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M-15 Halftrack Wreck

Thank you for posting my pictures Matthew. I hope my other walk-around photos will be shared soon as well. I noticed this M15 along a highway while on a trip and so I took these pictures of it. Limited film so I couldn't take very many pictures. I didn't have a digital camera back then. Last year I happened to be traveling down the same highway so I looked for it but it was gone along with all of the other debris. I had plans of trying to purchase it and take it home and restore it as a 1/1 scale project!! I am sure the neighbors would have loved that. It was in rough shape and as John mentioned the transmission had been removed and the clutch plate was on the ground. It had some interesting "field" modifications done such as the roof, the grill cover, the front and rear bumpers, the fuel tank attachments and the interesting glove box door latch. Not sure about the chain links on the track. I think maybe that was a field fix of some kind. I have seen some pictures of an M15 with those types of headlights supposedly in North Africa but I can't verify that is where the picture was taken. I felt sad for the old warrior and wish I could have saved it. In it's days of glory it would have looked like this Thank you again Matthew and thank you everyone for your comments and interest. Your welcome James, I wish I could have taken more pictures of it. I have more walk-around features of other "gems" to come. Randy

Randy, yes, James Bella passed them to me a short while ago, and I will be dropping them in at intervals. BTW, interesting that you mention these shots being taken on ye olde film camera, the subject, the grasses and the light give the photos a quite interesting quality; you might have noticed that I somewhat exagerrated that quality in the photo I used for the header - though I did present them again (almost) unenhanced for the body photos...

Cool, Thank you Matthew. I had sent all of those in awhile back and I wasn't sure if they had all went through or not. The pictures look great. Whatever you did worked. I didn't really look at it like that before but all of the dead grass and barren landscape does add to the plight of the poor old thing. I feel bad for the old military vehicles when I come across them. Makes me wish I had a large enough building somewhere to rescue all of them and give them a home. I am always on the lookout for other discarded military vehicles. I found a couple of M29 Weasels awhile back but when I wanted to take pictures and see about buying them the owner had already sold them. The same thing with the old Dodge WC12 I sent in pictures of. Looked for it last year and it was already gone as well. Starting to think it is a conspiracy against me!! Thank you again for posting these. Randy

Nice find! I almost thought it was one of these - but they were still running. Still, I checked the numbers anyway. It certainly proves we should always have our cameras with us. The one with the A frame is still on my "to do" list one day.

Thank you Robert. I almost missed it but I happened to look over and see the tell-tale door with it's slanted window so I knew I had found something cool. Then when I got close I knew for sure that I had. Poor old thing. Thanks for sharing the pictures. Randy

Pretty much the same thing happened with me. I saw them from a distance, and when I drove up I knew it was a find. I actually offered to buy one but they were using them to push railroad grain cars around.

The heavy roller chain attached to the outside of these tracks was an attempt to get more use out of these worn out tracks. The tracks on the US halftracks were truly "rubber band tracks" they were solid molded rubber with steel cables woven through them for strength.

Its pitty, how this vehicle ended... But thanks for grat photos!

Wow, and it's an M15, not an A1! Where's this located? I might be interested in getting it for the museum if it's for sale....

Thank you for the information Mike. The chain was an odd field fix for sure. You're welcome Peter. I'm glad that you like the pictures. I too hate to see these old warriors end up in this kind of condition. Hi Jon. When I took the photos it was sitting next to the highway in the town of Upton, WY. I took the photos back 1994 and the last time I was there, back around 2000 or 2001, it was no longer sitting there. I have no idea what happened to the poor thing. I am hoping that someone bought it and made a restoration project out of it......I hope. Thank you everyone. Sorry for the looooooong delay in responding to your posts. Randy