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Twin Whatzis Redux'd

February 6, 2007 | | Comments (21)

This here seemed to confuse a few, but not all.

The AVLB (Armor Vehicle Launched Bridge, M60 Chassis) was often stood "up" just to make life easier for the crew to work on the launcher, which was sometimes parked inside for work:


When deployed it looked like this:


Animated .GIF here. (about 1MB, wait a few secs for it to start. To stop on any frame, click the browser stop botton. To restart, click Refesh.)

As for the gun. Here's the carrier:


Higher-Res Here

Z'at help? ;-) --SangerM

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21 Comments

By Pogue on February 6, 2007 11:29 AM
I think that makes it worse... A Martin B-26 with a Mitchell B-25 tail grafted on it? But I'm guessing that might be a T9E1 75mm cannon (with automatic feed mechanism...)
 
By SangerM on February 6, 2007 11:40 AM
nope, nope, & nope....
 
By Rod Thorsen on February 6, 2007 12:11 PM
Beechcraft XA-38 Grizzly
 
By Rod Thorsen on February 6, 2007 12:12 PM
T15E1 75 mm cannon
 
By Hunter on February 6, 2007 12:21 PM
Great, I look dead at the bridge, even said to myself,"hmmm, looks a lot like a bridge deck," and moved on. Great. Remember, first rule of the battlefield: Shoot the weird stuff first. Which is why I'd never consider being an AVLB, ACE, CEV, or AEM operator. Not only are you in some obviously weird stuff, you are usually way out in front of everyone else.
 
By Hunter on February 6, 2007 12:23 PM
Great, I look dead at the bridge, even said to myself,"hmmm, looks a lot like a bridge deck," and moved on. Great. Remember, first rule of the battlefield: Shoot the weird stuff first. Which is why I'd never consider being an AVLB, ACE, CEV, or AEM operator. Not only are you in some obviously weird stuff, you are usually way out in front of everyone else.
 
By Hunter on February 6, 2007 12:25 PM
I extend my apologies to all for the double post. I thought my machine was just being recalcitrant. Hunter
 
By Brad on February 6, 2007 12:28 PM
How about a T13E1 75mm cannon? Aren't variants fun?
 
By SangerM on February 6, 2007 2:01 PM
That's the right plane, but not the gun (at least not as described on the display stand where I took the picture). And it's not labeled a T-anything, but an M-something, though I am beginning to suspect it's possible the display stand is not accurate. I'll post a pic of that later/tomorrow... and you all can decide. In the meantime, for what it's worth, there is a discrepancey between what I have and what wikipedia and AF museum call it. V/R
 
By SangerM on February 6, 2007 3:02 PM
That's the right plane, but not the gun (at least not as described on the display stand where I took the picture). And it's not labeled a T-anything, but an M-something, though I am beginning to suspect it's possible the display stand is not accurate. I'll post a pic of that later/tomorrow... and you all can decide. In the meantime, for what it's worth, there is a discrepancey between what I have and what wikipedia and AF museum call it. V/R
 
By Brad on February 6, 2007 3:17 PM
Ok, well there's the M4,M9 and M10 37MM cannon, but the barrel looks too small for that compared to the ones I've seen. Then there's the Molins 57mm but that was a British gun, can't tell if it was ever mounted on a US plane.
 
By SangerM on February 6, 2007 4:21 PM
Sorry. When I said not the right gun, I meant nomenclature, only. It is indeed a 75mm, and it looks a lot like the T-numbered guns John found days ago and that you've all listed above (but not exactly), but the display stand plate calls it something else.
 
By Casey Tompkins on February 6, 2007 4:47 PM
When I saw that plane, I thought to myself, "Hmmm, that looks like an Electra, or Twin Beech." Looks like I came close. ;) Congratulations, Sanger, it's not often I encounter a US warbird I've never heard of before!
 
By Trias on February 6, 2007 8:19 PM
Nice instant bridge. I never would have guess that one. Can it be folded from both sides?
 
By Rod Thorsen on February 6, 2007 9:42 PM
yes it can
 
By Rod Thorsen on February 6, 2007 9:48 PM
Sorry for the brevity, the bridge is mirror imaged. The laying vehicle can lay the bridge, cross over, and retrieve the bridge on the other side.
 
By SangerM on February 6, 2007 10:54 PM
Rod is right. Also, it can be launched without having to exit the vehicle, and in a pinch could probably be collected the same way, but that would be very difficult (alignment, etc). Also, I can't recall specifically, but I seem to remember that the hydraulic lines had to be hand connected. Another trivia bit is that before lowering the bridge onto its cradle, the operators would bang the two halves several times to make all the dirt drop off. If you were under that otherwise, you would get clobbered with clods, some fairly sizeable. Look at the one in the animated gif. And finally, the inside hull was actually fairly spacious (no turret or bullets, etc), but it was full of hydraulic lines. One time, one of our bridge tank's (every armor unit had two) tracks actually froze to the ground (look at the ground in front of the mopo door, mud and big gravel rocks), and we got called out on alert, so the driver was trying to break it free by wiggling the tank side to side. After about 10 minutes of that we heard this big thump and then a squish, and seconds later, the driver jumped yelling out of the hatch soaked with "cherry juice" (hydraulic fluid), which was also gushing out of the bottom of the tank through the escape hatch or whatever--just poured out all over the ground. We had to clean that up, but fortunately the ground was frozen and it hadn't gone too deep. And it wasn't even my stuff! Stupid tanks... BTW, if you look at the ground on the opposite side of the stream, you'll see it's all torn up. One crew actually buried their tank to the sponson boxes on one side. That's why the Germans had come out to look. The field belonged to one of those guys... I'll post a pic of that too.
 
By SangerM on February 6, 2007 11:06 PM
Casey, I'd never seen one until I encountered the gun on display at the Air Armament Museum at Eglin. supposedly only two prototypes were built because the war ended too soon, and because the engines were used for bombers... "75mm Cannon M10" ring a bell for anyone? That's what the data plate says, but that doesn't google anywhere, nor all the web, (which is actually _better_ for finding odd pics www.alltheweb.com)
 
By Rod Thorsen on February 6, 2007 11:31 PM
Don't trust the web for everything, stuff that turns up off it is real good. You also reminded me of my last reforger. Our Armour Co. was attached to an Inf. Bn. We'd just pasted a town, I could hear our new Capt. tell his new batt Cmdr that we can't pull off the road for attack, the map shows we're in the middle of a bog (all around us was very nice looking corn fields). Well the bird said we will get off the road and continue the attack. We spend the next week in place with 15 of 17 tanks stuck. My own track was up to the sponsions . Fortunately the local landowner saw the bucks coming his way and treated us to Pizza Romona, Beer, etc, while the powers that be worked through getting us out. the 88's didn't do it. Cranes (as in the helo type) didn't work. Our company, plus engineers, with shovels solved it by building ramps. Hey, not a big deal.
 
By Moose on February 6, 2007 11:38 PM
I might be completely wrong on this, but, I was looking around and found this(just searched for m10 on the page), which then led me to google some more and I found this. Is the T9E1 75mm Cannon the same as the 75mm Cannon M10?
 
By Rod Thorsen on February 6, 2007 11:57 PM
Maybe, the important thing is to not lead to any credence for how any organization labels anything. There's also another T15E1 gun (90mm) that the singular "Super Pershing" was armed with.
 
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