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On being un-American
Take a look at this photo. Let me tell you what it is. That is an M1A1 Main Battle Tank. It weighs over 60 tons, is armed with a 120mm main gun, two M240 7.62mm machine guns, and one Browning M2 .50 machine gun. It can move at over 30 miles an hour. It can fire on targets 2 miles away, and hit them, while moving. It is as American as American gets. And I spent 4 years of my life learning to defend all of you from your enemies using one just like it.
Now, I bring this up for one simple reason: I didn’t get shot at by communists so that you people could cast the term “un-American” at each other because you can’t agree on which of the two wonderfully horrible candidates President is the worst. You need to shut up with that crap. Because un-American is someone who looks through the sights of his 12.5mm machine gun, points it at some poor GIs hanging out in the woods, and pulls the trigger.
Also, I’m always looking for an opportunity to post a photo of a tank.
Published in General
But Willie can still sing it!
Steve,
I find that two pair is the way to go. I have one progressive lens pair for driving and socializing. For computer & work at a desk, I have a single focal length pair that keeps everything in focus between 18″ and 4′. Works great.
Regards,
Jim
Excellent post. I can’t bring myself to vote for Trump, but fully understand why others will. I too hate the epithet “Un-American.”
Thanks for your service. I too love tanks, but not because I’ve ever been in one.
This is a picture of my father sitting on the side of his Sherman tank somewhere in France in the summer of 1944. In early October 1944 his tank was hit by German artillery–as a result he spent the rest of life with a seriously messed up right arm and shoulder. And he never once complained about.
Tankers are tough.
Is it possible to put in a larger version of the photo?
@tabularasa, once you’ve uploaded and selected the graphic from your library, on the right hand side of the Add Media screen there’s Attachment Details and down at the bottom of that, there’s a pulldown for various image sizes.
Yeah. In high school I once spent a summer trying to put on some muscle. 7000-8000 cal/day. I gained three pounds.
Sigh.
James, I did a bit of research on the merkava for your benefit. Aside from being a tank, it has little in common with the M1 series tanks.
First,the engine is in the front, which means the drive sprockets are also in the front, and it has just 6 road wheels (per side), as opposed to 7 on the M1. The suspension is, according to wikipedia, borrowed from the old British centurion tank. The engine in all models of the Merkava are turbo-deisel, as opposed to the turbine engine in the M1.
As far as armament, early models had a 105mm, and later models a 120mm smoothbore, but neither was the same canon used on the M1 (105mm) nor the M1A1 and beyond (120mm). However, the 120mm gun on the newest Merkava can fire all of the same ammunition as the M1A1 and beyond. Variants of the Merkava had a 60mm mortar in the back, something the M1 series tanks never had. The Merkava also boasted two 7.62mm machine guns, same caliber as the M1, but different weapons, and mounted differently. The tanks also has an M2 .50 cal machine gun, but instead of being mounted for use by the tank commander, it is mounted coaxially with the main gun and fired from within the tank, similar to how one of the 7.62 machine guns is used on the M1.
Anyway it was a good question, and fun to go and read about the Merkava. Beyond being able to identify that specific tank, I’d never read much about it.
Interesting. Worth a try. Thanks
Once upon a time. But if was awesome in its day…
Straw man. America is a thing, and it is possible to be apart from the thing or opposed to the thing. A person stamping on an American flag is anti-American. So is a person agitating for open borders. America is not a mysterious image haunting each individual differently. It is real, it exists, and many people don’t like it.
You have issued a feel-good diktat that a certain phrase is beyond the pale, and you will not be able to defend it. Everybody may moo and nod that yes it is good what you say, but it’s crap.
It’s un-American.
And you, sir, are an angry old man with a chip on his shoulder, and nothing good to say. Every post and every comment you write matches your profile photo. Take your nastiness to someone else’s post.
Fair enough, sir.
Because there is no fashion accessory hotter than a semi-automatic.
https://youtu.be/S56CZ5wiuus
I was hoping for hot and heavily-armed Israeli women, but that was fun. Also reminded me of why I could never have been a tanker. Give me the wide-open spaces, not crawling in and out of small hatches into a cramped metal box. (Even a very powerful war machine of a cramped metal box.)
The inside of an American tank is like a Hilton compared to the inside of a Russian tank.
Understood. Still, for some of us, anything smaller than Trump Tower is cramped to be inside of. ;)
I apologize for the personal attack. I was up at 0h-dark-30, and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be on Ricochet.
Late posting as usual, but have to get my tank picture in. 2nd Battalion 81st Armor, Grafenwoehr, Germany 1976. Some of my friends worked on the testing of the M1 at Ft. Knox. It was a giant leap from the M60A1 pictured here.
Awesome. Good ol Graf!
@spin, do you remember when that guy stole a tank (I think an M60 Patton) in San Diego? Unrelated question, do you live in Texas or can you tell me how to hotwire one of those badboys. I’m sick of Sonic always forgetting my Ketchup.
My favorite stolen tank story took place in Germany in the 70s. I think in Kirch Goens, aka The Rock. The story as told over beers at the club is that a disgruntled young tanker was thrown out of the club for misbehaving. He went down to the track park andstole a tank. Tanks in the FRG always had main gun service ammo on board. He drove up to the club, loaded a HEAT round and, according to the storyteller there is a misfire. Probably too good to be true.
You don’t need to hot wire, because there is no key. You just have to bust the lock off the loader’s hatch and you are in.
And yes, I do remember that story. It has somewhat of an effect on me. Our local museum was able to get the Army National Guard to donate an old M60A3, and a bunch of us tankers got involved in it. We were excited to show people the inside and sit in there and BS. But the Army made us weld all of the hatches shut, so nothing untoward could happen. Didn’t matter that there was no engine, no optics, the breech and muzzle were welded already…