M1 Tank Factory

[Cdnwolf]

http://m.youtube.com/watchv=G8uFVKmAj5o

[stormlion1]

Hmm, might be interesting to come up with a way to use these factorys in a scenario.

[Rainbow Six]

Hmm, might be interesting to come up with a way to use these factorys in a scenario.

IIRC there was a scenario published in a Challenge magazine that involved an M1 plant in Lima, Ohio (I haven't viewed the Youtube video so don't know if that's the plant in question). I can't recall the specifics - I think it might have involved the PC's having to recover some machinery or such like.

[Panther Al]

Yep, thats the second facility they talk about, Lima OH.

I like how the tanks that are refurbed in the background are the ones they was doing for the Aussies - complete with the Roo on the turret cheek.

[Targan]

IIRC there was a scenario published in a Challenge magazine that involved an M1 plant in Lima, Ohio (I haven't viewed the Youtube video so don't know if that's the plant in question). I can't recall the specifics - I think it might have involved the PC's having to recover some machinery or such like.

That Challenge Mag adventure has been discussed a number of times on this forum before. It's titled Lima Incident and it's in Challenge issue #56. Opening paragraph of the description:

*SPOILERS*

"The 112th Medical Division recently learned that 30 M-1 Abrams MBTs are sitting outside the former General Motors Lima Tank Plant in Lima, OH."

During one of the previous discussions about this scenario it was suggested (by Kato perhaps) that according to the canon strike lists, the Lima tank plant would likely have been within the zone of destruction caused by a nuke strike. However, given that GDW sanctioned a Challenge Mag adventure featuring the plant being intact, I treat it as being intact in my campaigns.

[kato13]

*SPOILERS*

During one of the previous discussions about this scenario it was suggested (by Kato perhaps) that according to the canon strike lists, the Lima tank plant would likely have been within the zone of destruction caused by a nuke strike. However, given that GDW sanctioned a Challenge Mag adventure featuring the plant being intact, I treat it as being intact in my campaigns.

Here is my post on the subject.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showpost.phpp=50174&postcount=10

As far as canon goes it ends up being vague on this subject. If the City was targeted, the Plant would be in a medium destructive zone. If the local refinery was targeted (as canon often suggests is the motivation for a strike), it would not be damaged. Of course with CEPs of Russian missiles often being measured in miles, you could really put the strike just about anywhere.


Update. The refinery seems to be right on top of the Plant so if you want it to survive the MIRV (assumed) needs to deviate.

[Cdnwolf]

The oil refinery and the Tank plant are right next door to each other so I think it may be slightly melted in a nuclear explosion.

[kato13]

Thanks Cdnwolf. In my post I was not exactly sure where the refinery was.

Edit. Looks like northeast and southwest caught my error in the prior thread but I only remembered making the pictures of the map.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpp=50181#post50181

Apparently the Challenge article also confuses northeast and southwest when referencing where the plant is, so again even with canon information there is still wiggle room.

[schnickelfritz]

Lima Incident

I believe the premise of the survival of the Lima Tank Plant in Lima Incident was that the warhead targeted on the Plant missed and/or fizzled. I'm going off of memory...I have it upstairs but I'm a little too worn out to get out of my chair now.

There was some damage, but the plant was largely intact and the tooling in a clean/cold state.

The "30" M1A1's were actually 3, only one of which had been fitted with the 120mm and bore sighted. Two more were waiting for installation and bore sighting. Your job was to recon, hold off the gangs/convicts, and call for a convoy of HET's.

It was kind of neat to see the details of the surrounding area...I think there were several OH NG units in the area armed with a scattering of M42 Dusters.

I did some work on a part for Cummins engine years ago and the part was delivered to a subsidiary in the Lima area. We drove through Lima, and right past the plant. I remember telling my coworkers that there was no way that place would be standing if it all went Nuclear. It was a little chilling.....I could hear the sirens in my head. A coworker was a Cold War aficionado and we just looked at each other and shivered.

-Dave

[Cdnwolf]

Could make the tanks be sitting on a railroad car on a siding just outside of town that escape the most of the damage.

[Webstral]

It seems to me that the tools would be far more valuable than tanks. It would be handy to have someone who knows how to use the tools, of course. Honestly, I think a convoy making the effort to get to Lima and carry off anything weighing 60 tons would be better served to take selected items from the machine shops and assembly lines than a actual M1.

[Targan]

It seems to me that the tools would be far more valuable than tanks. It would be handy to have someone who knows how to use the tools, of course. Honestly, I think a convoy making the effort to get to Lima and carry off anything weighing 60 tons would be better served to take selected items from the machine shops and assembly lines than a actual M1.

You're absolutely correct. And that's exactly what it says in the mini-module.

*SPOILERS*

Page 9, "Findings" section:

"The 30 M-1s reported turn out to be three operational M-1s, and only one has complete armament.
If the PCs check inside the plant carefully (the tanks are parked out back) they will find that the building has hardly been touched by vandals. The tools and dies are more valuable than the tanks themselves, as they could be used to make more tanks."

[stormlion1]

Make more tanks Well somewhat true, the ability to produce some the equipment certainly but a complete modern tank should be pretty much impossible. Unless you want to make something along the line of a World War 1 era tank that is.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I watched a documentary recently (I think it was originally linked to here in the forums) tank "building" "tools and dies" are multiple-ton, specialty machines, many of them computer controlled CNC machines. Nobody's going to build another tank factory. Not for multiple decades, not with a country with barely twenty million people left in it, who are starving, beset by plague, cut off by completely destroyed infrastructure, scattered across 4 million square miles with no remaining central gov't outside of a few enclaves and the gov't that's left is in a three-way de-facto civil war (all canon, btw.)

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Make more tanks Well somewhat true, the ability to produce some the equipment certainly but a complete modern tank should be pretty much impossible. Unless you want to make something along the line of a World War 1 era tank that is.

A pickup truck outfitted with phone books and cut-down dumpsters as armor with a couple of retired NG guys armed with LAW rockets is more like what you'd have for "tanks".