Blasts From the Past, Oz style.

[browningautorifle]

The only blanks I ever saw for the M-60 in Oz were the black plastic variety.

You're quite right, I checked my pics and I have one where you can see the black blanks. The red must have come from a reforger or ace mobile... The black plastic had the aluminum bases and I had a stoppage once that had me remove the barrel to see what was wrong...four or so blanks all fell out at once. All jammed in together. They didn't work very well. I wanted brass blanks but there didn't seem to be any. The gun was an old vet...77748 was the gun number...I had it written on my bush hat for years after.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

When it was time to "upgrade", Oz went with "8 ton" Macks and with Unimogs for "lighter work.

The first thing we discovered was that the bed on a Mog was a LOT further off the ground than the old "Inters". Leaping cinematically off the tray in full battle order was a good way to end up in hospital with sundry lower-limb fractures. That aside, because of their road performance, they soon became known in some circles as "2-door, European sports cars". This, of course, meant that a lot ended up in various states of shabbiness in the Mechanics' workshop. The same thing happened when the turbo-diesel 110 Land Rovers arrived, albeit often with a higher "casualty" rate among over-enthusiastic drivers.

The Macks were to upgrade "lift" capacity, which they did in spades. As delivered, they had serious leaf springs on the rear wheels.

These did not even LOOK like bending until at LEAST 8 tons were on board. This "undocumented feature" let to another problem. It was not possible to carry troops in these things because the ride was essentially "unsprung", even with 30 bodies in battle order on board. As for bailing out / doing "ambush drills"; forget it unless you wanted a whole platoon hospitalised in one go.

Our Signals cousins also found out about the "hard ride" after sending a container-sized signals "shelter" off to a far-flung exercise. On arrival, the comms crew opened the door of the shelter and promptly closed it. Everything inside had been shaken so hard that most of the gear, much of it mounted in 19" racks, was in pieces on the floor.

Hence the rapidly instituted programme of fitting air-bag suspension units.

For an "8 ton" truck, they provided serious grunt. Best example was howling along at 45MPH, pedal to the metal, in a 2A Landrover "workshop" and being overtaken, like we were standing still, by a Mack with a 113 APC on the tray, AND another 113 on a trailer behind. Not sure how good the brakes are at those speed with those sorts of loads, and I don't think I want to be there when they have to use them suddenly.