“ The Towbar” The Official Newsletter of the Fort Snelling Military Museum Volunteers, Inc. “Dedicated to the remembrance of veterans of all wars and the preservation of the military equipment they used.” Volume 13 No. 3 July, Aug, Sept, 2011 Website: www.fsmm.org The Last Open House Despite some truly soggy weather, the Volunteers presented one last Open House to packed bleachers and people crowded tightly along our barricades. Setup on Friday was about as muddy as it could be, but Ray Peter- son’s interview on Channel 9 helped bring out the crowds for Saturday’s 0ne-day show. And the crowds got what they came for—virtually every piece of equipment that could be convinced to run was operated for our visitors. Some pieces, such as the M42 Duster and the M110 howitzer, haven’t been used in our shows for several years, but they were used this year.
Transcript
“ The Towbar” The Official Newsletter of the
Fort Snelling Military Museum Volunteers, Inc.
“Dedicated to the remembrance of veterans of all wars and the preservation of the military equipment they used.”
Volume 13 No. 3 July, Aug, Sept, 2011
Website: www.fsmm.org
The Last Open House Despite some truly soggy weather,
the Volunteers presented one last Open House to packed bleachers and people crowded tightly along our barricades.
Setup on Friday was about as muddy as it could be, but Ray Peter-son’s interview on Channel 9 helped bring out the crowds for Saturday’s 0ne-day show.
And the crowds got what they came for—virtually every piece of equipment that could be convinced to run was operated for our visitors. Some pieces, such as the M42 Duster and the M110 howitzer, haven’t been used in our shows for several years, but they were used this year.
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A Soggy Start
The weather didn’t cooperate with the Volunteers on Fri-day—mixed heavy rain and heat combined to take the starch out of the work crews. Thankfully, the bleachers came in one piece as a fold up and out system mounted on a trailer, and
the barricades were rented for the weekend instead of trying to pound down fence posts through compacted crushed rock with a 30-pound post driver.
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The Crowds
We’re used to seeing large crowds at the Open Houses, but the combination of this being the last Open House, plus press coverage, plus the Air Guard’s anniversary, all com-bined to bring the public out in full force.
Crowds were aligned along every side of the demonstra-tion area—North, East, and South. They came to see what we could do—and we showed them a lot!
People came to see military vehicles operated, and to see an M60 crush an automobile. And they did!
With the help of Roger’s Auto Parts, suitable junk cars were borrowed. After the volunteers had removed the win-dows and drained all the fluids from the cars, they were staged for the show, and like any show, the best was always the last.
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The Show
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The show also saw Bob & Ray continuing their annual commen-tary on the vehi-cles, and enter-taining the crowd as they jockeyed for bleacher seats or maneuvered for a good spot along the barricades. Once again, their Fan-In-The-Stands contest for the kids was a popular warm-up to the show. The kids had to answer such questions as “What is an MRE?” (Meal Ready to Eat), with Museum patches, T shirts, and sweat shirts as prizes. The crowd was encour-aged to help with the answers, so every contestant was a winner.
The PX truck was also popular when the fans discovered that it was holding a going-out-of-business sale. By Saturday evening, the shelves were totally bare.
After the show, the Volunteers sat down for a very well deserved steak dinner. Dan Little’s wife, Vanessa, led the cooking team. Steaks, sweet corn, baked beans, and deserts all helped the volun-teers recover from the intense activ-ity before and during the show.
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The Next Day
On Sunday morning, Museum Volunteers worked to clean up the leftovers from the Open house. One team washed down the vehicles that had been driven, another team swept the parking lot to clean it up, and volunteers picked up and stored away all the many parts that came together to result in a very memorable Open House.
The crushed cars from the Open House were stacked to the side of the demonstration area to wait for return to Roger’s Auto Parts the following week (Roger’s has loaned the Vol-unteers suitable cars for crushing since the Museum’s first car-crushing event). The Volunteers policed the car crushing area to pick up any debris left from the show.
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Reassembling a Sherman
Even though the Sherman will be transferred to another Army facility, the Volunteers still wanted to do as much to restore it as pos-sible before it was formally transferred.
The tank was sitting in one of the shop bays, with-out the turret (which was on a storage trailer in the lot). The turret had been removed several years ago to allow the interior to be emptied, cleaned, and restored, one piece at a time. As the photo on the right shows, it was moving forward.
The decision was made to reassemble the Sherman, so the next museum would have a displayable artifact instead of a pile of loose parts.
On Saturday, 10 Septem-ber, the Sherman was reas-sembled.
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Saturday, 10 September, dawned bright and clear. Since one wrecker couldn’t handle the weight of a Sherman’s turret, another wrecker was borrowed from a private owner, Scott Wojciak. Thanks for your help, Scott!
There aren’t many ways to handle an engine-less Sherman, but an M60A3 does it very easily. The ‘60 was moved to the shop on the concrete paving to prevent damage
to the asphalt areas, while matting was laid down between the shop and the concrete work area to prevent the Sherman’s steel treads from damaging the paving.
Step 1 was to pull the Sherman out of the building and be sure that anything too large to pass through the hatch was already installed.
Step 2 was to move the trailer with the turret into place.
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Once the Sherman was clear, and the turret was lined up with the Sherman, the wreckers teamed up to pick up the turret (with the help of a forklift to support the gun tube and to keep the turret level). When they had lifted it high enough, the ‘60 pushed the Sherman under the turret. The turret was slowly lowered close to the hull, the alignment was veri-fied, and the turret lowered the rest of the way. It dropped into place perfectly.
The volunteers then stowed the wrecker’s equipment, picked up the area, and pushed the Sherman back into the shop so the turret bolts could be reinstalled and any bits and pieces rein-stalled.
When the Sherman is shipped to it’s new home, it will be as restored as we could make it in the time we had available.
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The official newsletter of the:
Fort Snelling Military Museum Volunteers, Inc 511 Constitution Avenue Fort Snelling, MN 55111
“The Towbar” Volume 13, Number 3 July, Aug, Sept 2011
This will probably be the last Towbar that will be published. The Museum’s equip-ment is being transferred to other Army facilities—some to other museums, some to An-niston for storage, and some (such as our increasingly elderly storage semitrailers) are destined for disposal. In several cases, multiple organizations are asking for the same piece of equipment,.
The Volunteer’s work weekends are also ending since the equipment transfer process ends our ability to work with the equipment.
The team shown below assembled and presented Open House 2011. It was a lot of work in some truly crummy weather, but we did it!
