Heya, Folks,

Had a question about the blade of an M-88 engineer vehicle... Would it originally have been painted the same color as the entire vehicle? I would assume so and that, over time and with use, the paint on the front of the blade would have been worn off, leaving a shiny steel/chrome blade.

Does anyone have pix of the M-88 with a mix of the original paint/worn finish, especially in Vietnam.

As always, many thanks, folks!

Regards and Aloha,

Johnny B.

Johhny

I have never to date heard of a M-88 with a dozer blade. I am not in anyway contesting there was one. What I found was a "Spade" that stabilized the vehicle in serious pulls. It looked kinda like a dozer blade. Here's a link to the best info I could find.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m88a1e1.htm

Hiya, Charles...

Yep. I stand corrected --- oops, wrong choice of nomenclature! :O

My question does stand, though.. Would the spade have been factory painted the same shade as the vehicle and does anyone have pix of the spade with the paint partially worn off.

Thanks again!

Regards and Aloha,

Johnny B.

Hi Johnny

Maybe these pics (from Google-hosted Life magazine albums) :








HTH

Frenchy

Johhny Sorry I missread your post, you never said dozer blade, at any rate, the pict at the bottom of the page has what you are looking for, the blade is folded up but you can still see the surface if you enlarge the pict.

Looks to me like instead of shiny steel it's more like the darker steel look with flecks of paint, anyway that's the best I could do.

No sweat, Charles! Nuthin' ta be sorry about.

Frenchy, as always, comes through with the goods! Thanks, Frenchy, for the great photos!! I've never seen these. Looks like the leading edge --- no surprisingly --- wears out the most. Fantastic color pix which will help me out on a couple of projects.

Thanks again, Frenchy --- I hope that life is good, amigo.

Regards and Aloha,

Johnny B,

You're welcome, as usual

Here's the homepage for Life magazine archive (just try several keywords to get more pics. I've found the M88 pics using "Vietnam" + "cavalry"...)
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
You can also check-out this thread on armchairgeneral.com (it includes many Life pics) :
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40061

PS : life is good

HTH
Frenchy

I've got M88A1 photos on this site. The main winch is being worked on so there are some decent shots of the blade.

Great images. I am excited and got me a AFV M88 NAM which the instruction sheet eaten by termites. Can anyone scan me a copy? Thank you.