So, I turned off the road and parked nearby, grabbed the camera, and went to look her over.
She's a rare one. She's an M48C. Only a hundred were produced - and that by mistake.
She's an early gas burner, and those tanks were prone to fires. It's entirely possible this tank had a fire, which compromised her rear torsion bars, and over the years, the load on the remaining torsion bars caused them to fail, as well. Or, they could have just failed on their own. I couldn't get an eye into her to see if there was evidence of fire. Her tires are in pretty good shape, so if there was a fire, it was contained quickly or her roadwheels got replaced.
As in the earlier posts, with the frontal views - Casey noticed the early style muzzle brake, with the slight "y" shape to it. And the early (not Israeli) commander's cupola. The drivers hatch and vision ports are there - but the there no periscopes mounted in the ports, so the port covers are closed.
Her tracks are in crap shape - she's been in open storage/display for decades and the rubber is rotting away. She does have all her road wheels, and I believe all her end connectors, but she's a tired old girl. As Olaf noted, she's missing her heater exhaust - heck her engine exhausts, too!
An M48C. She is one of the 100 hulls that were produced that were not ballistically sound - and relegated to training use. I was wondering if someone was going to open up the big pic in yesterday's post and notice the odd pattern - in fact weld-bead words - on the nose of the hull.
It says - "Training Tank Non-ballistic"
I also find it interesting that she's at Fort Benning - you'd have thought the training tanks would have gone to Fort Knox. But, who knows what path she took to get where she's at?
But yeah, that's the kind of stuff that catches my eye.