90mm - Great to be American

[itsbob]

Indeed I was an 11 H 84 - 88 M901 ITV @ Carson 85-87 / TOW Hummers 87-88 Korea
when I got to Carson in 85 1/12 inf still had Vietnam Era Analog TOWS, were upgraded to the 'digital' units in 86.
not having to swap Nitrogen Cooling Bottles was nice, but the noisy compressor was nerve wracking on a hillside in an Ambush Position at Ft. Irwin @ 3am

yep we had a couple of inert rounds fly off into never never land .....


Interesting, we never had to police up the thin wire ....

Ooh, our left turning rounds were live.. RARE that we ever fired inert TOW.. Don't recall ever firing an inert TOW.

The wire was picked up especially in Grafenwohr.. figure in a training area that size that was used that frequently in a matter of a few years it would have looked like a golden carpet covering the landscape.. but I have picked up the copper at Ft Knox as well..

I was in the 11th ACR 19D, on an M901 (one of the few in our troop that still had the hammerhead attached) 81-83.. Qualified several times as both an M60A3 Crewmen and Scout Table.. from there on out it was all M3 and M1..

 

[GURPS]

Ooh, our left turning rounds were live.. RARE that we ever fired inert TOW.. Don't recall ever firing an inert TOW.

Yeah Ft Carson was WAAAAYYYYYY down the Activation Roster for WW III
.... most of what we fired was Inert Rounds
.... we had one the common area of the Company Offices - it had soft landed and still had all of the fins
.... we got guys rotating in all the time :shrug: what no alerts
.... No, No Alerts ....





[I salvaged parts from a couple of wrecks I have a launch motor]

 

[itsbob]

Yeah Ft Carson was WAAAAYYYYYY down the Activation Roster for WW III
.... most of what we fired was Inert Rounds
.... we had one the common area of the Company Offices - it had soft landed and still had all of the fins
.... we got guys rotating in all the time :shrug: what no alerts
.... No, No Alerts ....





[I salvaged parts from a couple of wrecks I have a launch motor]

We had alerts regularly usually on a weekday morning at like 2 or 3 am... but they did one while I was in Schweinfurt.. I think it was like 2 in the afternoon on a Friday. I don't think we got 50% of the vehicles out the gate.

Kind of proved that we weren't as prepared as we thought, and they never did it again.

 

[Gilligan]

LOT of Foreign Military Sales for TOWs.. It's been around a VERY long time.

Russia had come up with a way to defeat the older variants.. not sure of the newer ones.

When I was working at RAAP in the mid 80s, TOW launch motors were one of their high-rate production items.

 

[Larry Gude]

We had alerts regularly usually on a weekday morning at like 2 or 3 am... but they did one while I was in Schweinfurt.. I think it was like 2 in the afternoon on a Friday. I don't think we got 50% of the vehicles out the gate.

Kind of proved that we weren't as prepared as we thought, and they never did it again.

I guess that's just how it works with beaucracies: the only thing worse than make believe capabilities is actually knowing.

 

[glhs837]

I guess that's just how it works with beaucracies: the only thing worse than make believe capabilities is actually knowing.

We routinely used to haul maint crew with us around the Pacific, as we were deployed to one main deployment site in Diego Garcia and had planes and crews scattered from Saudia Arabia to Gaum on detachments. One bright shining light of a mission commander decided we need to do full emergency drills, to include the ground pounders. When counseled that perhaps that might not be the best plan, he insisted. And the drill he chose was a bailout drill. The crew had theirs on and ready to go in under 30 seconds. The ground folks, yeah, took about three minutes to get them harnessed in. Then came the part where you simulate leaving the aircraft and popping your chute. Everybody checks everyone else's harness, guy standing by the door gives you a final once over, slaps you on the helmet and you pass him as if you were jumping out of the plane.

Then, you meet up with your instructor and talk through your decent procedures, gloves on, visor up or down, when to pop one leg strap, prep for water entry, how you will pop the last two harness points and roll free of the chute. How to escape from the chute if it falls on you in the water, etc. Well, sure enough, one of the ground pounders, after passing the door guy, grabbed the chute handle and yanked. Amazing how much space a 28 foot round NB-8 canopy can take up inside and aircraft. Took a while to get it all corralled. Riggers were NOT happy when we landed.

 

[GURPS]

Amazing how much space a 28 foot round NB-8 canopy can take up inside and aircraft. Took a while to get it all corralled. Riggers were NOT happy when we landed.

:shrug:


Air Force ??

a C-5 has plenty of room, a C-130 not so much

 

[glhs837]

:shrug:


Air Force ??

a C-5 has plenty of room, a C-130 not so much

And my bird, far less, being a 1950s airliner to start, and once crammed with top of the line electronics to find submarines and 23 people and all their crap that wouldn't fit in the 3 cubic foot tube frame luggage rack we could attach to the bomb ray racks.

 

[GURPS]

And my bird, far less, being a 1950s airliner to start, and once crammed with top of the line electronics to find submarines and 23 people and all their crap that wouldn't fit in the 3 cubic foot tube frame luggage rack we could attach to the bomb ray racks.

ah Navy ...

... L-188 Electra
... Constellation

 

[glhs837]

The P-3 was derived from the Electra. My Dad flew as a radio operator on super Connies. I was "lucky" enough to also fly on an Electra in 1985. I was in Adak Alaska on my first deployment. Word came that my Dad was going poorly with his throat cancer and that I should come home. Only way off the island was on Reeves Aleutian Airline. Had to fly in that out to Shemya, then back to Anchorage.