Background - For the past three years I have been the Curator at the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum, home of the historic submarine USS Razorback (SS-394), in North Little Rock, AR. I have visited a number of historic ship museums as well as a number of military museums in the past 20 years and am intimately familiar with the "behind the scenes" stuff that goes on.

In general, most (but certainly not all) vehicles and other equipment at museums has been rendered inoperable prior to display. In fact, most are required to be inoperable before being accepted by the museum. In addition, most museums simply do not have the staff to maintain more than one or two vehicles in running condition. Again, there are notable exceptions and a GM should feel free to make such an exception when it helps the story.

As far as historic ships go, since about 1980, it has been U.S. Navy policy that any ship or craft handled through the formal ship donation program be rendered inoperable, usually by removing the propellers, so almost all military ships on public display will not, in real life, be able to get underway.

That said, a military vehicle, like say, an M113 would make good, sturdy shelter, and residents might even make additional room inside by removing the non-operable engine. I mention the Gavin since I have seen them at MANY different military museums across the nation.

More about museum ships in particular later...

I watched an episode of Mythbusters a couple of nights ago where they used an M113 and an M551 Sheridan to tear apart a pair of statically fused phone books. They were restored display-quality pieces but were from a "private collection" rather than a museum per se. So there's another avenue for ya.

Don't forget that some of the larger PMCs have an aircraft and, less often, an armor contingent.

Well, if one looks and gets lucky, you can see M113's and other armor on ebay at ebay motors. So, such vehicles are out there and being sold on the open market right now.

The MVPA (Military Vehicle Preservation Society) is one of several groups of military vehicle enthusiasts.

They have (as of 2008) over 10,000 members, and these members are worldwide, so GMs have lots of options...

A friend of mine belongs and he owns 2 A2 jeeps, 2 deuce and a halves, a gamma goat, a British M-115 command track, a Warrior, a Spartan, and I believe 1 other that I can't remember what it is. He also collects automatic weapon. 2 M1919A4 MGs w/all three barrel sets, .50 cal watercooled, BAR, M60, 20mm Lotti, AKs, M16s, Ingram SMG, etc. The Jeeps have pedistal mounts for the M1919A4s.

Out of curiosity, have the weapons been de-activated or are they still...pointy?

The vehicles have had the weapons deactivated. But a good machine shop can do much?

Forgot to say, the machineguns, etc are fully operational and legally licensed and registered.

I've talked to a lot of re-enactors, and most of the heavy stuff has been de-mil'ed. All the small arms are live. Heck even the 37mm anti-tank gun that the guys from the 6th Division out of Cheyenne have is live! Of course the owner has a federal firearms license, so he's legal. I heard they're gonna have a live ammo shoot for it near Ft. Morgan, Colorado in April of next year. Gonna have to go see that bad boy in action...

Depends on the museum, and the source, to some extent. I happen to know Jacques Littlefield, and have been up to his collection a few times, and ~40% of his heavy ordnance would fire, if you could scare up ammo for it. The Eland-90 I was crawling around in 2 weeks ago, forex, had a fully fireable main gun. Not fully _fitted_ however, and the secondary armament (2x M1919 MGs) was missing.

Biggest problem with equipment like that isn't the main armament, though. It's getting ammo that will actually safely fire.

How difficult would it be to create your own ammo for the larger guns? Is it a matter of machine tools or is it more a problem of propellant/explosive?

It's probably harder than breaking out the gear and reloading rifle rounds. Of course some of those rounds are getting harder and harder to find, not exactly standard issue around here.

If your talking about practice rounds (solid projectile) I doubt that making the projectile/driving bands would be very hard for a machinist and the case could probably be turned on a lathe. The powder for LCR (large caliber rounds) is triple based powder. It has nitrocellulose + nitroglycerin + a third chemical with a name longer then I am tall, I don't remember the name, it would be a massive pain to make it. Primer material is sensitive to start with, and the primers are not standard so making them would be very dangerous, the danger would be out of proportion to their size. If you had several fired cases with spent primers and at least one unfired round then you probably could figure out how to make them if you had enough reference books or experienced personal. Don't forget that the Viet Cong admitted that they had to replace there explosive making personnel about every 3 weeks due to accidents. (not a long carer) I used to work for Barnes Bullets back in the 90's so Ive been in the industry, this gives me some perspective. However small arms hunting ammo is nothing compared to 40MM and 40MM is nothing compared to the consumable 120MM shell of the M1 Abrams ( witch i doubt you could make). For your reference shelf look up "Ammunition making" by "NRA Book Shelf". Its written by a industry insider who worked for Winchester/Western.

An anecdotal story:

In the Pittsburgh suburb where my in-laws live, they used to have a field-piece on display at the veterans memorial in the park. When I first visited, I was stunned- because the piece was nothing other than a WWII German 15 cm sFH 18 gun/howitzer, complete with ammunition caisson. I took dozens of photos of the gun and told my brother-in-law about the historical significance of the weapon. Well, it seems that a european collector also heard of the existence of the sFH 18 in a little park north of Pittsburgh, because the gun vanished one weekend, later to be disclosed that the township sold the weapon to the collector FOR SCRAP METAL PRICE. I'm sure he's still laughing about that.

But the story doesn't end there. The veterans of the community- and there's a bunch of 'em, were mightily upset that their gun had been purloined by the township. After a few threats of lawyers and bodily harm, the local congressional representative vowed to procure a suitable replacement. This came in the form of a surplus M-60A3, which was delivered on a flatbed semi-trailer one Friday morning. Unfortunately, the truck driver had no way of getting the tank from the trailer, across the grass field and onto it's prepared display pad, near the memorial, and the local tow service laughed when asked if he could tow a tank. It was then wondered whether a local steelmill had anything that could tow such a vehicle. A telephone call to the Allegheny-Ludlum Steel Corporation's Diesel repair shop brought two mechanics and a fully-equipped repair truck. One of the men had retired after more than 30 years as a tank mechanic in the army and he quickly determined that all he needed was a battery and jumper-cables. After starting the vehicle, he drove it off the trailer and across the field, parking it perfectly on it's display pad. Apparently, the only thing missing from the vehicle were the bolts for the MGs and the breach block for the main gun. As far as I know, the vehicle remains in this condition today.

Mate of mine collects military vehicles . Cheeky sod wrote to the USMC after Gulf 1 as they were getting rid of the M60s and asked if he could have one .

He heard nothing back and assumed his letter had been filed under "F*** OFF!"

Until some months later he got a 'phone call from the docks at Southampton to say "When can you come and get it?"

They'd dismounted the coax and dropped the Main gun breecblock but that was it! Man! there was some paperwork to do on that one.

Just goes to show ya that it never hurts to ask...all they can say is "no"; and sometimes there just might be a surprise in the mail

There is an armor museum at Aberdeen Maryland that has one of EVERYTHING!
WWI tanks up to Abrams.

I just saw Mithbusters on discovery and they were doing the 2 phone books intertwined mith, they used a M113 apc and a Sheridan tank to pull them apart, lol took 8,000 lbs to pull the interleaved phone books apart, the two armored vehicles came from a museum in California that also had vehicles from the first world war on up..and they ran! so instant vehicle outfit. if u have machine shop to make new breach block! lol the details its always in the details.

Which suburb of Pittsburgh? I live in the Pittsburgh area.

Chuck

Brackenridge. Down at the riverfront park.

Apropos of nothing, I was just re-reading this thread and now have a burning desire to give a PC group based in Florida one of the NASA M113s.

- C.

That would be Jacques Littlefield's MVT museum.

There are plenty of operational military vehicles in private hands and at public collections. The main problem is keeping them working, but I love the idea of a group of pc's enountering a sherman tank