Quote:
Originally Posted by Noble713
Were you a bulk fueler too? I recognize a Tank & Pump Unit anywhere. ^_^
^2004, Osan AB, Korea. That FMTV was like a Cadillac compared to anything else I drove.
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First gen pod fueler. Everything prior was a fixed tank. We could swap between MO (motor fuel -gas) to Av (Aviation gas- Some helicopters and light planes), DI (diesel) or JP (jet fuel) in about 15 minutes just by swapping pods. These trucks were so new when I was deployed to Germany (this was Cold War Germany and no cake walk at the time) that we still did not even have placards to say what pod we has so we wrote the current fuel type in chalk on the sides and tailgate. You can just make out MO in the pic so I had gas (well I didn't the pod did) at the time. I was actually lucky in that most of my time was spent on airbases fueling choppers and Canada only had a couple of them.
Not only were we the first users we were also the guinea pigs for development and a lot of things went screwy. At first there were no baffles in the tanks so if you hit the brakes hard the fuel would slosh around in the tank and could bounce the whole truck forward 20 feet and then back 15 then forward 10 and then back 5. It was something you had to experience to fully appreciate. The pumps motors also had a tendency to randomly catch fire, which is not normally a feature you desire when pumping fuel. If pumping JP or DI you would casually saunter over with a FE and put it out. With MO you would rapidly get there and put it out. With AV gas you would rapidly run in the opposite direction and hope to hell it didn't just blow up or somebody else would be stupid enough to put it out.
As far as your FMTV being a Cadillac goes consider that the trucks we drove for years were built in 1951. Seats were foam on plywood (not even springs), the heaters used manifold heat instead of a heater core and the windshield wipers worked off engine vacuum and stopped every time you accelerated. We Canadians were actually lucky though since at least our M135s had a hard top and not just canvas.