I model the gun trucks that were in my company, the 444 Trans outside of Qui Nhon, Vietnam in 1969-70.
[imghttp://www.geocities.com/vietnammodeling/snoopy_lside.jpgimg]
Kewl!!
I was stationed in Qui Nhon the last 2 months of 1970, and remember seeing a number of those gun trucks running down the roads guarding the convoys…
Ken,
Have run into a few other Qui Nhon vets on web sites and one at Marty’s last year, he was even a trucker! . Jerry
I was a tanker. 17th Cav, 23 Inf Div…F Troop, no less…
I joined the local guard unit here and finished out my 20 for retirement. It was an armor unit, mostly M-60 variants over the years, m-1’s towards the end. After I got out they switched over to being truckers! Jerry
I trained on M-48’s at Ft Knox, drove an APC over there, got wounded from a booby trap on dec 31, 1970 and spent 1971 recuperating in Valley Forge General Hospital. Got a medical discharge and 50% disability pension…now retired from the phone company after 36 years.
Hope your wounds did pain you too much over the years. Glad you made it back, I was lucky, came back with no wounds. I retired from teaching 4 years ago, when I hit 60. The guard pension helped my teacher pension enough to let me out. Jerry
The medical pension more than made up for any pain…
Glad it wasn’t too bad Ken! Jerry
I have some pix up now on my web page about building a model of Red Baron, a gun truck in my company in 1970 in Vietnam. http://thescrr.com/GunTruck/
(http://www.lscdata.com/users/splitrack/InflateTnt.jpg)
1971-72 Pleiku Highlands What is this ? Weather gear… Big Balloons… Packed everything up and shipped all of the gear to Qui Nhon in 1971 while I stayed back to do other work. Bah ! Not a good time to have rank. We lost some trucks even though Dragon Wagon’s accompanied them. Ah yes ! Many nifty terminologies used on these vehicles like Luck Seven etc… Weird thing, I saw some of these vehicles at my last duty station, Tooele Army Depot. There they were cleaned up and shipped to guard units. Good use of our $$$ but no recognition as it wasn’t news worthy…
I did this model of Bounty Hunter a few years back for a guy that was on it. A fellow crew member here in Neb commissioned me to make one for him.
(http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/jerrybarnes/Gun%20Truck%20Models/BHdoneAngle.jpg)
Here is how it looked in Vietnam.
(http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/jerrybarnes/Gun%20Truck%20Models/BHleeOsml.jpg)
Here is where I am at right now.
(http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/jerrybarnes/Gun%20Truck%20Models/BHcabBed.jpg)
I hope finish this and drop this off in Lincoln on my way to Marty’s, so I have some money to spend!
We had a couple APC’s that had names on their sides. Aluminum Coffin was one that comes to mind. Not necessarily the one I’d pick nor as elaborate as those gun trucks…
Yeah, saw one with a nice 2" hole on the outside and hundreds of small holes on the inside from the splash of the melted metal. Nasty. Most gun truck names were based on the songs/groups/movies/tv shows of the time. Almost 500 gun trucks have been documented. New book on they should be out by the end of the year from Squadron.
Let me know when it comes out and who it’s distributed by. I wouldn’t mind reading that.
James Lyles is the author. He had two previous ones, but not sure any are left to get. This is his publishers address: [email protected] Squadron put out one by Tim Kutta about 12 years ago, but it’s out of print. It was early and Tim was NOT a gun trucker, as Lyles was, so a lot of the info was incorrect. Not Tim’s fault necessarily, but the info was just not out there. Lyles, being a gun trucker, got info from guys that would not share it with anyone else. Jerry
Thanx Jerry…
I’ve made a lot of progress on Bounty Hunter, hope to have it done to take with me when I got to Marty’s. Guy lives near there and will pay in cash that I can spend at Marty’s. Rex is bringing me a Pacific and I ordered some stuff from Kidmans. Just a week to go! Note the Pepsi X box, seen those in a couple of gun truck photos, don’t recall the product, but made up a sheet, based on the C ration printouts you can get. Did the same for beer cases, this one will have a Miller’s that I just finished last nite, ripped open some, with cans inside!
(http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/jerrybarnes/Gun%20Truck%20Models/BH80SideSm.JPG)
I got the graphics on, big sigh of relief on that. In this blurry shot you can see the C ration boxes and Pepsi X and Millers boxes. One box is ripped open to expose the cans. Getting closer to the end!
(http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/jerrybarnes/Gun%20Truck%20Models/BH85sideSm.JPG)
The most important addition to any vehicle…C-Rations, Pepsi and Millers…