Picture of the day

purple said:
I've seen a couple of modified Sherman chassis still doing duty on highway construction in BC. One was the early vertical volute suspension type.There's another Sherman chassis parked beside the road in Boston Bar, BC which has been heavily modified as a crane. Most of the original hull is cut away and about the only thing still recognizable is the suspension and track.
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There are several in the North Ok that are being used for running long lead operations. Still running but not many people know that they started life as main battle tanks.
 
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tokguy said:
We have one in Downtown Medicine Hat in Riverside Park, too. Very cool unit
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There are quite a number of the M4A2E8 diesel Shermans on display across Canada. There are the ones that we used post-war until about 1970.

There are a few wartime Shermans to be seen incl an early M4A2 in Sherbrook and in London. There's also an M4A1 Cdn built Grizzly and M4A4 on display at the CWM in Ottawa. I think that the Grizzly and M4A4 are the same ones that used to be in Borden when I was at the Armoured School in 1965. The tank museum in Borden also had a Sherman Firefly with the 17pdr gun and a Sherman Flail at that time. Maybe they are still there.
 
Brno8x57 said:
Tank undercarriages were used extensively on the BC coast as the chassis on which Madill and other logging equipment manufacturers mounted yarders and towers. Also very common for rock drills. Likely the machine you saw at roadside in Boston Bar was a 009 Madill tower (90 foot) or an 071 Mini Madill (50 foot)
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I have operated a number of grapple yarders with M4 undercarriage. The Washington 78 series used the track components, the transmission, the final drives and the front glacis. They were far too light for the weight of the machine and what we did with them and track problems were common. As one old timer told me as I fixed yet another broken track, "Tanks were made to go to war, they weren't made to come back."
 
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diopter said:
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Out of respect for those who went there, it should be said that this was truly the sh---est job afloat. Sometimes called being in the "black gang" for obvious reasons: a lot more than your hands got dirty, you were also a candidate for "black lung" from the coal dust. The heat was incredible, the air terrible and if water gets in and touches the fireboxes or a steam pipe breaks, the steam flash would cook you like a lobster in seconds - or maybe just partly cook you. Super-heated steam has awesome power.
 
Stokers. Hell of a life. And if the ship's sinking, you're only several hundred feet of tight passageways and jam-able hatches from jumping off into the unforgiving sea. Jesus, thanks no..

There are downsides to every line of military work, I suppose. There you are in your ME-108. Sunny day, CAVU conditions, happy thoughts. And then some unfeeling dink shoots up your ride and you have to flop it into a field so common humans can put their greasy paws all over it.

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Comparatively speaking, still a hell of a lot better than running goon spoon in the guts of a ship.
 
diopter said:
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As an ex navy guy there are plusses and minuses. Never get cold as a stoker, no chipping of ice or standing watch in freezing cold storm conditions on an open bridge. Immune to injury and death, well pretty much, during most combat situations no bullets or shells zinging around. On the other hand get hit by a torpedo or a big shell in the worng place----------- and life becomes nasty pretty quickly and getting out is a real problem. I was a deck and bridge guy which I preferred but fire is an every present danger in combat. That is why navy guys spend so much of their training time on fire fighting. Any combat is nasty.
 
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