Posted on 06/15/2006 5:43:38 AM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
The older surplus trucks would have been a lot cheaper, and just as effective. And when all was said and done in Iraq, they could have been turned over to the Iraqis.
These are the trucks I'm referring to. They could have been retro-fitted for a fraction of the cost of even one of the newer trucks, providing more vehicles for convoy security. Would you screw with a convoy in which every third or fourth vehicle was a heavily armed gun truck mount mounting two or three .50s?
see #16 & #21.
Not that many troops can drive a standard transmission anymore.
M813 5-Ton
M35A2 2 1/2- Ton
They're gone, man. Out of the inventory. No PLL.
Saw some of these in Puckapunyal, Victoria last month. They are beastly large and appear to have some maneuverability issues, but they certainly will be useful in the IED environment.
While not in the system, I'd be willing to bet that the government still has a lot of those trucks and their spare parts still sitting around somewhere. I find it hard to believe they liquidated everyone of them.
Most of them couldn't drive them back then, either. But I taught em.
Whenever I had to train some kid to drive a stick I'd take them out to one of the five-tons. They's expected to learn on the jeep and their jaws would drop when they discovered they were going to learn on the big nickle.
The reason for using the five was that it had power steering (unlike the 2.5 ton), and when the transfer case is in low they can run through all five gears without going over 30 mph (3 mph tops in first). No fear of stalling if you dump the clutch, etc. After an hour of that kind of instruction they had no trouble with the jeeps and smaller vehicles.
Even with a stick the old 5-ton was easy to drive. Easier than the deuce with its manual steering.
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