Heya, Folks,

Still working on the AFV Club M88.

As such, I've got a picture of an M88 serving in Vietnam with twin .50s mounted on the commander's cupola... Turns out that if you look close --- real close --- that a pair of M60s are mounted towards the rear of the upper hull, probably to cover the rear. I wish I had seen this before I got this far with the build. Anyway, you can't really see the detail of the M60 mount --- it is just too blurry.

I figure adding the mount won't be as much of a hassle it does not have custom gun shield like the twin .50s did. But I still have a few questions: 1) would the M60s have had ammo boxes mounted or would they have remained been belt-fed? 2) do you think that they would have both retained their regular left-hand feed for both weapons or would the M60 on the right have been modified to feed from the right side of the weapon?

I have seen .50 caliber machines modded this way (Riverine craft, etc.) but most pictures of "twin sixties" often show them both weapons belt fed from the left hand side of the weapon.

Lastly, I'm looking to add MV lenses to the M88 headlights. Does anyone know the size or part number (and colors) of the appropriate MV lenses? And if I could throw one more question out: is that light on above the left hand headlight assembly a red light...?

I'm still working on this new math/metric thing so I thought I'd ask for help...

As always, big thanks, folks!

Regards and Aloha,

Johnny B.

PS I accidentally posted this in the general AFV forum and meant to nest it here under the Vietnam category --- oops! Sorry about that, administrators, my mistake!

I crewed on an M88 from 1974 - 76, 1st Infantry Division, 701st maintenance Batallion, and from what I remember the armament was 2 crew carried .45 pistols, 2 carried M-16s, track armament was a single .50 cal on the commander's turret and there was a rocket launcher of some type. I never saw the launcher tho and our company didn't have one, but I distinctly remember the racks for the rockets in the crew compartment. I suspect what you saw was something a creative individual came up with to adapt to it. with the military big on standardization i don't think an opposite feed M60 would have been developed unless it was a specific weapons system component. i am by no means a weapons expert so i am definitely not the last word on the subject.

while the 88 was nicely armored the early versions ran on gasoline. with a capacity of 454 gallons of the stuff plus all the hydraulic oil and the huge amount of oil in the engine and tranny a prolonged fire fight was not in the best interests of the vehicle and crew, hence heavy weaponry was not really necessary. the crew compartment was also not exactly spacious either so storing all the extra ammo would have been challenging.

i don't remember much about the lighting although I do recall (i think) that the light on the drivers side rear had a red lens. the track i was on had a pair of infrared periscopes that locked in to the driver's hatch and i think the commander's hatch that had a cushioned eye piece shaped like a pair of aviator goggles so you could press your face into it and "see" to drive at night. i never did get much benefit from black-out lenses driving at night and that was when i was in my 20s and could see quite well.