Hello, I have two questions about the M103 tank. First of all, when did the US Marine replacement battalions stop having M103s (I know that the main Marines battalions got rid of them in 1973/74, but the best I can tell the replacement battalions kept them longer)? Secondly, what happened to the M103s after the Marines and Army got rid of them?
Thanks!
I think you mean Marine Reserve Tank Bns. No idea how long they held onto them, but my guess is not that much longer than active Marine Tank units.
As to the second question, some went to museums and as gate guards, the rest became range targets.
Somewhere, I have photos of some old M103s that were hard targets at Fort Drum, NY circa 1984-85.
Thanks!
S.M.
I got to live fire TOWs on them a couple times in Spring of '87 at Ft Polk. But I did not get any photos of that exercise.
This M103A2 is at the Marine Corps Reserve Center in Syracuse, NY. I took a bunch of pics, but it was a gray day.
Ah, yeah, there’s one in Radcliff outside of Knox. I drive by it daily, but tend to forget about it.
I always thought that as a range target they made a good approximation of the T-10/JS-3 series of tanks… a bit taller, but in the same class.
Big target…
There’s one at the Davenport Iowa Credit Island Park. Been there since around 1970. Nearly every spring it’s in the flood waters. I posted pictures I took of it and had then on the Quad-City scale Modeler Society website. Use the Wayback machine for qcsms.org