me say that had nothing to with Gunner Dunn or Top Tompkins. They ran the most professional
set up I ever saw in my 11 years in armor. I would serve with them after the war for a year and found them
to be nothing but the best.
The vehicles had several shortcomings that made the invasion a race against the clock. One was the
coincidenc range finders. Once they would go bad it was hard to get replacements from Albany that had
not yellowed since their 1976 inspection date. The two images could not be lined up due to this. Two was
the wearing of the cones at the final drives. In peacetime you never know the mechanical limitations of a
vehicle. Once active patrolling or training kicks in you find out how much wear and tear the machine can
take. The cones would eventually make an oval around the bolt hole in the hull. This was a difficult thing to
fix becuse the hull had to be rewelded in that spot. All the machine was subject to one ten dollar item
wearing out and there was no way around it.
The fuel was a major source of a problem as well. The algae blooms on the JP would clog the filters in
record time but this was worked after a couple months by changing fuel. The JP burned too hot and tended
to burn out jugs as well but this was more simple than it sounds as the AVDS 1790 2C was made so you
pull out a single jug and retime the whole pack.
Other than that it was for the most part like Twentynine Palms. Oh yeah,except that Paul Cochran made
the mistake of eating an apricot ice cream in the field once. We all told him no becuase it was bad luck in
the field. He told us that was a old wive’s tale and ate it anyway. When we got back to the tanks we went to
fire up and he could not move. His imput shaft on his transmission had pushed through the aluminum cover
in back of the tank. When we pulled the heat sheild there it was and no one had ever seen that before.
As for being a platoon mechanic both Charlie and Alpha tried one platoon a piece on that. I was the one
for Company C and Chris Burkey was the one for Company A. We both compared notes at Aberdeen six
months later and came to a similar conclussion that it was not really needed in large formations anymore
because support was close enough at all times and if it was not it was not a circumstance you could pull
someone off a crew for.