From: Steve Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Thu May 09 2002 - 08:04:08 PDT
Hi John,
>Although it would be nice to think that some collector was having that M109
>moved, I suspect that it was just the Army. I think that we would all be
>amazed at the amount of money that the military spends each year on civilian
>transport of heavy equipment.
I can buy that, but where was it going? Maine has almost no Army
presence worth speaking of. There are no large Army bases either. We
are way out of the way of everything, so what was it doing coming up here?
>In September of 2000 I saw two M60 tanks, on
>civilian tractor/trailer rigs, heading west through Pennsylvania. I assumed
>then, and still believe, that they were US government property. That
>is...unless somebody is aware of the government selling M60's to the public.
Er... they have :-) Jaques Littlefield owns, IIRC, 5 variants of the
M60. I also have seen several in private museums. In fact, there is a
small military museum down the road from me a bit which has a M60 sitting
on a pedastal to attract visitors driving by on the highway. My gut
feeling is that this M109 is going to that very same museum.
>The "road rage" sign was a nice touch, but I wonder if the tractor/trailer
>driver might have put it there? As to what one M109 was doing on its way to
>Maine...who knows. It could very well be on its way to an Artillery unit up
>there.
As far as I know, we do not have any heavy units in Maine. We have some
guard units, for sure, but I am pretty sure it is just towed stuff. I'll
see reps from this unit in July so I can ask them. The M109 is a fairly
special vehicle which I doubt they hand out to any hillbilly cannon
cocker unit :-)
>It might have been on its way to some VFW post, for use as a
>monument.
Knowing how many teeth a local VFW had to pull to get an old towed 105...
I doubt it :-)
>We can all dream, and I wouldn't mind waking up on day to find that I was
>the owner of an M109, but I believe that what you saw was not a privately
>owned piece of armor. I'm sure that somebody will correct me if I am wrong,
>but I don't think that the government will allow something like an M109 to
>be sold to the public.
My guess is that it is going to a museum. It is the ONLY thing that
makes complete and total sense. I could, of course, be quite wrong about
that, but overall I still think that is the best guess. I'll try and
contact the museum next month when they are open for the season again and
see if they know anything. If I find out anything, I will post here.
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Aug 16 2002 - 11:20:49 PDT