Thread: Gun Trucks
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Old 12-27-2008, 08:11 PM
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I have included fairly sophisticated gun trucks in the OOB of the Granite Brigade, which is the main body of the New Hampshire Military Reserve (NHMR) at the end of 2000. Below is an excerpt from my write-up on the NHMR:

"Fire Support Battery Yankee is in many ways the heart of the brigade. As of January 2001, FSB Yankee disposes eleven gun trucks: eight trucks with direct fire weapons and three using Mk19 grenade launchers. Most gun trucks in post-attack America are unarmored vehicles with a single machine gun on a pintle mount. Not so the gun trucks of FSB Yankee. The Manchester cantonment was extremely fortunate to acquire among its refugees a group of Vietnam veterans who recreated Vietnam-era and WW2 weapon systems for private collectors and museums across the country. The team used local machine shops and auto shops to combine a number of armored cars formerly used for moving cash and other valuables with a small stock of heavy weapons the State Headquarters had amassed by emptying the National Guard armories around the state. Although the combination of trucks and guns is unique for every system, all of them resemble in concept the gun-carrying halftracks of WW2. For each armored car, the roof of the cargo area and the upper half of the sidewalls were removed. The guns were installed in powered mounts designed by the re-creation team and manufactured under their supervision. Each gun truck thus has an armored cab that is proof against small arms fire and a powerful weapon in its cargo bed.

"The most powerful of the gun trucks is called “Cruiser”. Cruiser sports a 20mm rotary cannon mounted on a ten-wheeled armored truck. The cannon was salvaged from an inoperable ADA system. The M113 had been stripped for parts to support other vehicles, but for some reason the gun had been left. The NHMR acquired the cannon when Acting Governor Colby ordered the consolidation of all state assets at Manchester. The re-creation team came across it in a NHMR warehouse and couldn’t wait to make something of it. The result was Cruiser.

"FSB Yankee has three gun trucks it classifies as “destroyers”. Each destroyer has a quad .50 caliber mounted in its bed. Each destroyer has its own name: “Bull”, “Bronco”, and “Bear”. The destroyers are mounted in six-wheeled armored cars of the sort used so frequently to transport cash and valuables in pre-war times.

"The fire support battery also has three gun trucks it classifies as “frigates”. The frigates each have a quad mount of M60s. The frigates are named “Moe,” “Larry,” and “Curly”. The frigates are mounted in lighter four-wheeled armored vehicles used for courier duty during pre-war times.

"The eighth gun truck mounts a 5.56 minigun in its bed. This last truck is nicknamed “Junior”. Junior is actually an armored van that has had a reinforced suspension and add-on armor plates installed.

"In addition to the direct fire gun trucks, FSB Yankee has three trucks with Mk19 40mm automatic grenade launchers mounted on pintles. The grenade trucks are unarmored. They are held back from the main fighting and used to provide observed indirect fire support.

"FSB Yankee gets involved in almost every fight of the Granite Brigade. The crews are a tight-knit group with considerable élan. Under all conditions, the gun trucks find themselves called out to assist a patrol in contact. When the gun trucks arrive and apply their massive firepower, most marauders still in contact either break contact or quickly surrender. The crews are almost all Veteran NPCs, with about ten percent of their number being Elite NPCs and ten percent being Experienced NPCs."


Webstral
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