I am starting to build the Academy USMC M60A1 Kit with rise/passive armor. Is there anything I should be aware in the build of this kit? Are the bogey wheels at the proper height as in the instructions? Or do I need to lower them. I don't build very many track kits so any help with this one is appreciated.

I want to build it as one of the Marines tanks in Desert Storm era 1991.

Here is the Patton Mania site. A lot of good info resides in there: http://www.patton-mania.com/

Current experts agree that the Tamiya and Academy M60 series kits sit a bit too high. This is reportedly due to the measured prototype vehicle being an engine-less display tank.

One of the problems with the Academy/Tamiya kit tracks are that the center guides do not straddle two adjacent tracks pads but are instead centered on each track block. The only fix to this would be to replace them with the AFV Club separate track links.

Overall it is a decent kit, but I am not knowledgeable on the Marine Corps fittings.

BTW, the RISE/Passive refers to engine and fire control/sighting improvements. The add on armor is ERA or Explosive Reactive Armor.

Thanks Rob this will be a big help.

I've got some photos of my old M60A3TTS (not very different visually from a RISE/Passive A1) that were taken during Reforger 88. I can upload them into my motor pool if you want.

That would be great Rob.

Here you go. The photos are kind of old and got moldy.

Thanks again Rob.

My pleasure. I had fun digging up these old photos. A month or so ago when I first found them I had brought them into work to show my friends. That very morning, one of my former platoon members walks into my office because he saw my name on the door. I opened up the album and we reminised for a while.

He was a Spec 4 back then and I was a 2LT. He's now an SFC and I'm a LTC.

Rob, What unit were you serving with at the time (3AD?)? I was PCS'es from 1AD, and our unit (1-35 AR.) was tasked with them some O/C duties, etc Dan

I was a platoon leader in the 8th ID. My unit was 5-77 Armor (formerly 3-68 AR) stationed at Sullivan Barracks in Mannheim. 3rd ID was just starting to get the M1A1 that summer and most other units had the M1IP. This was one of the last uses of the A3 in Germany (except for OPFOR at Hohenfels).

I had a great time riding that dinosaur.

Robin,

I am always amazed at how old fashioned the M60 looks when compared against a Chieftain of the same era, with the height of the M60 more like something belonging to almost WW2 and then ours being quite low slung and boasting the 120mm rifled gun.

Just an observation having seen them close together on Nato Exercises.

John

I too loved the old '60's and still have a special place in my heart for them! I arrived at Erlangen in January '83 and we had the '60's until Sepember of '87. We put alot of sweat into those things! I need to get on that old ESCI kit in the closet sometime. Dan

I remember walking into the motor pool and seeing the M60A3s all ratty looking and wondering what an M1 tanker was doing there. I am glad that I did get a chance to tank with the A3 before it was put out to pasture. You really had to know how to fix the beast to keep it going. It was a great ride to learn how to tank on and every tanker was part mechanic.

After commanding roughly a half dozen different Abrams tanks, that thing is more like a Nascar. You basically told the mechanics something was wrong with it and they figured it out and fixed it. About the only thing the crew did was maintain the track.

Just look at what they decended from..the M60 can trace its lineage to the M26 Pershing...where as the Chieftain was influnced by the Centurion, which was futuristic looking when it came out in the late 1940's

One thing to note on the second photo are the road wheels. There always seems to be an issue that the finned aluminum wheels were out of service by 1980. The compensating idler wheel on my tank is aluminum and the #3 and #6 road wheels are too. Most of our tanks had some sort of road wheel mix and even if this same tank was photographed at a later date, there's a good chance the mix was different.

When I entered service, they were training us on the M60a1 nothing. We had all that turning the turret and going in through inside the turret to disconnect stuff. I stayed on for MO afterwards and they taught us the brand spanking new Rise stuff. Lucky me !! When I finally PCS'd to the FRG my unit had gotten the RISE 2 weeks before. My intro to my platoon was. Here you go LT...that is your tank and it is down. I impressed my platoon Sgt by really knowing what to do. A fine way to start.


Oh animal as the kit lacks the pack...... it is accurate !!!!!!!!!! :-) :-) :-)

If you're gonna do a USMC M60 in DS, you could get away with really rusty tracks on it if you model one transported over from Okinawa. Those beasts had some rusty tracks, we only got to take them to the field once or twice during our 6 month UDP's. They saw the field maybe 4 times a year and on two of them the main route to range 10 was mainly road.