Quote:
Originally Posted by Adm.Lee
The "lost tanks" reminds me of a story from Michael Lee Lanning's book on commanding a mech. company in 1970s Germany, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...ttles-of-peace. When he took over the company, he went over the equipment inventory, and found they were short by 1 M113 (nothing much)! 
Someone remembered that Brigade had the idea a year or two ago, that each company should park 1 track at the supply depot, so they could load ammo quickly from the stores if they went on alert. Everyone forgot about the concept, but no one remembered to collect the tracks from the dump.
Sooooo, the captain and a sergeant went to check it out. Gee, wouldn't you know, the cleanest, shiniest, newest one there was the one that matched their serial number! At least it did by the time they got back to the company....  The maintenance manual was even free of greasy thumbprints.  |
Not that I would know... (cough cough) there are three things you have to look out for if, say, hypothetically speaking of course, if a M1A2 suffered a massive maintenance because someone's sergeant forgot to oil the final drives and they welded themselves to the hull, two days before an IG inspection. And assuming that the Orph yard at carson has a A2 on hand, and that you have the pockets to buy 3 separate people a case of their favorite tipple (One at the yard, one at the 8000 bldg that can repaint the numbers and such, and one to pick up the old one to dump at the orph yard. It helps that the orph yard guy was 5 days from terminal ETS leave) There is two serial plates, one in the hull, and one in the turret. You have to swap out the FBCB2 gear, and you need a welder to grind off the old cast numbers on the cheeks, and weld the new ones onto the brand spanking new A2 you got from the orph yard. Make sure you grind the old numbers off of the one you are leaving in the yard, somebody is gonna be pissed when they find it. But if, hypothetically speaking, you was required to try to do such a thing, works surprisingly well.