On the Academy M998 I.E.D. gun truck kit (model 13405) there is a box for the bed of the truck, is this for the soldier to stand on when using the rear mounted gun?
George
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Yes, that is the intent. It is supposed to be an ammo box.
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I remember bulding that kit. Ammo box for what? It looked like no ammo box I’d ever seen. It looked to be a welded together monstrosity that you couldn’t even put ammo boxes into. (as a former HMMWV gunner I ask why you’d even want to.) I didn’t use it.
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Hey18bravo thanks for the reply. The pedestal stand for the gun seems way too high for the gunner to not stand on something. Is this model kit not accurate to the real world? Did you ever see these kind of conversions done? Its real nice to be able to chat with a real USA soldier. Thank you for your service.
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Yes, this type of armored version was an actual vehicle. I am sure some soldiers did add a stand if they were short to reach the gun on the pintle. I had a short gunner who stood on a pallet to give him a little extra reach. I would leave out the kit box/platform though as it is too tall, as you say.
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That is exactly why I removed almost .25 inches from the pedestal. (nearly eight scale inches) I found it to be too high to be practical. If the intent was to protect the gunner, most of his torso would be exposed to unpleasant things, In fact the Army would later adopt a “nametape defilade” policy whereby the armor had to come up to the nametape on your uniform.
This is Jeff - the other 18B on my team. Note how high the srmor is on his torso:
Also note that we removed the gunners’ platforms from all of our gun trucks - they were an unnecessary impediment even in though they were affixed to the floor. I can’t imagine having to deal will boxes sliding around, or getting my feet caught in a pallet. Plus the higher you are, the more you get slung around during violent maneuvering.
We also removed the padding from the seats most of the time, but that’s for sanother thread…
I saw it done. Unfortunately, while a woman actually visited congress complaining that her son had to go around in an unarmored HMMWV, we (SF types) had Toyota Tacomas. Better A/C and even a CD player:
I had nothing to stand on here either, although we did often sling a cargo strap between the handles of the fuel cans so we could occasionally sit.
By the time I got to Iraq we were using uparmored M1151 and M1114 gun trucks. There are kits of both available. But in answer to your question, yes - we had one such beast in addition to our four gun trucks. We were not authorized to take it out on long patrols but its light weight meant we could use it to pursue jackasses who got too close to our house. The western boundary was plowed up ground normally used to grow sunflowers. The larger, heavier gun trucks didn’t do well in it sometimes. No pintle - we just rested the MG bipods on the roof.
And I did see a variation when I worked with 2nd Battalion of MARSOC. Theirs were a little bit more advanced than the original “hillbilly armor” gun trucks, but not by much.
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