"Member we chained the steering wheel on anything worth stealing? No ignition key. The M38A1 just has an ON/OFF switch too; no key......."

WellSir, Doc- you tasked my old mushy hatwarmer for a minute there, but it came back to me.

Does remind me of a funny one, tho.

I was stationed at HHC 2nd Bde 3rd Armored Division in Gelnhausen, Germany in the late 70's, and our Bde HQ was on a big hilltop, with a sorta flat area out back, with a circular drive around a large, round, DEEP, murky pond, 'bout the total surface area of a basketball court.

One rainy night, some prankster (maybe) popped the Old Man's 151 outta gear, let off the parking brake, and FALOOP... into the pond. The lawn around the pond was pretty steep, firm ground, and no one seemed to notice any tire trax, and BOY! did the MPs and UPs (Unit Police... really, just Grunts on Guard with axe handles, and no Police Powers)- catch HELL for "letting someone steal the Brigade Commander's Vehicle and GET IT OUT THE GATE"!!

It was many months later when a .50 cal (we had a tank battalion and two straightleg infantry battalions, an Armored/Aircav Squadron, and ADA Chap/Vulcan/Redeye Bn- lotsa nice guns and missiles) -oh, yes ...came up missing after a field problem that someone thought they'd better search the pond for it...this was shortly after the Baader-Meinhof Gang was firebombing cars and family housing in the Frankfurt area, and the Gelnhausen O-club-and they certainly might have liked to have a .50 BMG.. but, I digress..

I heard they used some sort of metal detector or something, from a borrowed small boat, and got a "blip" from the deepest part of the pond. Word spread fassst around post that they had found the Ma Deuce, and a crowd gathered, m'self included).

I SAW this:

As a trooper stood in the boat, probing the bottom with a long pole, there was a huge air bubble allasudden come up right next to the skiff, almost turning it over.... the probe had seriously punctured the top of the 151, and apparently weakened by long immersion and the force of the air escaping, the whole top musta split suddenly.

They really didn't have a clue what they had, then, 'til some grunt got his scuba gear and went down and found the jeep, in neutral, brake off, and with the chain running tight between the clutch pedal and the steering wheel. Awsh*t.

Creighton Abrams' son, then an 0-4, was our Brigade S-3... boy, was he tough to live with for a while!

Hell on Wheels! (or was it Old Ironsides?-- I fergit...)

Some outfit.