Canadian Army Jeeps / Recoilless Rifles question?

[#1bcshooter]

Remember these?

Curious if anyone knows what happened to them (the jeeps and the guns). Were they sold off, melted down?

My M38A1 still sports the brush painted Canadian camouflage .

 

[Mitchell]

i also have two m38a1. One is a 67 and is my running around the farm machine and the other is a 70 work in progress in pieces

 

[points]

We had this set on display in 1968 in a mall parking lot. I was with the RCRs at the time. These things were incredibly accurate. The ranging .50 could hit a golf ball at a 1,000 yards. Okay. I never really tried that but it was pretty awesome. I got out before they changed over to the tow. What I heard was that the tow was so damned expensive that nobody got more than one shot in their career in practice so who knew if they could ever really hit anything.

 

[TacticalTeacher]

Someone mention M38 Jeep?

On top of the RSM’s veh on leave in 1978....





I was a great deal skinnier back then.... h aha ha ha

Cheers, Barney

 

[Bartok5]

My M38A1 still sports the brush painted Canadian camouflage .

Unfortunately, you appear to be missing the 3rd colour in your camo pattern. It was an intermediate Green, darker than the Olive Drab colour. You can make it out in the black and white photo above your original post, right around the front of the Driver's Footwell where you have painted your center Black Patch. The M38s (and A1s) were always a 3-Colour paint job as detailed in the official "Camouflage" pam. The camo pam detailed the correct placement of each colour for every vehicle and trailer within the Army's wheeled and tracked field fleet.

 

[maple_leaf_eh]

The 106 RCL carrier M38A1 had bump stops on the rear axles and an extra leaf. The crew seats were sideways on the wheel arches. The spare tire carrier was relocated to the passenger's front side, because the rear panel was cut away for the crew to get out the half-dozen rounds in carried on the floor. Very Spartan as a fighting vehicle.

What happened to the guns? Not sure, but they had CFRs and the Sand Dirt and Gravel (SD&G) in Cornwall have/had one on drill floor five or six years ago. No idea if it was live. They also had an M3 Scout Car in there.

FWIW, a collector in Ottawa has a TOW M151A2 "Jeep". He always wondered about its history, until he found it was ex Canadian Airborne Regiment. The notches in the steering wheel were jumps! He contacted the old Airborne Centre in Trenton for example photos of Jeeps rigged for parachutes. They sent him pictures of HIS jeep in service. Everything he has done to that vehicle since has been to rebuild it true to form. I haven't seen it in a while, so I don't know its progress. But he sold me a set of tires for my Jeep because the tread pattern was just slightly wrong for his build.

 

[R711]

I supposedly have the canister for the last 106mm round fired in Canadian service, the individual that I got it from fired it. I have no reason to believe he’s lying as he’s now the official historian for the RWR.

 

[ShooterMcGavin]

There is x 1 M38A1 cdn reconciles rifle jeep in Niagara. It was on the road as of 2 years ago, owner was trying to get a dewatt 106 some place for it, sadly he passed away, that jeep an others may be for sale soon

 

[XRCD011]

I supposedly have the canister for the last 106mm round fired in Canadian service, the individual that I got it from fired it. I have no reason to believe he’s lying as he’s now the official historian for the RWR.

Did he get it in the mid 1990s, as the 106 RR was being looked at and trialed in Gagetown for a return to service mounted on a trailer.

 

[TheTooner]

We had this set on display in 1968 in a mall parking lot. I was with the RCRs at the time. These things were incredibly accurate. The ranging .50 could hit a golf ball at a 1,000 yards. Okay. I never really tried that but it was pretty awesome. I got out before they changed over to the tow. What I heard was that the tow was so damned expensive that nobody got more than one shot in their career in practice so who knew if they could ever really hit anything.
View attachment 327855

The British Army had the similar MILAN. I had a rifle platoon in a mechanized infantry battalion in BAOR in the mid1980s and the MILAN Pl.Comd told me a live round cost about the same as a new Austin Mini so his three man MILAN teams got one shot per year. Fast forward, after the Gulf War and the units that had fought had been replaced and they were cycling units through to take advantage of the wide open spaces for training. There was so much unused ammo out there even the Milan teams had all they wanted for practise and would set up shots for the ordinary riflemen to come along and let one off for "familiarisation." (And still, a lot of ammo got loaded on commercial cargo ships chartered to take it to deep ocean and dump it overboard because it was cheaper than destroying it in place or shipping it all the way back.)

I remember the jeeps with the 106 from my time in the local militia regiment in 1980-82. I never got to play with them but was impressed when I saw a demonstration shoot by our anti-tank element. I think they had four, probably two of them working.

 

[Claven2]

Rumour in the late 1980's was that the Jeeps were surplussed and the Rifles were sold to Turkey. The M40 106mm Recoiless Rifle was an excellent weapon system which mated a semi-auto .50 cal Spotter-Tracer Rifle atop the 106mm Rifle. The trajectory of the .50 Spotter-Tracer Ammo was matched to the 106mm High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) and High Explosive Squash-Head (HESH) main rifle rounds, so that whatever you hit with the .50 cal you could immediately thwack with the big gun. You pulled a big control knob to fire the semi-auto .50 cal and then pushed it to fire the 106mm Rifle. It was a very effective weapon against armour targets of the early cold war as well as bunkers and other field fortifications including concrete emplacements.

I had the pleasure of being a qualified Gunner/Loader as well as a Detachment (Jeep) Commander and eventually the Anti-Armour Platoon Second-in-Command as an infantryman with the Canadian Scottish Regiment (Princess Mary's) on Vancouver Island back during the early 1980s. Good times!

Pretty sure we ditched them all when TOW came in. Not a bad trade, if you ask me.

 

[stencollector]

I am quite familiar with the 106 recoiless versions of the Jeeps. We had the 106 mounted on the M38 and the M38A1Cdn. As those fleets were phased out, the M38A1Cdn2 and Cdn3 were used. I remember in Winnipeg that the reserves recoiless rifles (which were transferred from the PPCLI when they went to TOW) were all the 1970/71 model (M38A1CDN3). While I have seen a CFTO for the M151A2 to have the TOW kit installed, I have not seen a CFTO for the 106 recoiless kits. Somewhere over on MLU a collector listed all the CFRs of the 106 Jeeps.....I would have to look there and see if any M151A2s are on the list.

One of the features of the recoiless rifle Jeeps was they had a set of overload springs on the rear axle which consisted of coil springs and brackets. Some other Jeeps got the kits as well if they carried a heavy load. My own personal Cdn3 that I own for some reason has the kit.

When the Iltis replaced the older fleets of Jeeps in the mid 80s, the recoiless Jeeps were sold off along with the regular ones. The exception is the M151A2s, which were to be destroyed. I bought 30 of those for $110 each, but that is another story.

There was an attempt to add a computer system to the recoiless rifles to make them capable of indirect fire, but by the mid 90s, this program was dropped. By the early 2000s, the recoiless rifles that were not given to museums went to the smelter around the same time the C1A1 and C2A1s went.

I got word from some of the techs that went to AVCON in Rogers pass that Parks Canada had some recoiless rifles, and all the remaining stock of recoiless rifle ammunition. When the ammuniton ran out, apparently the guns were scrapped.

Canada also mounted the 106 on the M113A1 fleet. I have seen some of the mounting kits at the local milsurp scrapyard. There are photos of them in Germany as well.

There was a M38A1 with recoiless sold out of collectors source a couple years ago. Price was $25K...it was only on their site for about 3 days. I have talked with a collector out of Quebec who has managed to import a 106 and has it mounted on his M38A1. As well, I salvaged a cut up 106 about 4 years back from the local salvage yard which went to a collector in Ontario to be mounted on a US mule.

I have the Equipment Logistics Directives at work for the 106. I believe Canada had about 135 of them.

By the way, the M38 and M38A1 are not military versions of the CJ3 and Cj5. The Cj3 and Cj5 are civilian versions of the military trucks. The military trucks came first.

 

[XRCD011]

There was an attempt to add a computer system to the recoiless rifles to make them capable of indirect fire, but by the mid 90s, this program was dropped. By the early 2000s, the recoiless rifles that were not given to museums went to the smelter around the same time the C1A1 and C2A1s went.

Interesting, I had never heard that while involved with T&E at CFB Gagetown and their work at seeing if there was any merit in seeing if new life and purpose could be brought into being for the 106mm RR. The gun was "modernized" with a laser range finder, thermal imaging optics, ditched the spotting rifle and trailer mounted and projected to still be used in the direct fire AT role to fill the gap between the Eryx and TOW ranges.

 

[stencollector]

There was an attempt to add a computer system to the recoiless rifles to make them capable of indirect fire, but by the mid 90s, this program was dropped. By the early 2000s, the recoiless rifles that were not given to museums went to the smelter around the same time the C1A1 and C2A1s went.

Interesting, I had never heard that while involved with T&E at CFB Gagetown and their work at seeing if there was any merit in seeing if new life and purpose could be brought into being for the 106mm RR. The gun was "modernized" with a laser range finder, thermal imaging optics, ditched the spotting rifle and trailer mounted and projected to still be used in the direct fire AT role to fill the gap between the Eryx and TOW ranges.

I got my information second hand from a weapons tech who I worked with in the mid 90s. He was previously out of Southern Ontario...not sure what his involvement was in the project. He may well have been talking about the same things you are. Hard to believe they would make entirely new rounds for the weapon, and it would make no sense firing AP in an indirect fire role.

 

[R711]

The optical laser sight was called CLASS.