Tank Girl Jr's Day Out

"I’ve been to Australia. I met the devil, drank beer and snogged kangaroos."

                                                                                              ~ Tank Girl

My wee Tank Girl!

A couple of weekends ago, we had the opportunity to visit the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation, aka: the late Jacques Littlefield's tank shop.   

Up armoring!

Playing Minecraft

You have to be this tall (16" shell)

M1917A1. My second favorite tank in the collection.

A couple of decades ago, during my days of reenacting and wrenching (mostly painting) on tanks with my pal Joe Fazio, I've had many a great opportunity to go to this museum and talk shop with the crew who did the restorations, and climb in pretty much anything and everything. 

It's very magical and wonderful to sit with someone and compare how many colors of Dunkelgelb there were on pieces of real tanks and armored vehicles.  (As an aside - Flames of War did a great article on this very subject.)

This time around my colleague Nick Duguid, a volunteer, was our guide and I had the fantastic opportunity to bring the whole family along!  We probably climbed into more things than we ought to have, but as the entire collection is moving out of state soon, I had to say goodbye to some of my favorites. I turned young captain Fossling loose with the camera (300+ shots!) and enjoyed watching Tank Girl, Jr. enjoying herself.  It was a blast! 

 

My true love- the Hetzer!

just how thin 9mm of armor actually is...

I'm gonna miss you, Lil TD.

If you are in Northern California in the next few months, do yourself a huge favor and check out the MVTF museum. At the very least go to their site, which has wicked cool 3d panoramas ( but no Fosslings).