Posted on 04/04/2013 11:58:49 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
STUTTGART, Germany — The U.S. Army’s 69-year history of basing main battle tanks on German soil quietly ended last month when 22 Abrams tanks, a main feature of armored combat units throughout the Cold War, embarked for the U.S.
The departure of the last M-1 Abrams tanks coincides with the inactivation of two of the Army’s Germany-based heavy brigades. Last year, the 170th Infantry out of Baumholder disbanded. And the 172nd Separate Infantry Brigade at Grafenwöhr is in the process of doing the same.
On March 18, the remaining tanks were loaded up at the 21st Theater Sustainment Command’s railhead in Kaiserslautern where they then made the journey to the shipping port in Bremerhaven, Germany. There they boarded a ship bound for South Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
“However did they (we) win?!?”
“Oh, German, I thought there was something wrong with you.”
Thanks to all of the people who stood at guard all of those many years, at least they kept the peace and kept the Russian Bear in his den.
Tanks have used rubber track blocks for decades in all kinds of terrain, not just on autobahns.
The military doesn't do that, but DHS still needs them.
FYI
Those were the days! Now just a memory. Grafenwoehr without the sound of tank and artillery going off, had to believe.
I can think of some uses for the money saved.
It is odd you are saying tanks are obsolete so soon after a Brigade of heavy tanks and mech drove all the way to Baghdad taking so few casualties.
And yes, even in World War II a cheap bazooka could (and sometimes did) take out a Tiger or even a King Tiger tank. Yet the German tanks could still cause us lots of problems and casualties. Our best weapon against them remained our own tanks.
“I remember the M-1s in K-town across the river where I was stationed. I remember the 73 Israeli war. We tried to ship a bunch of them on freighters out to Israel from Bremerhaven...the effing NAZI germans wouldn’t allow them to leave.”
That would be impossible since the XM-1 wasn’t delivered for testing until 1978, and the production M-1 didn’t make it to Germany until REFORGER ‘82.
I'm just sick and tired of foreign commitments that our government botch and get good Americans killed or maimed for life, for no real purpose.
Not saying you are wrong, exactly, but we aren’t quite there yet.
The drones that shoot the Hellfires don’t go for $10K.
We are talking pretty expensive drones. The Predators go for $4M each.
And in a “real” war, where the other side actually has effective air defense systems, the relatively simple Predator won’t do. An anti-tank missile-shooting drone that could survive long enough to be effective would be an order of magnitude more expensive.
On the other hand, there are many other ways of delivering an overhead attack with a “smart” missile. Many such potential systems are unimplemented ideas at this point. And of course there are countermeasures also. Active defense systems (which have been in use for some years now) and even, maybe, just a simple armored “umbrella” could complicate things enough to foil the best laid plans.
We are in one of those times where there hasn’t been a high-tech cutting edge war recently enough to show us through experience where the technological balance actually is.
OMG! I actually watched that episode within the last couple of weeks!
“Those were the days! Now just a memory. Grafenwoehr without the sound of tank and artillery going off, had to believe.”
Graf was OK, I preferred going there compared to Hohenfels.
My last time at Graf, the entire 1AD road marched from Graf to Hohenfels.
The first convoy out of the gate onto 299 ended up having some LN pancake himself into the back of the M-88 trail vehicle. I want to say that it was 2/68 Armor. After that, every convoy had a heavy MP, German MP, and Politzi escort, and every vehicle had at least on VS-17 panel draped over the back.
On the way out some of the guys tried to abscond with an old piece of WWI equipment but they got caught at the railhead ~ so we had to give it back.
Most of the time our unit would have the troops ride the rails with the tracks on flat cars (tofc) and a few of us would ride down the autobahn, et al, mostly et al, to whatever training area they wanted us.
Once we returned to Kitzingen (Harvey Barracks) in our tracks ~ it was well below freezing ~ I was TC ~ WOW! Even a hawk jacket has trouble with that. The guys inside were roasting though.
Earlier that year we were up on the border with a radar watching a Russian/GDR guard post ~ major minefield in that area, and the Russians came down a road on the otherside just across from us IN A TANK COLUMN.
So, you might ask, did the guy at Tianamen Square wet himself up against that tank? ~ from experience I'd say he never noticed if he did. Tanks are impressive. Tanks that can be or could be aimed at you and fired are very impressive ~ a thing you'll never forget. When there's nothing between you and a bunch of them and what immediately seemed to be a very inadequate mine field, it's time to deedee out.
Considering how the EURO crisis is going it looks like Germany has found a way of conquering the Western and Southern Europe without firing a shot, and demanding and getting reparations $$$$$ too.
They are doing much better than Japan is.
Spent 4 years in Berlin, 84 - 88. Most interesting assignment of my career.
Not yet................
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