Warbird Information Exchange

It's a boring day here at work so I finally decided to take the time to upload a bunch of my pics that I had taken during the Gulf War and share them with you guys so you can all get a good laugh. Enjoy!

John

That's me holding the main 73mm main gun round from a captured BMP-1 personnel carrier.


The same BMP-1 back at Ft. Hood, TX on display at the 1st Cavalry Division museum. Notice how the guys marked the tank by welding who captured it. They didn't want some REMF unit taking credit.


Destroyed BMP-1 in southern Iraq...what a mess!


M1A2 Abrams Tank outfitted with mine clearing claws.


What infantry guys do best...smoking and joking while trying to keep warm.


On the move during the ground war...we were lucky if we stopped long enough to take a sh*t!


Daily chore of drying out clothes and duffle bags after all the condensation from the previous night.


Me and another soldier posing next to captured Iraqi weapons.


Never waste an opportunity to catch some zzzz's!


Me in desperate need of a shower and a long nap.


Destroyed Iraqi jeep in southern Iraq...don't you just love air power!!!


Found this starving dog in an Iraqi bunker (surprised the Iraqi's didn't eat him ). After a couple weeks of eating nothing but MRE's he fattened up real quick!


Captured Chinese-made Iraqi tank on display in Saudi Arabia awaiting shipment back to the states.

John,

Very cool pictures thanks for sharing those. The mine clearing claws remind me a lot of the improvised hedge row cutters that the Stuarts and some of the Shermans had welded on the front to help get through those nasty French hedge rows during the advance after Normandy.

Ryan

Thanks Ryan. Yeah they usually had one tank in each platoon that was outfitted with these claws (1 out of 4 tanks ). When they lowered them into the ground via hydraulics and moved forward the claws were designed to rake the mines out of the ground and the steel plates on top would push the mines and earth off to the side. The steel chain draped between the two claws in the middle was supposed to trigger any "tilt rod" mines that might explode when the body of the vehice moved over it. One would expect that after triggering an anti-tank mine the claws would be pretty much destroyed (luckily they never had to find out). The only drawback is that the claws somwhat hampered the tanks preformance and speed.

John

John, that doesn't look like any place that I'd like to visit. Glad you are back safely, lot's of guys, and girls aren't.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Thanks Bill. Keep in mind this was back in 1990-91 during the 1st Gulf War so luckily we didn't have many casualties and didn't have to worry about IED's blowing us to "smithereens" !

John

Cool pics, John. Thanks for your service!

One of those AK's would make a nice addition to my collection

Thanks for sharing your photos, and for your service.

your pics give real perspective to the daily experience over their!! nothing sanitized like in the news media.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Thank for sharing! Hats off and a BIG THANKS for your service!

It would bring tears to your eyes if you knew how many weapons we were forced to blow-up, burn, or simply bury in the desert. I remember seeing at least 2 cases of Soviet-made Takarov handguns (still in packing grease) that we were told to destroy. I think the higher-ups feared this stuff being smuggled back to the states more than the Iraqi's having it. At least some of the nicer examples found their way to several museums.

John

I believe it. The same restrictions are still in place. We were searched twice before we left the theater for OIF 1. Our unit accumulated all sorts of weaponry odds and ends - even heard of a few examples of old STG-44's being captured.

On the way out, they were even confiscating peices of shrapnel that landed around us (all the explosive energy had obviously been spent, but I guess they were still classified as shrapnel). Some of the pieces were mortar fins from some close calls, some of us had sentimental value attached to those!

I was able to leave with an old WWII British helmet, left over from RAF Habbaniyah as well as what looks to be an oil temperature gauge (with the liquid and moving needles still inside) from a TU-22 Blinder that my driver and I crawled into at Taqaddum.

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"So there I was, knee deep in a river I couldn't pronounce..."

Sorry to hear that things haven't changed in the Army. They wouldn't even let us bring back AK-47 bayonets let alone hollowed-out and demilled ammo, magazines, etc. The higher-ups even frowned on us firing some of the captured AK-47's for fear that somebody might get shot accidently. One of the reasons givin was that supposedly they were worried the Iraqi's might've booby-trapped their ammo by removing the gun powder and replacing it with C4 explosives...WTF?? I swear they must've had a group of officers whose sole job it was to sit around a table and dream up ways that a soldier could get injured or killed...no matter how ridiculous it was. About the only thing I came back with was some helmets, a couple gas masks, uniforms, and some Iraqi maps & documents.

John

A number of soldiers tried to smuggle weapons back to the states inside of military vehicles. The inspectors back in Saudi Arabia soon learned where all the good "hiding spots" were located on the Abrams Tank, Bradley Fighting Vehicle and 2 1/2 ton trucks, etc.

When we were staging our vehicles to return to the rear after the ground war ended the Battalion Commander decided to have an "Amnisty Pit" dug next to all the parked vehicles. The idea was that if you had contraband weapons you could put it in the amnisty pit...no questions asked...without fear of getting into trouble. The following day after that pit was dug the battalion brass was horrified to find it overflowing with every conceivable weapon/ammo you can imagine. There were RPG rounds, AK-47's, pistols, grenades, countless rounds of loose & belted ammo, and even a coaxial 7.62 machinegun that somebody had stripped out of a BMP personnel carrier! Needless to say the Battalion Commander went absolutely "ape-sh*t" and demanded multiple shake-down inspections of all vehicles and equipment....the logic being that where there's smoke, there's fire.

When I was stationed in Ft. Riley, KS in 1993 some mechanics were overhauling and repairing a Bradley Fighting Vehcle for a leaking fuel tank. Low and behold when they inspected the fuel tank they recovered a folding stock AK-47 that somebody hid up against one of the fuel tanks and never bothered to retrieve it after the vehicle returned to the states.

John

What ever happened to that dog?

A couple of the guys wanted to take the little pooch back to the states with them but unfortunately the higher-ups put the "kybosh" to that idea real quick. They were forced to let him go close to one of our staging areas which was located close to a small settlement. This was far better than being out in the middle of nowhere in southern Iraq.

John