More Info on M48 Tank


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Posted by Willy-N on Sunday, January 25, 2004 at 0:37AM :

I did some research because some had never seen these in Vietnam. There were 27 total made and were rare. After a lot of checking I found this on the net. This one was a Calvery Units Tank may have been 11th Cav and I can't remember the excact unit I was attached with because I was a 20th Combat Engineer Group with them. Mark H.

As early as 1966 commanders in the field began to ask for better devices to deal with the mine danger. They were in particular need of a mine detector that could be mounted on a vehicle and that was capable of finding any type of mine, metallic or nonmetallic, no matter how fuzed. Finally, in 1969, the U.S. Army, Vietnam, asked the Mobility Equipment Research and Development Center to provide a device that could detect or destroy low-density mines on roads and that could move faster than a man carrying the portable mine detector then in use. The center's answer was the expendable mine roller, a mechanism to be mounted on and pushed in front of an M48 tank. The roller was tested at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and delivered to Vietnam for combat evaluation in the fall of 1969.

Although the 11th Cavalry, which made the first test, felt strongly that the device would tie down a much needed vehicle, it fitted one tank with the roller and tested for over eighty kilometers, but no mines were found. Eventually the device was damaged when it was taken into the jungle, for which it was not intended. The regiment concluded that it was unsatisfactory, primarily because of its twenty-ton weight and maintenance requirements. Again in the fall of 1969 the 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized), tested the roller in Quang Tri near the Demilitarized Zone, where it proved unsuitable for the soft sandy soil of the region and was eventually ruined by a mine. The 4th Infantry Division made the third test of the mine roller, which was mounted on a combat engineer vehicle in lieu of a tank. In an experiment the roller detonated four mines and the 4th Division requested more rollers. Eventually twenty-seven were used in Vietnam. At the end of American participation in the war, the mine roller had not been fully accepted, and there was still need for a mine destroyer that would allow rapid movement.





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