More Tanker Hazards......
Jeeps seemed to have an especially hard time around tanks and armored vehicles. Once at the sloped motorpool at Hohenfels, one crew failed to chock their tank, which preceded to roll down the slope until it smashed a colonel's jeep!

In the following sequence, A-34 from A Co. 4/37 Armor of the 194th Armor Brigade, had a run-in with a jeep that was in a maintenance bay for some work. The driver was being ground guided outside of the bay approximately where I was standing to snap this shot. He panicked for some reason and slammed on the accelerator, sending the tank through the foreground bay door (after crawling up over the concrete pillar designed to protect the door rails), over the jeep, to then slam into an M-577 command track, pushing that vehicle out the back door!

Fortunately, the mechanics were doing class work that morning and nobody was UNDER the jeep working on it when this happened.





Right..... look carefully at the bulletin board in the background.  Notice anything funny above the first aid box?

Yep... somebody misspelled SAFETY! As nobody got hurt in all of this, the misspelled sign makes this all too funny (or scary)!
Tanks can go almost anywhere because that is in large measure what they are designed to do. However, crews can get tempted too often to try and go places they should not. This can result ina mired tank. Here the platoon sergeant attempted to move his tank through the main stream that runs through Camp Atterbury, IN. He barely avoided disaster as he almost drowned his tank! Another tank had to be brought up to pull him out and a real mess was barely avoided.

Unfortunately, my tank later didn't avoid such a mess.  While at Ft. Knox, I received a concussion when I fell through a hatch and had to be medivaced.  My gunner took over and was then ORDERED by the company commander to attempt to ford the Salt River.  Yeah, right.

Instead, my crew SANK my tank. The entire tank was flooded out, with all the electronics damaged and the engine waterlogged. My poor tank was dragged back to Boatwright (higher maintenance) and I lived without a tank for about four months. I visited the thing once, seeing it dismantled with the turret pulled as they were rewiring the thing. What a mess, not to mention costly!
Left and below, another example of a broken track.  The tank has been dragged onto the road (notice the furrows of the road wheels) to better facilitate getting the track back on. An M-88 is essential to assist in this task, with the vehicle being ground guided into position.

Notice the enlarged photo of the ground guide below.  He is pulling his open hands towards him, signalling to the M-88 to move forward.  Ground guiding is crucial in tight places to prevent damage to equipment and keep somebody from getting killed in an accident.