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Have any of you google mapped Fort Irwin? I can't believe all the vehicles you can see! You can pick out all kinds of vehicles in different areas of the base. It is awesome.

Clint

Um.. yea, Its freaking awesome. I was only planning on looking for a few minutes and ended up spending well over 30 min..

There is an interesting site along I-15 in So. California just east of Barstow. Right cross the street from Peggy Sue;'s 50's Diner is a long line of flat cars loaded with marine corps vehicles. On the other side of that obstacle lies storage yards of the Marine corps Logistics Base (Barstow). Using google maps you can see hundreds of HMMWV's, engineering vehicles, AAVP's some tanks and other 'stuff'. All just parked in the dry desert sun.

I learned about this on a vacation drive to So Cal one year and looked into it further when we got home. Pretty Cool.

Yeah, I realized that basically look at any base and you can view the same thing. Fort Knox, Ft. Hood. Any of them. Cool to ID all the vehicles...

Wow, that was pretty cool. I promised myself I would not get sucked in...

And then I got sucked in looking at everything and trying to ID it. haha

Very cool.

The combat power on display at certain bases can be pretty spectacular.

Ft Hood, TX was my first duty station out of flight school in the early 80's. At the time, the base was home to two full armored divisions, 2nd Armored and 1st Cavalry, as well as III Corps Headquarters and the 6th Cavalry Brigade. It was said there were more tanks at Ft Hood than in the British, Dutch and Belgian armies combined. I'm not certain that was true though.

It was a modeler's and gamer's paradise. In those days, access to the bases wasn't very restricted and while you couldn't get into the motor pools, you frequently saw convoys of armored vehicles of every conceivable type either crossing the road in front of you or running parallel on the tank trail. You could even drive the range road that encircled the impact area and watch tanks run through gunnery tables.

If you started on the west end, which was the 1st Cav area, and drove east, you would see mile after mile of parked tanks, APCs, SP Howitzers, trucks and combat engineer vehicles. Once you got to the end after passing by the 2AD area, you went around a little hill and you came to Hood Army airfield which was home to the 6th Cav Brigade which had an Attack Helicopter Battalion and a pure Air Cavalry Squadron, both with Cobras and OH 58s as well as a heavy lift company with Chinooks.

That was about when the Army went to the Division 86 organization which reduced the number of tanks from 17 to 14 per company but added a fourth line company so you ended up with more tanks per battalion. It was also when the M1 Abrams and M2/3 AIFV/CFV began replacing M60s and M113s. The 6th Cav lost its Cobras and became the Apache Training Brigade. It eventually ended up with 3 full Attack Battalions of Apaches.

Google earth is great, although most armies have gotten better about putting equipment under cover in sheds or hangers.

We should start a sticky thread for google earth images of military equipment at bases or even in the field when we can find it.

I think those motor pools ran about three miles wide. It was pretty impressive to a guy like me, who was used to a brigade-sized post with two battalions side-by-side in Friedberg.

I have to say that the Fort Hood one is the best one I have seen yet. I think I am going to build one of the blocks with the L shape shops to display my US Modern stuff! I have seen the bridge layers, ACE, Strykers, Command 577's, tanks with plows... I could go on forever!

Clint