Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmySGT.
How?
Who maintains it in the field? Where do they train gunnery? Who trains them on gunnery for that matter? Who has trak pad and pins every 500 miles?
Running them is going to be a huge xhore. There are no radios in them that talk to modern radios, no main gun ammunition, 30.06 linked? Where are you getting that? Optical range finding equipment in daylight only, and severely degraded night fighting.
To put a Sherman in the field takes hundreds of man hours of resources to get it running, then hundreds of hours to train maintainers for engine, tranny, turret, and ordnance, then hundreds of hours in driving and gunnery to get a crew even familiar with it.
For a tank that won't last five minutes in a fight.
Better off going into the desert (Ft Irwin, Twenty Nine Palms) and hauling out the M47s and M48s used as targets. That way atleast you will find people with some of the knowledge to make them useful and survive for a bit.
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Except for one little problem - the Mexican Army has both places - so you go with the next best thing. And those Shermans were in running condition with live barrels. As for ordnance - the Centurion Mk13 used the same shells that the M1 did that was part of the 40th - ditto the M60A1 and the M60's that they had - and the M60A2 used the same ordinance that the M551 used - which would have still been around and kicking - as for machine gun ammo - have a feeling the US Army had a lot of it still available
And the tanks had brand new track pads and pins on them - and 500 miles is more than enough to take those tanks to the Mexican border from where Littlefield's collection was
And against a bunch of Mexican infantry armed mostly with side arms and rifles a Sherman would do just fine