| Subject: Fiximg Miss Nancy |
Author:
jack
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Date Posted: 21:31:41 03/27/11 Sun
Nancy was a gun truck for 27th Transportation Battalion
One day in the spring of 68, the Sgt in charge of small arms repair came up to me and said, “there is a quad fifty and the guns won’t fire, would I take a look at it?” I was told it had electric solenoids for triggers and maybe I could figure it out. I packed a tool bag and make it over the motor-pool of the 27th Trans Bn. I remember it was out on highway 19. They had pretty nice digs with lg, clean, cement floors. Well, there was a bunch of brass there and a few mechanics, I can’t say I got a warm reception. (I was 19 and looked 16 and had a bit of and attitude) I was told to get to it. The truck was off to one side with a wrecker. I found out that after servicing the truck, the guns would not fire but everything else worked. I asked them to show me and a couple of guys got up on the truck and worked the turret, then cocked the fifties they and hit the buttons for the triggers and nothing. The buttons for the triggers and control for the turret were something like two pistol grips mounted in the middle. There was a bank of batteries to power it and the bed of the 5 ton truck was filled 2 deep with fifty Cal. ammo cans. There was a M-60 on a turret mount for the passenger and I was told the driver used a M79. The cab of the truck and the center of the quad were armored but the 2 loaders for the fifties just hung it out to dry.
They left me alone and I started looking around and tracing the wiring. I pull out my jumpers (a 20' piece of wire with an alligator clip on each end) and hooked up to the batteries then went at one of the fifties. Well, everyone’s head turned when when that fifty dried fire. I told them that it had to come apart and that meant removing 50 to 100 bolts from around the base. They were all excited and started working and that's when they got friendly and started talking. I heard stories about how many confirmed kills and how guys were refusing to drive if Nancy was not going. So we lifted the top from the base and found the contact rollers that carry the power from a copper ring in the base to the revolving turret had been greased, so no electrical contact was being made. I also found that they could block the firing in some areas by moving two pins (so they would not shoot up the cab of the truck) I told them to clean the race and the rollers with solvent, they did and we checked it for continuity and bolted it all back together. I had seen a few quads but Nancy was the only one I saw with its original optical sight and when we took Nancy out to the perimeter to test fire her, I got to look through that optical sight (kind of like the lens on a SLR camera only there were circles of ever increasing power down to the center) They asked me if I wanted to test fire it. The power is hard to realize and the way the tracers come into the sight, from the outside corners to the center, was wild. I was told the guns were centered on a 1000 yards. The controls were smooth and fast, with a flip of the wrist the guns went up, down, all a round, with the trigger buttons under each thumb for the left bank and right bank of fifty's. That's how I fixed Nancy and the convoy went out the next day and everyone was happy. Well, maybe Charlie wasn't happy.
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