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M113 Gunshields question.


hoggydog

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  • 1 month later...

These kits were definitely in use on M113s in use with the USAF for base defence at RAF Alconbury, UK in 1992, and possibly much earlier. I remember seeing a couple of them there.  That would make for a really esoteric/obscure scenario, but they did exist. Something similar still does, or did, until quite recently, albeit in Iraq.

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USAF_M113_in_Iraq.JPG

 

 

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I did lots of digging into this a while back, and for some reason, I think that I decided they would be randomly distributed among the M113s in my cold war scenarios.  I thought I had found something written at some point about a quantity of gun shield kits having been made and placed into storage to be sent to Europe in the event that war broke out.  My assumption was that not enough would make it, and they would be rapidly snatched up at any opportunity.

 

So I didn't fit any to the foreign M113s, about 50% of the US ones get the shield, and just a few get the full setup in my scenarios.

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I had planned to reply to this thread, but Breakthrough7 posted that article which is basically what I knew about it. 

 

When I was tasked with updating the M113 fleet in SB, I purchased most of the books I could find on it.  Many squadron signal, concord publications etc.  Already had the hunnicutt Bradley book, which covers the 113 is good detail.   While I didn't read every last word in each,  I did read about these armor kits.   And they said basically what that articles says about it.

 

One of the squadron signal books had multiple images of vehicles belonging to the 11 ACR.  And many of these vehicles did have the gun shield, and some had the cupola as well(vehicles without the dragon mount installed).   They where taken from the time when the unit was stationed at fulda (72-94).    So the US armored Regiment at the tip of the spear during the cold war had these kits.  Likely they got priority, and hoarded them.

 

So that made this equipment a must have, but we also knew that it needed to be optional.  So it served as the beta for programming to allow select-able armor parts on vehicles.  And this programming has since been used on the HEMTT trucks for their "field mod" armor kits.  So, the fact that we NEEDED to do this for the 113's, lead to getting this programming done, and now it can be used for other things in the future when resources(time) permit it.   So yay : )

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