Do AFV crews have any particular way of securing all their gear to the sides of their vehicles. (e.g. do they use straps, boltheads, welded brackets etc.) and what is on the stowage to hold it in place. (I can't imagine a cloth loop hooked over a bolt head holding a full alice pack in position for long.
Tom

Tom,

If you go into my gallery and take a look at the close in shots I have of my LAV25 you'll see gear strapped all over the hull, the trick is straps, lots and lots of straps on any fitting we could find that dudn't interfere with the turret traverse or weapon sights; we also used towing shackles, gypsy rack(s) we were alloted 1 per vehicle nice thing about be the last unit to draw stuff, you can always get extra--we had an extra rack on both sides of the bustle rack and we kept a toilet seat we hung off the rear antenna mount.

I am in a Combat Engineer unit. During training as well as the time we were in Iraq, we typically hang our gear off of our vehicles using shoulder straps. We also tie items using rope, 550 cord or bungee straps.

For example, we would hang rucksacks off of brushguards by running the shoulder straps over the top of the brushguard, bring the strap through the center and then reconnect it to the rucksack.

Don't lie, the secret's out...the military gets industrial strength super glue in 55 gallon drums. We apply it liberally to our gear and press it to the hull and turret sides. #:-)

Sabot
So my M113 is an accurate model then.
Thanks all.
Tom

Eduard has released a useful PE set for Tamiya's M2A2 ODS Bradley that includes these hard-to-scratchbuild square tie-downs and some straps for side storage. This item reference code is TP038.

HTH
Frenchy

Yeah, that's the ticket. Back in the old days, before they invented super glue, we had to use big magnets. They didn't work in M113s because they have aluminum hulls, so the Army invented CA glue. nudge-nudge, wink-wink