An ode to the faithful M88, sixty years and counting

There’s an old saying that’s true in the Army as with civilian life – the more things change, the more they stay the same. You can confirm it by taking an old tanker or cavalry trooper from the 1960s into a modern armored unit motor pool (what we used to call the hardstand). There are many differences between a hardstand of yesteryear and today’s motor pool. But if you asked that veteran Soldier which vehicles he recognized from his service in the old Army, he would quickly point out two: the M113 armored personnel carrier, ₁ and the M88 tank retriever.

My dad was a tanker from the late 1940s into the 60s. Although I never asked him, I’m sure he and his battle buddies required the services of the then-new M88. I served for eight years as a cavalry scout on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the 80s and 90s and came to respect our trusty 88s and the Soldiers who crewed them. Whether at the hardstand on motor stables or out in the field doing everything from road marches to combat, our mechanics in their 88s went with us every step of the way.

The Army has gotten its money’s worth out of both the M113 and the M88. Although the 113 might (and I stress might) be replaced with something new sooner or later, the old 88 is still soldiering hard all over the world. Tanks, be they M48s or M60s from the Cold War era, or the newest model M1s, look, sound, and sometimes even feel unbreakable. Same thing with the Bradley, M109, MLRS, and other medium-weight tracks. ₂

The big 88s are crewed by mechanics, and they’re trained not only in how to fix the things we break, but also how to get our tracks unstuck. They’re some of the Army’s unsung heroes. 88 crews carry everything they need to mired tracks, no matter how badly stuck.. Winch, tow cables, A-frame, spade, cutting torch; it all goes with them. Think of it as a dual-purpose tracked wrecker and garage combination, and a rolling house for the crew.

All of the Army’s armored vehicles – while not exactly delicate – are intricate machines with countless moving parts. And they get used in the toughest conditions. There’s an endless list of things that break, usually at the worst possible time. Ever seen a picture of a bunch of M1 tanks driving around in some desert somewhere? Well, there’s a better than even chance that after they’re been going for more than a few hours, something will go wrong with at least one. What, you might ask? Here are just a few examples.

Know what a wedge bolt and end connector is? It’s the thing that holds all the track shoes together. Crews check them all the time. Even so, they vibrate loose, or sometimes just go snap. When that happens, the tread falls apart. Not good. Sprockets shear off. Packs (that’s what the engine and transmission are called) blow. Treads run off the road wheels or sprocket, which is call throwing track. Final drives break. Electrical systems stop. Air and fuel filters get hopelessly clogged. And those are just the simple problems.

We haven’t even talked about where armor crews drive tracked vehicles. From personal experience, I can vouch for the fact that vehicle crews get their tracks stuck in the darndest places. Bogs, swamps, sand, washouts, stream beds, and tiny little trails in the woods are all places we love to drive our armored combat vehicles. Those kinds of terrain make it harder for bad guys to shoot us. Plus they help us sneak around. I know, you’re thinking, “How do you sneak around in something that big and noisy?” Trust me on this one, it’s possible.

Here’s just one extreme example of tanks getting stuck. This happened in Germany and was so bad, the Stars and Stripes wrote about it in 1987:

[SSgt James] Timmons’ mired tank could be called a sunken battleship. Timmons’ 60-ton chariot is one of three tanks partially submerged [in]a wooded area during Certain Strike maneuvers. Three tanks that is, until an M88 recovery vehicle also became stuck while trying to free them. And every … tank commander … knows that when a tank goes into the muck, you don’t get out and push. ₂

In the above case, not even the trusty 88 could get the tanks unstuck. It eventually took an entire German army engineer company with heavy equipment to get them out of their predicament. I saw this article back in the day while serving in Germany and remembered it all these years. When I was writing this story, I knew exactly what I was looking for! No doubt, SSgt Timmons’ old buddies recall the incident too, and remind him about it whenever they can.

To cite just one of my own (mis)adventures, in about 1988 we were doing field operations at Hohenfels, which is a big troop training area in southern Germany. It had been raining and the ground was mushy. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) Anyway, it was very early in the morning, totally dark, and I was navigating from my Bradley turret with night vision goggles. I saw this grassy meadow out ahead of us, and told my driver to go ahead.

Well, the grassy meadow turned out to not be grassy, but swampy, very swampy. Next thing I knew, the driver reported that he couldn’t go forward. So I told him to back up. I knew right away that we were bogged when the treads began throwing mud in front of our track when he pushed the pedal.

I took out my flashlight and looked down, seeing the water up over the front of our track. At this moment I experienced a sinking feeling. That’s when I said, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, “Oh, fudge,” although this wasn’t exactly the f-word that escaped my lips. Let me tell you, this was some mighty deep mud.

Some of our buddies drove up behind us with their tank to pull us back out with a set of tow cables. Guess what? They sunk too, worse than us. We weighed just under 30-tons to their 70. We had mud halfway up our hull, and the tank was good and stuck too. (SFC Byrd, if you ever read this, I’m sorry for that night.) Take one guess who we called in that fudged up situation to come save the day. Yep, it was our trusty old M88 and crew.

88 crews might get a handshake after they save the day, that is, if there’s time. But you won’t find their names displayed on a top gun trophy in battalion or squadron headquarters. Hell, you can hardly find a mention of them in books about armor and mechanized operations. Their job isn’t glamorous, but it’s absolutely essential.

I guarantee you that no armored unit can shoot, move, and communicate for long without their 88s. Our mechanics are brave too. If a combat vehicle gets knocked out or breaks a tread in a firefight, the 88 responds. Enemy fire might be raining down, but they come, sometimes with the medics. They earn their spurs like the rest of us.

Our recovery crews live through the same dangers as we all do in combat. In armor and cavalry, there’s no such thing as “just a mechanic.” They’re our battle buddies, which is about the highest compliment one Soldier can pay to another. And although it isn’t something we like to think about, sometimes our mechanics give the last full measure of devotion.

The 88 has been beefed-up and modified over the years since it was introduced in 1960. The modern version is the 1050-hp M88A2, officially called “the Hercules”. That stands for “Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System.” You have to wonder how long it took the PR people to come up with that moniker (but I digress). 1960 or 2020, it’s the same big squat powerful dinosaur.

Track crews in the modern Army are doubtless happy to hear the throaty growl of an 88 chugging up the trail to the rescue today, just like we were in the old Army. That beautiful diesel rumble has been music to the ears of tread heads for sixty years, and there’s no sign of it stopping any time soon.

Thanks for reading,

Mark

Notes

1. I include the M577 command post track, which is a derivative of the M113. The 113, 577, and 88 have all undergone modernization and improvements since entering service.
   
2. Soldiers use the word track in reference to tracked armored vehicles in general. To make it more opaque for civilians trying to figure out Army lingo, the same word is used when referring to the treads that armored vehicles ride on. They’re also called tracks, but just for clarity, I call them treads in this article.
   
3. Cited passage from Stars and Stripes (Europe edition) article “Three tanks, recovery vehicle defeated by mud,” page 9, 22 September 1987