Part 2: ... to the Hands of Troops

Telling the M114 story for the troopers at Daley Barracks is a somewhat difficult task. We believe the first copies were issued in 1963 with final turn - in ten or eleven years later. Quite simply, not enough troopers from that period have stepped forward with their recollections to adequately flesh out the story. Many areas are unresolved, use of the vehicle on the border, gunnery experiences at WTA and GTA to name just a few. Our only photos of the M114 in service at Daley Barracks date from the mid 1960s. We hope that this article stimulates memories and the desire to share them among members of the 2 - 14 ACR.

As a substitute, MSG ( Ret ) Roy Lingle, LTC ( Ret ) Burnis Allardyce share their recollections of the M114 in the hands of troops. Roy served with a variety of armor and cavalry units in the 1960s and 1970s with several experiences with the M114. Burnis was at Fulda and Bad Hersfeld with the 14th ACR and first days after the re - flag to the Blackhorse. We are convinced that their recollections are comparable to what troopers in Bad Kissingen experienced.

For a wonderful selection of photos of the M114 in use at Bad Hersfeld, please click here.

Making Due ...

Once in wide issue, the M114 exhibited several flaws apparently unnoticed in the design and testing phases. While it was small, stealthy and quick on the roads and level trails, in cross country operations and particularly in difficult terrain, it was decidedly under powered. In later years, when weighed down with the heavier 20mm cannon and ammunition, the marginal performance decreased dramatically. The rubber band track required very careful monitoring, was prone to spinning off the drive if track tension was out of tolerance or simply break in standard operations. Either way, if any speed was involved when track failure occurred, the vehicle would wildly spin out of control. Likewise, the transmission was prone to accidentally switch to "swim - low range" mode from normal "drive" mode. If this happened at 25 mph, the vehicle would violently buck and spin as if driven into a wall.

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I've fallen and I can't get up!! Nosed into a ditch and stuck, the protruding hull and under powered engine ends the day for this scout track. Unable to drive through or back out, all they can do is wait for the tow. --Hunnicutt		Scouts of the 2/14 ACR on maneuver in Germany. --2/14th ACR

A workable sleep schedule for a three man crew created problems during FTXs, this was made all the worse if, as was often the case in Germany during the Vietnam War, the crew was short personnel. The 20mm cannon and powered turret worked if maintained but proved to be maintenance headaches for all but the most skilled turret mechanics. The recoil made rapid precision firing very difficult. The nose of the M114 hull extended beyond the drive line of the tracks, this caused the carrier to often "stick" at the bottom ditch. As scouts began to acquire more equipment associated with their missions, the limited carrying space in the hull became apparent.

Some 40 M114s were sent to Vietnam to equip select ARVN units but the vehicle was deemed wholly unsuited to the mission and environment and the experiment ended. For the Army in Germany and the United States, gradually, fixes occurred to the track and transmission problems. The chronic under power problems persisted and of no use in Vietnam, funding for long term improvements was non existent. The program began to "starve" in the final years as without money or supporters, the M114 was tolerated until a interim replacement could be found. By the mid 1970s, the vehicle was being replaced by the reliable if uninspired M113 carrier as debate raged in Washington and Fort Knox over just how to equip future armored cavalry scouts. The M114 "blank sheet" scout specific vehicle had been, at best, a marginal performer.

LTC (Ret) Burnis Allardyce

"I was a platoon leader in I Troop, 3rd Sqdn, 14th ACR in Bad Hersfeld during the first half of 1971. We had 5 M114A1s in a cav platoon at that time. A year or so earlier the M114s had been armed with a M2 cal 50 mg. Sometime in the year before my arrival in the sqdn in July 1970, the M114s were upgunned with a 20mm H - S mounted in an electrical ring mount at the vehicle commanders position. It was quite a improvement in firepower and accuracy over what the sqdn previously had. People were still talking about it when I left 2d platoon, M Troop and moved into a cav platoon in I Troop."

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German kids always fascinated by the American vehicles. --2/14th ACR		On parade in Bad Kissingen. --2/14th ACR

"Later, as I Troop XO, I was involved in the 3 x 5 exchange, which brought in the Sheridans. During this period we lost the M60A1s and the M114A1 because it was thought that the M551 could operate in both roles!"

"The M114A1 was a great little scout vehicle in that it had low profile and a good 20mm gun; and if memory serves me correctly, it was relatively quiet. The major problem with this vehicle was that it was under powered and would easily stall when loaded and climbing some of the steep inclines in the backwoods along the IGB. Unfortunately, the 20mm gun and the added weight of it's larger ammunition added to these problems and reduced the number of rounds that we carried. If memory serves me right, I believe that the gas engine for the M114 series vehicles was a General Motors (aka Chevy) 283! I think that if it could have/would have been fitted with a more powerful diesel engine, it could have made a good little scout vehicle. That is what happened a few years earlier with the M113 when it was upgraded from gas to a diesel engine. We still had some ‘gaser’ M113s in the 2nd Armored Division when I left Ft. Hood in December 1969."

"There was a lot of discussion in the Armor community during this time regarding the role of scouts and how they should be employed. There were a number of opinions, with the two most diametrically opposed positions being either;

a) Scouts were supposed to be stealthy, avoid contact with the enemy, but recon to determine the enemy's position and disposition and report . . . . . .

to the opposite extreme . . . . . .

b) Scouts were to fight, delay and determine the enemy's position and disposition without becoming decisively engaged and report.

In the end ( b) won out."

"As I previously mentioned, each cav platoon had 5 M114A-1s in its scout squad. The scout squad consisted of 2 scout sections, each with 2 of these vehicles. The 5th vehicle was TC'ed by the Scout Squad Leader. Dependent on the tactical situation, the platoon leader, who was normally in one of the M60A-1s in the armor section, might move into the scout squad leader's vehicle and lead from there."

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Recovery operations after an M114 snaps its track and spins wildly into a ditch. The TC was killed. --2/14th ACR		"See ' ya guys!!" Down the trail and soon, out of inventory, an M114 from the 2/14 ACR sets off for the day. In a few years, the scouts would be in the reliable M113 and, not much later, the next blank sheet scout vehicle was issued, the new M3 Scout Vehicle. From the armored jeep to the tank killer, the evolution would be complete. --2/14th ACR

SFC (Ret) Roy Lingle

"I had a lot of experience with the M114 family of vehicles, both good and bad, in Germany and USA. Here is what I recall."

1st Bn (Light) / 63rd Armor at Ft. Riley, Kansas.

"Those M-114A1s were not bad. They ran good and we had great maintenance support. Moving cross country on the grass covered plains of a Kansas prairie during the dry season was easy. Since the battalion had M-551 Sheridans the battalion commander tried to conduct a water crossing exercise ever time we went out on a FTX. The M-114 was amphibious, but just barely. Due to the short length of the vehicle and the front of the hull sticking out past the sprockets most dry washes would stop us in our tracks. It was hard to get down into many of them and sometimes impossible to get back out without a tow from another vehicle."

"The Scout Platoon lost a TC one night to a dry wash. The vehicle went over the edge in the dark and flipped upside down. During the rainy season, the heavy Kansas mud would put a very heavy strain on the power pack and it seems like we lost a number of engines and transmissions during one late fall FTX due to that mud."

4th Bn (Light)(Airborne)/68th Armor, 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

"Same group of vehicles and people, name changed and relocation to Ft. Bragg. For the first few months the vehicles did OK on the sandy roads running through the pine forests of North Carolina. One time during driver training, I had a new driver that didn't understand my instructions to "half-track" the tank trail as we tried to climb a hill. Passed rains had made the ruts from other tracked vehicles a bit deep. The new guy tired to follow the old ruts and high centered the belly of the vehicle. We had fun digging the sand out from under the hull so the tracks could move us back down the hill."

"Sometime during late 1969 or 1970, one of the mechanics sent in a suggestion for an improvement to the sprocket system. He received a very nice 'thank you' but no thanks. Good idea but the Army was planning on replacing the M-114 as soon as possible and would not be funding any further upgrades to the vehicle. In time, those vehicles started breaking down and it would take forever to get something fixed. I had the feeling that the Army had stopped buying spare parts for the M-114."

1st Bn (Mech) /30th Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, FGR.

"In May 1974, I was assigned to Schweinfurt. That unit had M-114A2s with the M-139 20 mm Hispano-Suiza HS830 auto-cannon. That set of vehicles was in bad shape. At any one time, I guess we may have had five or six of the nine moving under their own power.  Main problem was with mechanics that were not trained on the engine, transmission or the steer gear and long delays for replacement parts. Most field problems turned into broken vehicle recovery training. We had major problems with the XM-27 hydraulic powered turrets due to a lack of turret mechanics in the battalion. If we could not fix a turret problem ourselves, it didn't get fixed. By the time we turned those poor vehicles in during 1976, none of the turrets had power."

"One of the best times I had was when a new hard - charging platoon leader got the bright idea to fire those 20 mm cannons. It was a lot of work to get clearance for a range in the Schweinfurt area to fire them and it didn't help that none of the troopers in the platoon at that time, had ever live fired the cannon! We had heard a number of rumors about problems and dangers and we were not very comfortable with the first few rounds. The more we worked, however, the more we liked it. For a Scout what was one amazing weapon to fire! I had been told the AP-I round might go through the side of a T-62 Soviet tank. I am very glad that I never had the chance to find out. We also learned that the danger of a hang fire was related to the type of warhead the round in the hot chamber had. If it was AP-I, no problem, give it some time and if it cooked off, no problem. If it was HE-I, big problem, it was possible for the warhead to cook off and blow the chamber apart. You had to get that round out fast before it had time to cook or clear the area and hope the vehicle didn't get damaged."

"One other very interesting time was when the battalion commander arranged for two vehicles to go with the division Vulcan batteries for their annual live fire at the Germany Army Todendort antiaircraft range on the Baltic Sea. We spent about ten days there firing at slow, medium, and fast aerial target sleeves. First day or so, we could not hit anything. We started with long bursts (note: I think it was 20 or 25 rounds), dropped back to five rounds short bursts and finally ending up using just single shots."

"The first problem was a bad case of 'rock and roll' ! The recoil from that cannon was too much for the little seven ton M-114 to support. Trying to use long and shorts bursts was a waste of ammo. The best we could do was get one hit on a target sleeve per pass. All the other rounds either passed below or over the target. We found a second problem when we tried the single shot setting. We found that no one could see the tracers through the Plexiglas sight with the speed rings for aerial targets. Between the gas cloud at the end of the muzzle and the Plexiglas sight the gunner could not see where he was firing. Then we tired using Kentucky windage and found we all could get some hits. The trick was to stand up behind the gun cradle and not try to look through the gun sights. That way we could see the tracers and using BOT ( burst on target adjustments ) move rounds onto the target sleeves. Using single shot, the vehicle would almost stop rocking by the time we fired again. A couple of the guys were getting three to five hits on the slow targets, two or three on the mediums and one of two on the fast targets by the time we were done."

"On the last day we found one more problem. Back when we first started trying to use the cannons, we learned that during training conditions it should be cleaned after ever 550 rounds. For the last day, they wanted us to have three or four hundred rounds left so one of the Assistance Division Commanders could see us do our thing. On the day before, my vehicle only fired about two hundred rounds before we reached the amount we had been told to hold for the last day. I figured that we could get away with not breaking the cannon down for cleaning that day. That was a MISTAKE!"

"By the next morning, that gun would not work at all. It was glued together and the bolt would barely move. Those cannons were gas operated and the gun powder residue built up inside the receiver was very heavy. That residue mixed with lots of LSA (oil for weapons) during the night turned into a glue. We had to strip that receiver and do a very fast clean up job. That glue didn't want to come off. Thinking about that event later, I wondered if a Scout crew would have the time to take that weapon apart and clean it so it wouldn't freeze up the next time it was needed if the Warsaw Pact ever came through the Meiningen Gap?!"

"The H - S 20mm cannon may have been a good weapon for a jet fighter plane, but I don't think it would have worked very well down in the dirt of and mud that a Scout worked in. It was hard to understand why the Army was still using the M-114 in the mid and late 1970s. That was the vehicle we were going to use to stop the Warsaw Pack and when asked what I would do if my vehicle broke down, I would respond with ‘ the Warsaw Pact has plenty of vehicles, I will just take one of theirs!’ I guess I was too young to know better at the time. During 1976 we were very happy to turn those poor vehicles in and pickup a set of new M113A1s. Now we could move and keep on moving."

3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Ft. Bliss, Texas

"In 1978, I was happy to go there thinking I would be working with a real Cav unit again and it would be different from scouting for a tank or infantry battalion. I was very surprised to learn that the 3rd Cav was still using M-114A2s! In all the 1st Squadron Cav platoons, the platoon leader and the two scout squad leader vehicles in each platoon still had M-114A2s. The GSR section also had two vehicles for a total of eleven per troop. As far as I know, the 2nd and 3rd Squadrons also had the same set up. Running around in the high desert of Ft. Bliss was a blast as long as the vehicles ran. It was easier to hide, could slip between sand dunes that other vehicles couldn't. The terrain, as long as it was dry, wasn't that much of a problem. The main problem was replacement parts and this was a nightmare. The Regiment had a sister National Guard unit and every time a training team would go visit them, a number of mechanics would tag along. That National Guard unit had just coveted over to M-113s and M-60 MBTs. They were putting M114s that were in better shape out on target ranges than the 3rd Cav was still trying to use. Those mechanics would come back with completed power packs, working steer gears, spare track sections, and endless other small parts. Liberating parts form National Guard ranges to keep active Army vehicles running!"

"During that time, the 3rd ACR was part of the III Corps. One night an III Corps inspection team hit the 3rd ACR with a no notice deployment exercise. B Troop of the 1st Squadron had the alert duty and started pulling everything together and getting ready to move out. We counted heads, inventoried everyone's duffel bags of all required items, moved everyone and all equipment and weapons to the motor pool, fired up all the vehicles and moved over to Biggs Army Airfield. That was new, the 3rd ACR had never moved over to the airfield before."

"Next thing we saw, six Air Force C-141s landing and pulling up near us. Surprise, Surprise! WE WERE GOING SOMEWHERE! That somewhere turned out to be Holloman Air Force base up in New Mexico which is about an hours drive by car from Ft. Bliss. After assembling most of the troop there, we started a road march through White Sands National Monument, White Sands Missile range down into the Donna Anna ranges at the North end of Ft. Bliss. Out of three Cav platoons with ten vehicle each, 29 made it to Holloman. My M-114 lost the engine about two miles into the road march. After I had reached the troop assembly area with two M-113s, each towing an M-114, the troop put all operational vehicles on line and started a zone recon mission."

"We crossed the LD with a total of ten vehicles on line for a troop size mission. Out of eleven M-114A2s, one GSR vehicle was still running. One vehicle was the 1st Sergeant's M-151. There was one M-551A1 Sheridan and the other seven were M-113s. When I left the 3rd ACE in the fall of 1979, the first train load of M-60A1s to replace our old Sheridans had arrived. Rumors were that new M-113A1s where on the way to replace the M-114s. The word at the time was the 3rd ACR was the last unit in the total US Army still using the M-114. The reason given was the 3rd ACR needed two of everything, one item to use at Ft. Bliss and one for the war reserve stocks in Germany."

"When the M-114 was working, I loved that vehicle and thought I could be a good scout. Now days, while thinking back, it was not a very good scout vehicle. It was too small ... try running fast enough to stay out in front of Sheridans or Infantry APCs and it would beat you to a pulp. At top speed it reminded me of the original mechanical bull ride. The tracks did not stick out in front of the hull and it was too easy to bury the front end into a small bank. One thing that I didn't notice during my time with the first two units was the placement of the fuel cell. It was next to the driver and over the first road wheel. After hitting a land mine in Vietnam with a M-113A1 ACAV I felt that hitting a land mine with the left front road wheel would most likely result in the driver and TC getting burned to death if the mine didn't kill them outright."

"Firepower, that 20 mm auto cannon was something else, but it was too much for the hull of the M-114. Look at the Vulcan AAA version of the M-113. That hull had a suspension lock out system to keep the hull for rocking while the M-61 Gatling gun is firing. There wasn't room in a M-114A2 hull for something like that. I think that cannon would have only been good for single shot sniping missions. Auto fire would have just been a waste of ammo, something else that the hull didn't have a lot of room for. I also think the tool kit needed to support that cannon was a possible weak point. I forget the number of tools in that kit, but I remember that when tearing down the receiver, you could get away with not using one tool, but when it came to putting it all back together, you needed each and ever tool. One lost or damaged tool and another scout vehicle had better be close by."

"I guess the M114 vehicle was Ok but I was amazed when the Army decided to stop supporting that vehicle sometime during the late 1960s, long before it was finally replaced in the active inventory in the end of the 1970s. It was very hard on my morale and very difficult to explain to young scouts why we had such a vehicle after hearing Commanders stand up in front of the unit and tell us, we were the best, we had the best equipment, and we were the point of the spear of the next war. I was glad I never had to go to combat with that vehicle."