Hi
I want to scratchbuild an ammo crate for NATO 105mm tank ammunition. and make a master out of it.
i tried to build one but it came out to big.
can someone post a simple drawing of such a crate with dimmensions?
Thanks

I believe there is an affordable set that comes with the Modern US tank accessory set by Tamiya. I can measure its dimensions tonight when I get home.

The Tamiya Modern US Accessories Set #35141 contains 4 105mm ammo crates. They are 3cm long by 2 cm wide and 1 cm high. It also includes four "tootsie roll" ammo storage tubes as well as several 105mm rounds.

Thanks!

For this (and the cheap whiskey price) I wish I was still in my Ammo company. I had all the specs, sizes and loading diagrams at hand.
Sorry I can't help you on this. I look forward to the answer, though. I might scratch a few myself if I find the correct sizes.

Jan

Were you planning to load them up on a tank, or use them in a dio?

I've been tankin' for 13 years, and we have never used them. When we recieve ammo (both 105/120) they come in a huge honeycomb that holds 60 or so rounds, and we transfer from there. The honeycombs are trucked out to the class 5 (ammo) upload site usually on a HEMTT.
Hope this doesn't confuse you, I just wanted to make sure you got the details straight.

John

Back in the day, when we kept the M60A3TTSs fully uploaded with 105mm we used the heck out of the ammo crates. Every time a platoon went in for services or a tank went into the bays for maintenance, we had to download the service ammo, put them in the tootsie rolls and then place them into the crates. Then we had to load them onto a HEMTT and take them to the ASP until the tank or platoon was out of the bays. We also had to do this every time we went to gunnery or REFORGER, except we only downloaded the turret ammo, the hull ammo remained in place and we had to put lacing wire over the ammo handles so we didn't accidently load a service round during gunnery.

During serivces, we did try to upload the ammo into a platoon that was coming out of service so it would eliminate a trip to the ASP and crating of the ammo. I recall seeing soldiers load the service rounds into shopping carts that were liberated from the commissary, roll them down the line to the platoon that just got out of services and them upload them. (yes, I know that was wrong and we stopped the practice). Every so often we had to download the ammo and check lot numbers, sometimes we had to swap out rounds so we all had the same lot numbers in the same company. Something to do with correction factors in the fire control system.

This was 1987-89 when I was in the battalion and we still had A3s. We did not keep the M1A1s uploaded with service ammo since the rounds were more fragile. The 120mm rounds we did get came in palletized honeycombs like John says.

I was in an ammo cie and never saw anything but the boxes, the tubes that held individual rounds and the empty shells. After shooting, the shells were returned from the shooting range to us in the original boxes, to be sent back for reprocessing. The boxes were moved either individually (manpower to load the trucks or trainwagons) or on NATO standard pallets. Boxes were generally uncolored wood with black, brown or green lettering , but I also saw painted boxes (dark green). Probably special rounds (illuminating ?).