When I was stationed at Ft. Knox, in 1966, I had a chance to visit the
Armor museum. They had some really neat stuff there, if anyone has a
chance, by all means check it out. 'Course by now they've probably
taken half of the stuff to the junk yard and the remaining stuff is all
fenced off; and all that's left is a big hall with pictures on the
wall. Boy do I get pissed when I go to a museum that's nothing but a
bunch of pictures on the walls...
Anyhow, they had one of these WWi rhomboid tanks there, and when nobody
was looking, I crawled inside. I remember being impressed at how crude
the design was. Did you know that two of the crew of eight were
"gearsmen"? There was one on each side of the tank, and their only duty
was to shift the drive for that side in or out of gear when so ordered.
As you all know, the guns were on sponsons on either side - nobody had
figured out turrets yet. I think sponsons had been dropped by the Navy
by then, eh? Another thing was, how much room there was inside the
thing. I recall that the armor was about half an inch thick, which
would only have given protection against small arms fire...
There was also a Tiger tank there, missing one track, and a German tank
destroyer parked outside. Way up under some of the machinery where you
could only see it if you were sitting in the driver's seat and looked
real close, someone had written in German, "Hitler was right". Lots of
other neat war trophy class stuff, not yet sanitized and varnished, and
put behind glass.
If anyone has been there recently, let me know what it's like today.
John
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