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Honestly, I can't remember. We generally fired one missile per year per vehicle at the TOW target at Graf which was about 2800-3000. If the missile worked, it hit. Problem was we had missiles which "poofed" out of the gun tube, went about 50m and spun around on the ground while everybody ducked.

Apparently, we did as informed by squadron. It was the first and last time we ever fired HE.

Wow. Did not know the background of the round in the late 60s. All I can say is that we didn't have a problem with the heat round and by the time I got to USAREUR the CBSS was working as intended. OTOH, some mensa decided that we would fire the HE round one gunnery at Graf. I mentioned to...

As equally as sordid was the development of the Apache and the concurrent effort to have aviation as a separate branch. In the late 70s/early 80s as a ground guy, though having worked with aviation for about a year, my time in training development put me in a position to work with Dir. of Armor...

"Anti-armor community" = infantry branch primarily. In fact there was an Armor - Anti Armor office in the Pentagon up through the Gulf War IIRC. A former CO of mine had a tour there.

Official language was not fire and forget, yet that phrase popped up consistently in the anti-armor community.

Drop tanks were actually a contentious issue especially with the bomber mafia. The P-38 could fly to Berlin yet the bomber mafia remained adamant that bombers could fly unescorted on long range missions. And bomber crews paid the price for their stubborness. Meanwhile, the 5th AF in the...

Not to mention fog, rain, obscuration of IR tracking flares of both TOW and Shillelagh. All of this reeks of pure McNamara type analysis. Not to mention the infantry community jumped on the "we need a fire and forget weapon system." We've had one for decades, it's called a tank gun.

Thank goodness these eggheads and their weapons eventually went the way of the dodo.

Back in the day, we lived in a small town SW of Nurnburg where we had the entire lower half of a fairly new house. It was the way to go. Just down the road was a farm house and you got use to the honey wagon smell because it was a damn site better than living in the city. The fridge was...

And ironically, the October War showed that in spite of long range fields of fire, gun tube to gun tube engagements still occurred in which the A2's missilery would have been useless.

We had A1s with LRF by the time I arrived in the 2d ACR in May of '76. IIRC they said the LRFs arrived in '75. The local German newspapers opined that US forces were now equipped with death rays. Speaking of the M60A2, had a family member who was a warrant officer up in Warren, MI working on...

Great interview. His comment on liking the movie Patton for George C. Scott's performance but not for getting the details wrong rings true. The movie was supposedly based on two primary sources, A Soldiers Story" by Gen. Bradley, and "Patton: Ordeal and Triumph" by Ladislas Farago. As it...

Belton? We lived in Cove. I think it was somewhat better than Killeen, but this was eons ago.

Sounds like one of our middle schools in ???, Texas.

And yet that's exactly what happened in Panama; at the last minute no less. The XVIII Abn Corps was given the task to plan and execute, then all the other services wanted a slice of the pie. :mad:

In 3, 2, 1....

Yes, we called them Graf Jackets. I never did do it but should have. The trick was to find the softer rain top and have the wool blanket fitted and sewn into it. But I did luck out and was issued a Korean War style winter cap instead of the standard pile cap. Loved that thing.

The sad thing is it took until the 80s until any serious work was done on cold weather gear. I will say though, I found the wool shirt and the field trousers with long johns and sweaters work very well in Northern Bavaria in the winter. Hands and feet were a different issue and the wool socks...

Speaking of real astronauts vs. Bezos tourists, I thought the G-forces on take-off and re-entry were pretty stout. Does Blue Origin have a super secret G force reducer?