List,
As a member of a Military Museum, I tend to take a certain amount of pride
in our accomplishments, even if I don't have a direct connection to the
actual event. In this case, I wanted to let the List know that another
Sherman Tank has come back to life. We obtained an M4A1E1 that had been used
as a monument in the town of Grafton, Illinois for a period of about 40
years. (Since armored vehicles that become monuments always remain the
property of the US Government, what the Government giveth...the Government
can take away) We hauled it back to our Museum in Minnesota about 4 years
ago. It sat in our static display area for a couple of years, and then was
moved into the shop.
A team of workers spent several months grinding the welds off of the
hatches, and every other place that the welder could get his stick into.
They cleaned out the interior, re-worked some of the electrical system,
checked fluid levels and replaced what was necessary. They built a crank to
use to turn over the engine. This particular model has a 9 cylinder
Continental aircraft motor in it. Dave Barry rebuilt the carburetor. Ken
Emme and Doug Nielson worked on the engine. Tim Gardner worked on the
interior. It's far from perfect, yet. It needs a paint job. The interior is
functional, but still needs restoration. There are some external components
that need to be replaced or cleaned up. The important thing is: For the
first time in about 50 years, this Sherman started, ran, and drove under its
own power this past weekend. It's certainly not as large, or as fast as our
M60's. It's not as sleek as our M551 Sheridan. It's not as unusual as our
Sgt York. I'll tell you what, though. It sure made everybody stop what they
were doing when we saw it run for the first time this weekend. It makes all
of the effort that we put into restoring this equipment worthwhile. This
tank will be the star of the show that we will be presenting the last
weekend in July. It's still a little rough around the edges, but we're all
very proud of it. Sorry if this comes across as bragging (not that I really
had much to do with it) but we're all very proud of our accomplishments with
this tank.
John
John Hutterer
Sen. Eng. Lab. Tech.
SIMS Deltec
651-628-7107
john.hutterer@deltec.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 05 2001 - 00:40:37 PDT