Follow Up 2017 Visit to Belgrade, Serbia, Military Museum

German Panzer II, 20mm Main Gun

Last June, I visited the Military Museum in Belgrade. It is in a fortress on the top of one of the two hills in the very flat area around the city where the Danube and Sava Rivers meet and flow together.  When I posted about my visit last year, I only put a few pictures on the page. Today, I am posting the rest of the pictures. Most of the tanks and guns are World War II and before.  Serbia was conquered by the Nazis then under the political control of the Soviets until the fall of the Soviet Empire.  

The museum itself has artifacts going back to the conquest of Serbia by Alexander the Great. Standing on the parapets of the fort that is the museum, it is easy to see how large armies conquered Serbia for the past two millennia.  

If anyone is sure about the identification of these tanks and guns, send me a message and I will add captions.  ngussman@yahoo.com  Thanks!

Panzerkampfwagen 35(tschechische)

Flak 88mm cannon

German Half Track with Cannon 

Carro Veloce CV-33 Italian armored vehicle

Polish Tankette

 Renault FT17 French light tank

S-125 Neva/Pechora Нева/Печора

The missile that brought down a USAF F-117

over Serbia in 1999

Stuart M3 Light Tank

Italian Carro Armato M13-40

Panzer I Aus F

Stuart M3A3 Light Tank

German Panzer IV

Stuart M3A3 Light Tank

StuG III Ausf. F/8 (Sd.Kfz.142/1)

JS-2 Joseph Stalin tank

Tankers vs. Non-Tankers: the never-ending discussion among armor crewmen

  

So much of the Army is competition, especially the combat arms parts of the Army where men are confined together in small armored spaces and have endless hours to “talk shit.”

When my small armored space was the turret of an M60A1Patton tank, one of the subjects that came up among us young sergeants was the question: Who is a Tanker, and who is a Non-Tanker?

Before gunnery, I was a Non-Tanker. Not only had I never qualified on Tank Table VIII (Tanker’s final exam), but I had transferred from the Air Force. A Wing Nut is not a Tanker.  So I was in the Limbo of those who simply never had been to annual gunnery.   Worse still, I enlisted in the Army in June 1975 after leaving the Air Force. Because I carried over my rank as Specialist4, I started as a gunner in 1-70^th Armor. I made sergeant in February and, partly from a shortage of sergeants, got my own tank crew right away.  Not only was I a Non-Tanker, I was the Non-Tanker in Charge of his own crew.

That first year, I fired “Distinguished” at tank gunnery at Fort Carson, Colorado, in April 1976.  Because I qualified near the top of the battalion, I was allowed to be part of the discussion of who was a Tanker and who wasn’t from that time forward, at least until 1978.

Every competitive job or sport has a group of insiders who discuss for hours, especially when drinks are involved, their equivalent of who is Tanker, and who is a Non-Tanker.  Whatever the field, the insider is competent, the outsider is in some critical way incompetent.

I have not been a Tanker since 1984, but the intense discussion came back to my mind in 2014 when I read the book, “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro. The central character is a butler in one of the “Great Houses” in the time between the World Wars when the butler had a household staff ranging between a platoon and a small company.  At one point in the novel, a dozen butlers gather for drinks and have an intense discussion of what a butler is, what are the critical skills, who were and who currently are the greatest butlers, and, of course, who among those not currently in the room are mere pretenders. 

As with any clique, one’s place is never permanent. In January 1978, I took a job at Brigade headquarters and stayed there for rest of my tour.  I became a “Non-Tankin’ MotherF*#ker” immediately.  I got out at the end of 1979 and went to college. In 1982, I joined Alpha 6-68^th Armor for two years.  I made staff sergeant, became a section leader and as an active duty soldier in a reserve unit, I was back to being to being a Tanker! But in 1984, I got a job offer that would make it impossible to be a reservist, so I left the Army. Although I re-enlisted in 2007, I was in aviation and so was a Non-Tanker ever after.

In many ways, being a tanker really was, “The Best Job I Ever Had” and discussions about who was or was not a Tanker was one of the ways I knew how deep into my that job I was. 

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Every Week in Cold War West Germany, Gas Mask Drills

Every week during my three years in Cold War West Germany, 

the Tankers of 1-70th Armor had a MOPP drill. Gene Pierce, Abel Lopez and Don Spears

are in the motor pool celebrating MOPP Level 1. 

With Russian Nerve Agent VX in the news, I remembered donning a mask and occasionally putting on full protective gear every week when I was stationed in Wiesbaden in Cold War, West Germany in the late 70s.  An alarm would sound and we would mask wherever we were and continue to work.  

Most days, if we were on post we were in the motor pool.  If we were tightening end-connector bolts or checking ammo racks, we masked and continued with the task in hand.  I had taught classes, including Chemical, Biological, Radiation classes when the alarm sounded and had the odd experience of seeing a room full of men stand and mask, then resume their seat.  It is difficult to be understood wearing a mask, so I dismissed the class.

It really sucked for those who had been waiting for food in the huge consolidated mess chow line then were not able to eat it.  

We did not often go to full MOPP gear (Military Oriented Protective Posture) because they were controlled items and had to be signed for.  Of course, when the drill was going to be full MOPP we knew it because it had to be issued in advance and carried everywhere: charcoal-lined suit, boots, gloves, everything.  

The Soviets had millions of pounds of VX gas they manufactured before they had a nuclear bomb and kept making for years after.  I wrote about the leader of the VX program in the Soviet Union recently, a man named Boris Libman who shows just how bad life can be for a hero of the Soviet Union.

With Soviet nerve gas back in the news, the Cold War is back in our lives.    

Dixie Pig, Motorcycle Racing and Missing my Tank

I am watching the second season of "The West Wing." A suspect in a plot to kill the President in this late 1990s drama was arrested in a Dixie Pig restaurant.

The only time I ever ate in a Dixie Pig restaurant was in 1987 when I took a weekend course to get a motorcycle road racing license. We all had lunch at the Dixie Pig and got a two-hour lecture on the basics of road racing. There were a dozen racers in the room. I was the only one who ordered the vegetable plate.

We were in Virginia. It was July and 95 degrees. We were wearing full leathers in the sun for the next phase after the lecture lunch. I am not a vegetarian, but eating pork barbecue before practicing mass starts and cornering seemed crazy. So I ordered the vegetable plate. When I did, the blond, blue-eyed sugar-voiced waitress said, "You don't want no meat? None?"

I got the license the next day, and I never raced again after the ten-lap road race that was our final exam.

In just ten laps of the two-mile, ten-turn Summit Point Road Course the two instructors lapped all of us. They were riding RD350 Yamahas.

Our machines varied from my 500 Intercepter to a 1000cc FZR Yamaha.

Serious motorcycle road racing means sliding the rear tire in every turn to get the best launch out of the turn. I knew at the end of that ten-lap race that sliding every lap was way beyond my modest skill level and I would be little more than a rolling chicane for the real racers.

Motorcycle road racing was the first of many things I did to replace the excitement of tank gunnery in my life after I left the Army in 1984. I continued to ride motorcycles for a few more years, but by 1992 had switched to bicycle racing.

The switch was healthier in the sense that I was exercising on the bicycle unlike the motorcycle. But racing and speed on two wheels can end with the rubber side up.

In twenty years of motorcycle riding, I had four accidents which resulted in four broken bones, four concussions, two surgeries and two weeks in the hospital--one of the accidents was by far the worst.

Although bicycling can be safer, it is not with me on the bike. Twenty-five years of bicycling includes 14 broken bones, six concussions, three surgeries and eight nights in the hospital.

The military was definitely safer. Eighteen years of active, reserve and Guard service led to just three broken bones and two concussions, but also seven surgeries and seven nights in the hospital. The surgeries were to remove shrapnel from my eyes and reattach two fingers after a missile explosion.

Clearly, I never found anything in civilian life as exciting as Armor. In 2007 I re-enlisted and spent almost ten years in Army Aviation, sometimes flying in Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters in the U.S. and in Iraq.

And this whole thing started when I saw the Dixie Pig on Netflix.

Happy Holidays.

My Last Tanker Nickname: Oddball

Donald Sutherland as Oddball, a tank commander in the movie "Kelly's Heroes"

I got my last tanker nickname more than a decade after I earned the nickname Sgt. Bambi Killer.  I got that nickname on a business trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2000.  The company I worked for just bought a company in Brazil and I was part of a team that went to Brazil to introduce ourselves to the people who ran the business.

Sao Paulo has traffic that makes Los Angeles look like Omaha, so the local managers sent a limo for the four of us. This meant we could be more comfortable on the three-hour 20-mile trip from the airport to downtown. 

At the time I had a beard and still had a lot of brown hair.  Among the local staff people who were waiting to meet us was my now long-time friend Ivan Porccino. Ivan speaks five languages and was assigned as our interpreter.  When we got in the car, Ivan introduced us to the driver and said we would be in Sao Paulo for a few days. The driver said, “I love America. I learn English watching American movies.”

So we talked about movies. The driver mentioned he loved “Kelly’sHeroes.” Bob Lee (Robert E. Lee, no kidding, but he went by Bob) our CEO said, “Neil was a tank commander back the 80s.” The driver turned, looked at me again and said, “Oddball! You are Oddball!” And so I was. For the rest of the trip and the rest of the time I worked for that company, I was Oddball, especially to Bob Lee.

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Best Day in the Army and The Best Job I Ever Had

Two weeks ago I started writing about the best day of my life as a soldier out of the 6,575 days (18 years) I served in uniform. That day (I have to find the exact date) was Table VIII tank gunnery at Fort Carson, Colorado, in the Spring of 1976.  It was my first tank gunnery, and my first gunnery as a tank commander.  Why was I tank commander first time out?

I was in the U.S. Air Force from 1972-74 and got out a few months after being temporarily blinded in a missile explosion.  After a year as a civilian, I re-enlisted in the Army and went to Fort Knox for Tank training in July and August 1975.  I re-enlisted as an E4 and made E5 in January of 76.  I got my own crew and was determined to qualify--not bolo as the old hands predicted the ex Wing Nut would.  I had a great platoon sergeant and my crew fired Distinguished on Table VIII. 

I will be re-reading gunnery procedures and interviewing at least four tankers who fired Table VIII at Carson that year.  If all goes well, it could be a book.

I admire the "Day in the Life of..." form. Especially the books A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin.  So I am writing Home on the Range: A Day in the Life of a Cold War Tank Commander with the idea of telling a much larger story of the effect that day would have on my life, but never leaving that one day.

I was talking to a friend about how even after writing several hundred words, I have more questions the more I write.  One related question that came up was about travel. Part of loving the military and why I kept re-enlisting was travel.  I flew space-available flights across America and Europe as a young soldier, everything from a C-130 to a C-5A.

Now that the military part of my life is over, any travel I do will be as a civilian.  This summer I went on a six-week trip that began in Belgrade, Serbia; circled north and east to Ukraine; back west as far as the very western edge of the Normandy beaches; and then to Israel and back through Paris to Stockholm.

That trip included seven Holocaust memorials and changed my view of life profoundly.  So my friend asked if their were other trips that changed me as much.  The answer I just blurted out was: The trips with a gun.  The only two trips that had as great an effect on me as the trip this summer were deploying to Cold War West Germany with Brigade 76 and deploying to Camp Adder, Iraq, in 2009-10 with 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.

Tank gunnery 1976 was, in part, training for sending the entire 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division to Germany in October.  And that day made me so much more confident I could lead a tank crew if the Cold War heated up.

In the past 40 years, I have been to 44 countries on five continents.  The bicycle-train-plane-automobile-boat trip this summer is the only trip that has come close to traveling in uniform with a gun in its profound effect on how I look at the world.

If you read this blog, you likely made one or more trips with a gun.  What it means to travel with and without a gun has been stuck in my head since that conversation.

Being a tank commander was without a doubt the Best Job I Ever Had.

Visiting the Base Where I was a Tank Commander from 1976-79 in Wiesbaden, Germany

When I visited Wiesbaden Air Base this summer, the tank in the photo above was the only tank on the base.  When I arrived the first time in October 1976, the 54 tanks of 1st Battalion, 70th Armor were combat loaded with 63 rounds of cannon ammo. We were on the East-West border within 48 hours after we landed at Rhein-Main Air Base.  

The building above was post headquarters for 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division as soon as we took over the base.  It still serves as headquarters, now for the reserve forces in Europe, commanded by Major General John Gronski, my division commander in Pennsylvania before he took over this new command in Europe.  

This building was my barracks in 1976-77, before I moved off post.  It is offices now. Bravo Company was mostly on the second floor.  The barracks were carpeted and had relatively luxurious living spaces.  I shared a room with three other sergeants.  Enlisted men were eight to a room.  Sergeant Daniel Rosera was the first one to buy 300 Watts of stereo to play Peter Frampton Comes Alive out his barracks window.  Her also bought a mic so he could belch at 300 Watts.  He could belch short sentences.  A man of considerable talents.

Across this fences is a few dozen trucks and a dozen more Blackhawk helicopters.  The tanks are gone and aircraft sit where M109 howitzers and their support vehicles were parked 40 years ago.

I rode up to Wiesbaden Air Base from Darmstadt and visited John and Berti Gronski. They live in the housing area. Gronski and his wife still ride. I didn't find out until this visit that they were really serious riders.  When Gronski left active duty as a lieutenant in 1981, he and Berti rode home from Washington state to Mossic, Pa. on bicycles! John towed a trailer carrying their 15-month-old son.  

The unit motto of the 28th Division, Pa. National Guard, is "Roll On!"  Gronski would say that at formations and public ceremonies. I had no idea in 2012 - 14 when he was division commander that he took "Roll On" so literally. He and Berti rolled on for 3,000 miles across the country.  

Tanks are Symphony of Roars and Rattles

The M60A1 Patton tank that was my home and weapon in West Germany was a symphony of sound I could never quite describe in prose, so I tried poetry:

M60A1, On the Border in Fulda, October 1976

Growling, howling, eighteen hundred cubic inches

Of diesel engine roars, belches smoke and launches

Fifty-seven tons steel and rubber and flesh across a

German field.

While the engine roars, end connectors grind in the

Sprockets, center guides screech as they scrape

Aluminum road wheels lined with steel. Ammo racks

Rattle, White Phosphorus rounds in the Ready Rack shake.

Torsion bars creak, flexing over rocks and ruts. 

Ratchets, wrenches, track tools, clasps,

Hinges, and locks jangle and ring on the fenders.

Jerry cans clang in their tie downs on side of the turret

Hydraulic motor screams as the commander swings the

Turret over the driver. A cacophony of track blocks,

Bolts, rack handles, the coax ammo box,  

Cupola ammo doors, the tanker bar and Little Joe,

Assails the ears of the crew as they scan the horizon.

Across the fence, squat Soviet T-70s track the

Trundling Pattons as they parade north, roaring,

Rattling and ready to rain ruin in a moment.

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Soviet Armor vs. American Armor, Israel 1973

In July and August 1975, I went to the U.S. Army Armor School in Fort Knox, Kentucky, after three years in missile weapons testing.

We learned the basics of armor and about our tank, the M60A1.  We also learned about a serious flaw in our tanks that was fixed at great cost by the Israeli Army.  The Israelis fought and defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan using the M60A1 among other tanks.  It turns out the hydraulic fluid in our tanks was prone to catch fire.  After the Israelis lost crewmen to these fires, the hydraulic fluid was changed.

We also learned how important mechanical reliability is to combat tank crews.  The Arab countries used Soviet tanks, primarily the T-55 and T-62 main battle tanks.  We learned the difference between "live" and "dead" track.  Soviet tanks used dead track, like bulldozers that does not use rubber bushings.  In hard use, especially at high speeds, dead track is more prone to break.  According to one report, the Syrian Army lost one-fourth of its tanks before they reached the battle in the Golan Heights due to automotive failure.

After the 1973 War, the Israelis installed American-made drive lines in captured Soviet tanks to make the Soviet armor more reliable.

To people who have never trained and lived in a tank, they can seem like the indestructible behemoths of movies.  But real life in a tank is a life of wrenches and rags.  As a tank commander of one of the most reliable tanks of its time, my crew and I spent five hours or more maintaining our 54-ton tank for every hour of operation.  Each of the 80 track blocks on each track were held together with a center guide and two end connectors.  Each of the 160 center guides and 320 end connectors could work loose and had to be checked, often.  The center guides ran between six pairs of road wheels, three pairs of return rollers, the drive sprocket and front idler wheel for adjusting track tension.  Each of the wheels had inner steel plates bolted to the aluminum wheels.  The road wheels were attached to torsion bars.

We tightened bolts all the time.  Our tanks would received major service at 6,000 miles of operation, usually including a refurbished V12 diesel power plant and transmission.

And our tanks were so much more reliable than the Soviet counterparts that the Israelis ditched their drivelines and installed American-made drivelines to make the Soviet tanks more reliable.

War shows strengths and weaknesses.  Reliable, effective armor is definitely an American strength.

Nearly 100,000 Tanks in Service Around the World--Most are Russian

Recently, I wrote an article about the new Russian T-14 tank as a real innovation in a world that is moving away from armored forces.  While writing the article I found a Wikipedia page listing all the tanks in service around the world by country.  While the page is useful, it can't be sorted.

So I made a spreadsheet with all the tanks by country so I could sort it and add up numbers.

The first number is the total of all tanks in service or in reserve for all armies in the world:

99,534 tanks

Wow!  The world is not building a lot of new tanks, but there are a lot in service. 

Wikipedia lists 142 countries with armies.  Of those, 28 have no tanks, leaving 114 countries with armored forces.  From Afghanistan with 771 tanks to Zimbabwe with 77 tanks, it is clear that Russian-made tanks are the backbone of the world's armored united.  Of those 99,534 tanks in service around the world, Russia made 54,853.  

Of the 114 countries with tanks, 49 have Russian-made T-55 tanks for a total of 13,776 tanks.  Fewer countries have the T-72 tank, but including Russian reserves, there are 20,478 T-72s in service.  These are by far the tanks in widest use around the world.

By comparison, the world's number two tank maker is the United States with 15, 538 tanks in more than 20 countries.  About a third of American-built tanks in world service are M48/M60 variants, mostly M60A3s.  The rest are the M1 Abrams in its various forms.  

M1A1 Abrams

The next biggest tank maker is China with 10,902 tanks in service in fewer than 20 countries.  But the Chinese tanks owe a lot to Russian design.  

Chinese Type 69 owes a lot to Russian design

Germany is the number four supplier of tanks with 4,395 Leopards in many variants in service in more than a dozen countries.  

In yet another example of the 80/20 rule dominating all of life, the top four tank-making countries made more than 95,000 of the 99,000 tanks in service in the world.  France and Great Britain are the next leading suppliers with a dozen other countries making tanks for their own use including Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand.  

The two countries that have the most serious on-going development of tanks are Russia and Israel.  The T-14 Armata and the latest Israeli Merkava show these two countries as the most committed to the future of armored warfare. 

Israeli Merkava

The smallest armored force in the world is Malawi with one T-55 tank.  The largest is Russia with almost 22,000, or about one in five of all the tanks in the world.  

One reason countries keep tanks is that they have no scrap value. Armor costs more to melt than the value of the recovered metal.  When I was a tank commander in the 70s and 80s, we used old M47 tanks as targets.

I cannot post a spreadsheet on blogger, but if you want a copy I would be happy to send it.  Email me at ngussman@yahoo.com if you want a copy.

Many Tanks...

Мой первый блог Сообщение на русском языке (My first blog post in Russian)

I just finished my fourth semester of Russian language at Franklin and Marshall College.  The final project was a 600-word article.  My general topic was politics, so I wrote about the new T-14 Armata Russian Tank and its political dimension.

If you read Russian, here it is.  If you don't read Russian, most of the content is in English in this previous post.

Редакционная статья

Новый Русский Танк Угроза Соседям

Сержант Нил Гуссман, Армия  CША

В прошлом году русская армия показала миру совершенно новый танк на параде победы России во Второй мировой войне.

Новый танк, Армата Т-14, представляет собой настоящий прорыв в технологии танка.  В течении следующих  пяти лет Россия  будет строить более двух тысяч  новых танков для своей армии.

Когда Россия производит новые танки она говорит  миру что танки становятся центральным стратегическм  оружием для будущих сражений. США и другие западные армии медленно удаляют танки из своих военных планов.

С 1976 по 1979 год, когда я был командиром танка в армии США в Европе, мы тренировались бороться  против вторжения советских войск. Советская Армия имела больше людей, больше танков, больше самолетов.  Война никогда не произошла, но мы считали что это произойдет. И мы готовились к отчаянной борьбе. 

Наши танки были лучше, но у Советского Союза было гораздо больше танков. Почти все что мы знали о советских танках мы узнали из отчетов 1973 года арабо-израильской войны или войны Судного дня.

Один из этих докладов дал  статистику по травматизму  в зависимости  от места нахождения в танке:

•          Командующий 60%

•          Канонир 25%

•          Погрузчик 10%

•          Водитель 5%

Другой способ проанализировать эти цифры: 95% ранений происходит в башне, 5% в корпусе.

В  Т-14 членов экипажа в башне нет. Трое членов экипажа сидят в корпусе танка.  Т-14 первый танк с дистанционным управлением башни.  Конструкция Т-14 обеспечивает защиту экипажа намного больше, чем у других танках.

Две основные причины использования танков в современной войне:

1. Борьба с другими танками.

2. Прорваться через линию фронта чтобы атаковать линии снабжения.

Создавая новые и лучшие танки, Россия заявляет, что будет бороться   танками.

Русская армия планировает сражаться в таких местах где  легко можно транспортировать большое количество танков. Это означает вдоль своих границ или в соседних странах. Отправлять танки через океан медленно и дорого. Россия рассчитывает бороться в местах где грузовики и поезда могут  транспортировать танки.

Я считаю, что строительство 2000 новых танков говорит что Россия не собирается  вести войну с Америкой, но собирается воевать со  своими соседями. США планирует вести войну с террористами. Большая современная танковая армия может атаковать соседние страны или защищать Россию от Китая.

Т-14 сравнивается с другими передовыми танками в статье  Regnum.ru веб-сайта. Они опубликовали большую статью  Сергея Кузьмичева о Т-14 .Он говорит что Германия и Франция планируют построить современный танк, но он не будет готов в течение многих лет. США не имеет никаких планов для  строительства нового танка. Китай разрабатывает новый танк, но его новый танк похож на западны танки  20 лет назад. Только у Израиля есть танк который соответствует Т-14.

Т-14 далеко впереди других крупных стран в области технологий. Почему бы Россия тратит так много денег чтобы сделать лучший танк в мире? Потому что Россия может продать танки в страны, которые покупают российские танки. Россия делает танки, которые находятся в армиях во всем мире.

Россия делает танки чтобы иметь сильную армию. Россия также делает танки чтобы продавать в другие страны. Википедия перечисляет танки всех армий мира. Список включает в себя тип  и страну, в которой были построены танки.

Почти во всех странах есть танки и большинство стран имеет танки сделанные в России. Потому что Россия имеет так много "клиентов", новый Т-14 также  является оружием маркетинга. Россия делает новейшие поколения танков. Наций которые покупают российские танки покупают новейший танк с новейшей технологией.

Лучший танк в мире российский танк Т-14. Это также принесет  Россие большой доход от стран мира которые покупают Т-14.