Re: [ARSCLIST] LoC and war reporting

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think you're right about a half-track and OTM got that wrong, too. So I
should have been more scathing about their reporting! They described the
half-track as the vehicle that got Marines from the ships over the reefs to
the beach. I don't think M-3 Halftracks were capable of that duty, but I
might be wrong. I'd think you'd use standard landing craft but maybe there's
more to that story. This was the Guam landing.

OK, some googling leads me to believe that what was actually used by the 2nd
Marines to invade Guam were Amphtracks,- not halftracks. Perhaps the
recordist (who was an embedded journalist) remembered wrong or perhaps
Marines on the ground called the Amphtracks halftracks. Here's a definition
of an Amphtrack:
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Landing_Vehicle_Tracked

Not the source for this is Whacky-Packia, so I might be amplifying some
mythology, so believe with care.

However, here are some pictures, allegedly:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/LVT/LVT.html
and they definitely do not look like halftracks.

Man, I'd sure hate to look out of my machine gun nest and see a horizon full
of these things headed toward my beach!

---- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Brock-Nannestad" <pattac@xxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 7:34 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] LoC and war reporting


> From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
>
> Tom Fine wrote:
>
>
> > Also, they were guessing about what a half-track is. Come on, don't
those
> > folks know how to use Google?
>
> ----- when I collected Matchbox models (1959) I never bought military
> vehicles. But a half-track was a truck (lorry to the English) with
ordinary
> front wheels but tank-like tracks where the rear wheels would have been.
> Ready knowledge is better than Google.
>
> ----- Apart from this, I wanted the transcript and was informed by the
> website that it would not be available until Tuesday afternoon.
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
> George