[MV] Thrown Tracks

Joe Baker (edc@tiac.net)
Fri, 16 Jan 1998 17:55:28 -0500

As Jim said the thrown track stories are always the great ones. I remember during
Reforger '79 I had the misfortune to have an end connector on my M-60 break while
we were passing through and intersection in a German Village. The track spread out
behind the tank and stretched across the intersection blocking traffic in all four
directions. The tank continued off to the side of the road and ended up in the
ditch. As the Platoon Leader I stopped the next tank in the column and instructed
the Tank Commander to get my tank back together and rejoin the unit at our next
battle position. You must remember that it was my job to command the Platoon first
and my tank second. It took the crew about 4 hours to put it all back together and
rejoin the unit. The track by itself weighs about 2000 pounds.

On another occasion on of my tanks in the platoon managed to throw both tracks to
the inside on a narrow road in the middle of the forest. It took a number of hours
to walk the tracks back onto the tank and extract it out of the woods

Now another story is when one of our Platoon Leaders managed to get 4 out of his 5
tanks stuck on a forest road, followed by an 80 ton plus M-88 Tank Retriever, and
assortment of trucks and jeeps and a D-9 Cat stuck in the process of trying to
extract the original 4 stuck tanks. In the end an Engineer Company had to improve
the road and extract the vehicles one at a time over the period of a week.

Joe Baker
Major, Infantry, USAR

formerly of the 1/2 ACR, West Germany

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