Hello Everybody,

I wonder if there have been some M113 ACAV equipped with a dozerblade, perhaps of the type Verlinden offers here, in Vietnam. I imagine that the dozerblade could be of certain use even for an assault vehicle as an additional armourplate and to remove the undergrowth/foliage. Perhaps someone can say a word or two and/or has some photos where one can see an ACAV plus dozer.

Thank you for watching.

Best Regards from Germany

Dennis

AFAIK, the dozer variant of the M113 has never been used by the US Army. Land clearing teams were equipped with D7 dozers (most of them fitted with Rome Plows).


HTH

Frenchy

Hi Dennis,

You might want to check these earlier threads:

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/64108

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/135275

hth a little

Mark

Thanks for the links Mark (I had forgotten about them ) So it seems my reply was too much peremptory...(never say "never" )

Frenchy

Well, I have never seen any pictures of (US) M113's with dozers in VN (and neither have you right?) so that says something. But it is possible just a few were tested or something. It would make a nice M113 that's for sure, as a matter of fact; I have the dozer in my stash, planning on doing a M113 in a Vietnamese landscape but I'm not building any dio's myself anymore (all my modeling time goes into MecModels

Btw did you see this M113 with (experimental?) mineroller-device?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zippo132/5794499729/in/photostream

that would be a nice conversion right?

Mark

Mark: That minesweeper looks just the part for my Vietnam dio. Do you know what is was called? I'd love to get my hands on a few more photos and scratch build it.

The Army Concept Team in Vietnam conducted an evaluation of the bulldozer kit for the M113A1 (or rather, a bulldozer kit, I can't be sure its the same one) sometime between 1968 and 1969. The report isn't online, but you can read the abstract here: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD0861799

Also tested in Vietnam was a bar armor kit, the mine roller already mentioned, and 2 types of AVLB.

Hello,

So, Thank you very much for your help. I`ve not found the Links Mark posted before, so they are a nice source as the abstract Joe posted is too. Just to get it right and to eliminate any possible missunderstandings the language barrier could cause: reports or photos of M113 with dozerblades in NAM are very scarce and most likely these where fitted on an experimental base only.

Again, thank you very much for your time, gents.

Best Regards

Dennis

Yes, the M113A1s with the bulldozer blades were trialed in small numbers, but were not adopted. Without having a copy of the report in hand its hard to say how many vehicles there were and who got them for the tests.