Magach82, You’re very welcome. I’m old enough now where it is quite enjoyable to look back at all the old memories! 
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Not saying that they cannot be but typically I have seen those platoon tank ids. Each branch/unit SOP could be different.
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Tank_1812, I believe you… haven’t seen it myself, but every unit is different. I can tell you in this case that that is the company commander’s tank for Delta Co., 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment in early 1991. (D-66 bumper number, plus I recognize the CO in the camo picture)
BTW, We put our tank names on the turret cheeks in Germany.. on the barrel shrouds at Ft. Hood. They must have put them in both places after painting the desert tan.
Tank names on the cheeks started during Operation Free Lion in 1988, as we had just arrived in Germany and that operation was our first time out on brand new M1A1’s we had just received. If you look back at my pictures (linked) you’ll see we wrote them in chalk out in the field because we hadn’t really asked permission to do it at the time…LOL
Here is a link to a YT video someone posted of that exercise… start at 22:30… from right to left is D-13 , D-14 (me, standing in the loader’s hatch), D-11 (Plt. Leader), D-12. I stumbled across that video about 10 years ago… still smiling about it. I remember a German national filming here and there… had no idea I’d get to watch the video 2+ decades later.. hahaha
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Here are a couple I took at Ft Hood (We had early model M1s, some still tagged as XM1s with serial numbers belonging to the first 100 or so LIRP models… they were beat to death when we got them in early ‘87). The shape on the side of the hull denoted the company, with the number of lines being the platoon… and just make out lettering for the tank name on the barrel thermal shroud (forward of the bore evac) (Delta Co.,3/66AR, 1st Platoon,1987) (blue CVC is a third platoon tank)
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Thanks for sharing! Great chipping.
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