Firing tanks!

I didn't get the greatest shots - but a few of my classmates got some great footage that I will put up pretty soon. Meanwhile, this will have to do...

This is me looking back at my crew partner from the gunner's seat. I've got my right hand on the breach of the 120 mm main gun.

I'm peeking out of the loaders hatch in front while my crew partner chills above the TC hatch before we start our evaluated runs. We are a pretty deadly combination.

This is a video I took of two other 2LT's beginning their first engagement.

First picture of a tank...

It's been a long time coming - I haven't had a ton of time to take pictures... Anyways, here's the tank I've been working on the past week and a half. I am taking a page out of Eli's book and calling it "Tanky" ;-)

The two guys in the pic are members of my tank crew, 2LT Brett from Philidelphia, PA, and 2LT Deleon, from Florida by way of Hawaii.

All of our experience with this tank has been pretty much academic - we have learned how to do preventative maintenance, function checks, crew drills, etc... But we haven't ever driven in out of it's stall. Each member of our crew of 4 has started it up - it takes 11 gallons of fuel just to start up the tank's jet engine. Seriously - the sound of the tank starting up makes you feel like you're in the batmobile.

Fort Knox and Armor School

I started Day 0 of Armor BOLC III on Monday of last week. You probably won't be hearing very much from me during the class - I have this labor day weekend off and then I don't have another day off until the beginning of October; we'll be working 7 days a week.

I plan to take a bunch of pictures of what I'll be doing - hopefully Becca will be able to post them on her blog.

So far, I've learned that if you aren't careful, an Abrams tank will kill, maim, or dismember a careless crew member. I'm really excited to learn everything, although I'll admit that I wish we weren't on such a compressed time scale and we had a few more weekends off thrown in.

BOLC III is a LOT more fast paced than BOLC II. We did all the inprocessing that took a full week at Fort Benning in only a few hours. We've also qualified with the M9 pistol and started the fundamentals of Tank Gunnery. It's going to be an action packed 3.5 months!