Inside M113s that mounted M47 Dragon ATGMs and were configured for use in scouting platoons, how many missile rounds were carried internally and how were they stowed?
I have a 1984 TM that shows the installation of various supporting components but provides no indication of missile stowage racks of any kind.
A supplementary question - The TM noted above includes details of the night tracker unit and associated batteries/coolant bottles. Something is tickling the back of my mind that suggests the night tracker unit wasn’t added to the missile system until the early 1980s, sometime after the Dragon entered service?
The above is the TOW m113, not one w/a Dragon mounted. The M113 version John is talking about is a standard M113 w/.50cal cupola and an additional M47 mount on the cupola. They were used in the '80s like the below one in Panama.
My bad ! I knew the variant John was looking for was not the TOW one, but this picture was mixed with other “standard” M113 views, and was not captioned. I should have paid more attention to the gunner pedestal…
Thanks both. Gino is correct in saying that I’m looking specifically at M113s fitted with cupola mount that accommodates the M175 damped base unit. The TM drawing below is (I think) a later vehicle because it includes the night tracker storage, bottle and battery storage, and battery charger rack. I have a different (earlier) TM that only shows the M213 Tracker case (day) fitted.
As you can see, there is lots of detail on the supporting components but no indication of where the missiles themselves were stored (or how many were carried).
At best you could strap down two Dragons on the internal sidewall. At least vertically. These were not dedicated anti tank vehicles. Just as with the TC’s .50 able be ground mounted because a tripod was carried. A second Ma Deuce was not carried.
Not every track in the platoon had the TC Dragon mount. IIRC, it was 2 per platoon at most. In the old 11 man squad TO&E one rifleman in the squad was an 11BC2, Medium Anti Armor Infantryman, aka Dragon Gunner. Once upon a time I was humping two Dragons up and down hills and ridges tank hunting. It’s not very feasible.
The Dragon was notoriously hard to steer in flight and had a dismal hit \ kill ratio. They were one of those “why did we buy this?” weapons. They didn’t last long and were soon replaced with TOW Jeeps, then HMMWV’s, attached to Infantry line companies.
Then they introduced Javelin and problem solved.
TOW and Dragon served side by side during their careers. Dragon replaced the 90mm recoilless rifle and was in turn replaced by the Javelin. Tow replaced the 106mm recoilless rifle, and is still in service. Dragon was always in the rifle companies down to the squad level, while TOW was originally in the Combat Support Company AT platoon and later enlarged to a full AT Co, E Co in Mech units until the Bradley made that company redundant, since each squad now had a TOW on the BFV. IIRC, the early Bradley’s had stowage for a Dragon or two internally. I never served in a Bradley equipped unit, so I can’t say for certain.
In Light, Airborne, and Air Assault units, TOWs remained in the AT platoon of Combat Support Companies
Yes they were. At least from 92-95. When I was with 1/6 Inf. In Vilseck. The Grunts in Berlin 76-79 were using the 90mm recoiless. Said the Dragon was not suited for combat in cities. CSC Company had TOWS mounted on jeeps.
Yes indeed. The Ranger Battalions then later Ranger Regiment never went to the Dragon and kept the 90mm RRs as well, before switching to the Carl Gustav 85mm RR. We had 11H TOW gunners in my old CSC/E Co. whose last assignment had been in Panama where they also kept their 106mm gun jeeps instead of using TOWs due to the terrain and vegetation of that AO.
AFAIK, the main issue with it was that it rested on the firer’s shoulder, but it was SACLOS-guided — that is, keep the crosshairs on the target and it should hit. The problem, then, is that the firer has to move his body to keep the target in sight, but that means any incidental movement translates into the missile steering as well. Things like breathing, which causes the shoulder to move up and down, and thereby the missile down and up, respectively.
Plus the fact that until launch, the 11+ kg weight of the missile is resting on that shoulder, but on firing it’s instantly removed, which causes that shoulder to rise.
All true. But the main trained firing position, seated with the round on the gunners right shoulder and feet braced against the bipod legs, did not allow for much range of body motion to begin with, aside from minimal twist and raising or lowering at the waist. The missile was quite slow in flight, much slower than a TOW, and each correction of flight direction was done by a rocket motor on the missiles side. These alone added to its accuracy issues.
TOW gunners and Dragon Gunners trained in seperate portions of the same facility at Ft Benning when I was there in school. I was trained as a TOW gunner. We TOW gunners were also give brief familiarization training with the Dragon during the school.
Makes me glad I apparently didn’t do as well on that weird test - hitting circles on paper with the end of wooden cylinders in a timed event. That’s supposedly how they chose the gunners as opposed to the regular grunt. Or maybe it didn’t matter in my case how well I did or did not do - I already had SF in my contract, provided I passed the Q course, and those weapons were not organic to an ODA.
Thanks all for the interesting history of the Dragon and it’s efficacy (or otherwise)
However, we are getting away from the original question(s) - how were the Dragons stowed in an M113 fitted with the viscose damped launcher and how many reloads were carried?
Like I said above, they would be strapped to the wall as shown on the -10 load plan. At most you could strap two vertically before they impinge upon the guys on that side of the track. Maybe three if you got really creative. Between duffle bags, rucksacks, squad equipment (NVGs etc.), rations, water cans, ammo cans, the interior would fill up real quick.
I found this illustration of everything that is supposed to go into a combat loaded Infantry Squad 113 from the Dragon era. You can see three Dragons as the basic combat load