You know, as intresting as it is to think about getting your hands on an old tank or armored car, there really are not that many available that are in good enough condition to rebuild. I took the time this afternoon to look over a tank on display at Camp Shelby with a buddy of mine and we can confirm that not only was the barrel demilled and the breech missing, there was not even an engine pack in the vehicle, the fire control equipment had been removed and there wasn't an intact gauge in the tank. This one would certainly require the services of Anniston Depot to get it into any kind of order.
I've been rereading O'Jerusalem and there is a section on how the Israelis rebuilt trucks into ad-hoc armored cars. The would sandwich boiler plate on the hood, cab, and body, stuffing the space in between with rubber, cement, gravel and a variety of other fillings. It was crude, it couldn't stop antitank rounds, but it did stop fragments and .30 caliber rounds. Just a random thought, but would it not be possible that this sort of home-built be a lot more common?
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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