PAGE THREE remembers being a young echo_1 while at Marine Armor school.



One night, after drinking over the hill in front of the barracks, we stole F co's fox that was in front of their barracks.



War trophy.

It's a sad day indeed... I spent a lot of time there over the course of my career... lot of history and tradition...

Delta Dragons...3/1 OSUTout of Disney barracks 1983...

Anderson Motorpool...
Marching to Holder Complex for Weapons training....
Ahh.. Heartbreak, and Agony and Misery...
Range week busting Service HEP on hard targets...

Back in 86 and was a E5 tank Commander training OSUT recruits...

back in 88 for TC Certification Course
Back in 89 for Master Gunner School...
Partying at the original "Hog Heaven" Rocker Inn (You know who you are who know about it.....)

Back several times thru the 90's for AT's on SimNet and later CCTT

Got the grand tour of all the Armored vehicle stashes thru out the Post (That most folks never saw...)by a guy who worked at the Patton Museum.. on my last trip their...

Makes me feel old, the loss of all that tradition, Ft Knox will always be My home of Armor... some traditions run too deep... Benning will always be Infantry just like Sill will always be Artillery....

feel sorry for all those poor bastards who have to go thru Benning....

My dad was one of the first M-60 tankers to go thru Knox in the early 60's.  I was one of the last.  A 4/13 January thru May, 1990.

That's sad. I took my AIT  11D (Armor Recon) training at Knox in 1970.    

June to August 1987.

Took my dad to see the museum and show him around the base in '05-here he is in front of the museum.



My understanding is that Knox is now an admin center, which required quite a bit of expansion.  Knox lost a lot of permanent personal during the Klinton budget blood bath.  There used to be deployable combat units there when I went to the crewman's course.  I've been back many times since then and it was a ghost town.

Benning doesn't even have a suitable tank gunnery range from what I understand.  The move was stupid, but not surprising given the mission of BRAC to fuck things up more than they already could be.

The Rocker Inn, home of KFCs (Ky Fat Chix)

The Rocker II after the first one burned down (from what I was told).  Fat chicks were still there in '03.  Some did have teeth, though.

AOBC 04/91, and SPLC right after that. SPLC was an awesome course.

Wish I could do it again.

Always the Home...



Who can forget those hot days on the wash rack.....


and of course... "Forging the Thunderbolt" circa 1986 baby....

I can neither confirm nor deny any knowledge about the "alleged" Fire at the Pig Palace....

D-2-13 19K OSUT June 89 graduation. Disney barracks.
STEEL ON STEEL!

Are they setting up the Patton/Armor museum somewhere else??

D Troop, 5th Cav 1st Bde, Disney Barracks 19D OSUT.  Then ITV Gunners course, Aug-Nov '85.
Just went to the Museum last year on the 25 th anniversary of Basic.

I've known about the move for a while now. One of my best friends is an E7 who helps run the Armor school and is helping with the move.
He also instructs the new officers. When I was at Campbell in a scout platoon we deployed there one time. We humped the hills all day and night
for a few days. They were very tuff and we were not useing roads we were in the bush the whole time.

I think that was our mess hall right behind Bill Murry.  (Actually it was A Companies, ours was shut down at the time.)  I did a few laps around that pavement, and bayonet training.  

One of our DS's told us the pair was misery and heartbreak.

I've stood in front of that very XM-1 many times in the past.  The T-28 next to it with four tracks is something to behold.

I'm bumping this thread.

They are in the process of moving to Ft Lee so now is not a great time to visit, but this is cool to see.
The US Army Ordnance Museum

Last week, saw a large convoy of Strikers heading to Knox down Dixie Hgwy from Louisville.

Anyone married at the time living in base housing? Lived in south Dietz(SP?) What a shit hole! This was in 92-94. Asshole next door had so many roaches, and they would come over to our place. I don't know how many time we had the exterminator out there. If I remember correctly it was on  9109 #F Estrada dr. Plus the youngest daughter was born at Ireland Army Hospital.

I'm bumping this thread again.

It's bullshit young troops don't have to go up and down the hills
I had to

I had to crab crawl those hills, because some fat fuck slob in my company snuck off to Burger King, while on sick call.
Misery loves company, an entire company

Yea, I remember a road March wearing those god awful OD rubber boots and a Poncho in those Kentucky Gully washers that would come up....I watched my Combat buddy float out of our shelter half on his rubber air mattress as the DI's were up on a hill in a GP medium screaming for us to get up and pack up our shit for the morning...good times...

Pfft, you had air mattresses?  This is what we slept on.  

Did he just say air mattress!? Fuck Im old

LOL

C co 6/16 CAV 19D Graduated OSUT Dec 1989

Look up M1950 Air Mattress.... it predates the Pad  quite a bit.......That was the original Old school pad...

Back when they use to teach how to make a Tankers Roll...


Bonus points for anyone who remembers the contents of a Tankers Roll.......

I hate to see change, but I especially hate to see the Patton Museum moved.  I spent a lot of time there.  I used to crawl up on the empty shell of a Panther that was parked behind the museum.  It consisted of a hull, turret with main gun, and road wheels-no track.  Don't know if it had a pack and all the components with it or not.

There also used to be an Ontos out back too, but I haven't seen that since my first tour there for school in '87.  The next time I returned was '99 IIRC.  It was gone by then.

Mr. Lemmons let me crawl around inside the Panther II / I hybrid they had inside the museum.  Sitting in the gunners seat (it was a Panther I turret) was an experience I'll never forget (gunner sat on the left, and the turret was traversed with foot pedals.  Main gun was manually elevated with the trigger on the elevation wheel.  There was even a "box" on the turret floor for the empty cases-kind of like the "box" for the base stubs on an M1A1/A2/A2 SEP.  Fascinating stuff).  

When he let me crawl down inside the PzKpfw III with it's 50 mm long barreled main gun, all I could do was ask myself "how the hell did they up gun these things?  There was NO room in the turret as far as I could tell as it was, let alone a bigger main gun.  Chalk it up to Teutonic engineering, I guess.

The T-28 was fascinating, with it's four inch-thick armored skirts, four sets of tracks, and 105mm main gun.  I can't imagine performing PMCS on that thing.

Ft Knox has historical armored vehicles stowed all over the base.  Even the LST building by the new Kouma (spelling?) chow hall had 'em parked in there separated by mere inches.  There were ramps where retirees who had civilian jobs as technicians would restore the old stuff like WWII German armor.

Over by the Disney Barracks area, there was at least one MBT 70 from that ill-fated program which was marked with welding bead on the front slope of the hull  "non ballistic".  There was another MBT 70 down the street from the traffic circle over by one of the admin buildings.

You couldn't walk anywhere without seeing some form of historic armor.  On the parade field, there was an M4 Sherman tank, and I remember walking by it one day in the summer of '87 and there was a Soldier in the turret prepping it for some ceremony.  For all I know it still ran.  

When Lt Col. Dunlap (USMC)-CO of the Marine Detachment-retired in '04 or so, the M60A1on static display in front of the MarDet was brought to life so he could ride in one for the last time before he retired despite the fact that the thing had been sitting there for at least a decade without any PMCS.  

Lots of memories at Ft. Knox.  

ETA:  And I'll never forget the amount of time I spent at the New Garden Towers UPH, and all the beer I drank at The Flea Market-liked it much better than The Rocker-either I or II.  I'll also never forget when the sewage system backed up and the basement had two feet of shit floating around in it in 2003.  Yuck.  Oh, and the Korean gal that hooked me up with some Korean Sushi was one of the nicest LBFMs I've ever met.  

Sleeping bag, shelter half, poles, pegs, and rope. What do I win?

The very first hill, the one by the confidence course and the gas chamber was the worst.  Coming up it that is, heartbreak didn't seem like shit compared to that.

Bump for some good memories...

D Troop Graduated April '04.  

Ft. Knox ALWAYS HAS and ALWAYS WILL deserve a good "bump" (or maybe "hump"?).  

"High-Tech" gunnery trainer from MY time there..

These were at Holder Complex and you tracked tank and APC targets running on rails and shot them with lasers.

You forgot the wet weather bag and "Spaghetti straps".....

I'll be sending you a MRE with a Maple Nut cake in it.....

That's Awesome.. I remember training on those inside Holder.... Love to buy one and put it in the back yard....

remember the driver trainers??

Wonder why they never had one in the Museum... the kids would have loved that...

My son with through Cav Scout OSUT at Ft Knox in Feb-Jul '07.  He nearly froze to death during the first part of training and nearly had heat exhaustion near the end.

Do doubt!

The driver trainers were cool too.  I liked the "Special effects" (Engine noises coming out of speakers) on them...

You know one of the things that "impressed" me most about the turret trainers (Besides the Drill Instructor leaning through the armor and screaming
"No stupid! You're firing APDS and indexed for HEP!" lol) was how "thin" the armor was on them.  We were learning threat systems at the same time
and I remember that bad ass round that the T-62 fired (A ten letter acronym!), HVAPFSDSDU(!) and I thought shit, that sucker'd punch it's way through
the loader's station without knowing it'd hit anything.........

I was a winter cycle (Late Nov' 81 to early Mar' 82) and one of My weirdest memories was PT at 5am.  It was FREEZING. We'd wear our pile caps at the beginning
and by the end (An hour later) we were all sweating our asses off and the pile caps were in pockets or being carried.  As soon as we finished the run (How we always ended PT)
we'd run inside to shower and get to chow before the training day started.  

The "Weird" part was that, as soon as you went from being heated up from PT in 20 degree weather to a nice, warm Barracks (Disneyland for me) you didn't make it
20FT inside the door before it felt like there were a pair of blast furnaces pointed at you ears!  I mean....it HURT bad they got so hot.  So, everyone would make a mad dash
to the latrine and you'd see 17,18 and 19 year old kids with their heads in sinks trying to run some cold water over their ears.....

Alpha1/1 March '81 19E  George S. Patton Award recipient.  I guess they won't be awarding that anymore.   Well, outta Ft. Knox at least!   Time marches on but sometimes it leaves a sting.  This is one of those times.

I gotta dig out my 214 & get a tank icon.  That will make me a little bit less bummed out...