That is the goal with any project. Good job. 
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With the snorkel,I would think not quite a week off the boat…your weathering really brings out the BRUTE of this machine very inspiring piece
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just a note: I’ve seen newly issued M48’s that were in the dark O.D. as well as Forest Green. I gather it was just what they had on hand at the time. 1965 would probably have been forest green. By late 67 and early 68, the junk pile in Chu Lai had both with Marine markings. After one summer in country, the darker color faded badly from the top down and it really wasn’t all that far from forest green
gary
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I like it too, Thank you so much
Thank you for agreeing with me
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Before making the Vietnam Diorama,
I bought a floor that would be the base and expressed the Vietnam base with MIG AMMO Ground expression.
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that’s probably Highway One in the picture. Side roads were really bad. Probably headed south and looks like somebody is getting a serious insertion to the north
gary
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Good image of a USMC M48 during Operation Starlite, 1965. You can see the earlier round Searchlight.
Wreckage of one of those tanks at Nui Go Dam, Vietnam, near Hill 43.
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I’m willing to bet that the display tank is from 1975 and not 1965.
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It’s possible. We did leave a lot of them behind and the North Vietnamese put them to use in the 80s during the Sino-Vietnamese War.
PAVN M48s - 1980.
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what is that track on the wreck it doesn’t look like normal M48 track/treads?
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The T97E2 tracks on the M48 look like that under the rubber molding. Kind of like the T-51 tracks on the Sherman.
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Those are the metal skeletons after the rubber burns off of the tracks. Goes all the way back to WWII US tank tracks.
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probably a safe bet! It does look like it was fraged due to the blast in the turret going downwards. Even then; I’ll bet it was off the hull when they blew it
gary
another interesting thing about knocked out M48’s is that I’ve never seen a burnt track like that, and I’ve probably seen thirty of them in one place or another. Maybe three or four feet at the max from a command detonated 155 round. I saw one deep in the Que Son Valley that took two 90mm recoilless rounds and never blew the turret off or even set the ammo off (it was a Marine M48)
Another thing to notice is the rusted out writing on the turret side (big letters). ARVN’s did that a lot, while Army and Marines kept it pretty small in size. Looks like something they drug out of the bone yard and then blew it in place.
gary
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A little late to this post… It seems, by the images, that the focus of this thread seems to sit as if the tank is empty inside. Sits too high for a regular vehicle. I’m aware that this has been brought up in other places before, and that the belief was that the Tamiya researchers took dimensions from a vehicle without a power pack installed, resulting in a hull that sat too high.
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Nothing is outside the realm of possibility. Propaganda ploy? Who knows? I was born in 74; so my knowledge of the war comes from books, documentaries and what I’ve heard from vets.
It was most likely a captured ARVN tank that was blown up after the fact and then left there as a victory trophy. Who knows?
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