A Thread for One Off Questions, etc.

[Brit]

I could not think of where to ask / put this so... I thought any 'one off' question could go on this.

Or any dumb question asked by me!

Mine?

The photos I have seen for the US Army Commemorative Parade show all the vehicles, i.e. M1 tanks and M2 (?) Bradleys painted totally green. Is this common? I have not seen a photo of non-'cammo' / MERDEC or 'desert sand' ones for years.

PS. Yes, the GB paper did state the Bradley was a tank. Well, it does have tracks and a turret!

[HaplessOperator]

When I was in Iraq, most of our MTVRs were solid green. Some had camo hoods, but all the armor panels were solid green, and if we had a truck get smacked by something, the replacement parts were usually green. Humvees, most were tan, but you had some camo and green ones sneak in every now and then, especially if you were just replacing parts from old stocks that didn't really need to be painted for any particular reason.

Stateside, I saw a mix of green, tan, and camo Humvees in the motor pool, with the most common camo item usually being the soft covers for enclosing the cab, or the troop covers in the bigger 7-tons.

We didn't usually worry too much about the paint job for them, unless they were getting sent off to be used as part of a force-on-force exercise, or somebody got a bug up their ass about bootshine stuff on the vehicles immediately prior to a deployment.

It matters in a conventional fight, but if you're worrying about readiness and spending unit budget on training and good, high-volume of fire range exercises and individual courses, there's more important shit to spend money on than mismatched vehicle paint for a fight where you want to be as visible as possible when you're outside the wire.

These days, there's more important yet to spend it on, since you can slap-job a paint scheme as long as the vehicle's clean and dry a week or two before your unit steps off. That said, when you're refurbing a vehicle it's getting more common to see more greed woodland camo or green coloration on something as the default state.

As far as I can tell, most of the tan stuff we've seen since the onset of GWOT has been stuff either freshly manufactured or temporarily repainted for use in those specific AOs. As time goes on, you just see them cycling back to green and MERDC patterns.

Parades specifically, you just pick the vehicles that have a uniform appearance, clean them up, and shine the tires. This one, it's not unlikely that they picked vehicles they wanted repainted anyway, or that needed a fresh coat, and had them done up.

[Brit]

Thank you.

[Desert Mariner]

A part of my morning was spent at a ceremony that may hold some interest to history buffs in the forum.

Our local US Post Office was officially dedicated in honor of a native son, as the Sergeant Major Billy D. Waugh Post Office. I won’t try to recap his storied career, it’s easily accessible on the net and in several books (Hunting the Jackal is my personal favorite). Afterward, we spent some time at the County Historical Society which is currently featuring an exhibit dedicated to the Sergeant Major, who spent a few years as a letter carrier between his time in the Army and joining the CIA. We also had the opportunity to meet his widow Lynn, who flew in for the occasion, as well as his nephew Johnny, a former county commissioner.

[Brit]

I just looked him up: What a life.

I wonder what he would have done in the Alt:T2K?

[Homer]

Originally Posted by Brit

…The photos I have seen for the US Army Commemorative Parade show all the vehicles, i.e. M1 tanks and M2 (?) Bradleys painted totally green. Is this common? I have not seen a photo of non-'cammo' / MERDEC or 'desert sand' ones...

Pre-GWOT our vehicles were the three color (green-black-brown) camo scheme, painted with CARC paint every couple years in the installation paint shop. We’d usually get spare parts in either green or the more rarely the old yellow colored desert sand (if it was a recovered part). They’d usually go in to the paint shop within a year to get carc’d- not for uniformity as much as to ensure the vehicle had the chemical resistant coating. Some units used the camo colors in a different scheme, or added the more modern grayish desert sand CARC.

When we deployed we took our three color camo vehicles as was, with prepo off the boat coming in the desert sand. In theatre we ended up painting add on armor and other theater mods in a “pac-man yellow” that was sold as sand. FWIW new vehicles were either fielded in solid forest green CARC or desert sand CARC.

For T2K, I’d say MERDC would be rare; it was on its way out by the end of the 80s, so there’d by enough time for standard maintenance to repaint with CARC. Forest green was pretty common in Europe during the 80s, and would probably still be around for some equipment, especially factory replacements. Most other stuff would be in three color carc or some kind of theater applied scheme. In centcom, the old yellow sand would still be common, maybe with some camo schemes. New builds and replacement kit may be in the grey sand, not sure when that came in.