[Basileus Ioannis]

Thank you Don, Pat and Suhiir, I appreciate your consideration and all the work you all put into SPMBT; the detail level of this game far outpaces its humble SSI beginnings, and your hard work shows. I mean, while running my brief playtest just now, I had a tracked vehicle get stuck in a rice paddy...another, a wheeled vehicle, wouldn't go into mud terrain so the passengers dismounted to continue on foot. That, gentlemen, is meat and potatoes details that certainly satisfies the appetite.

Suhiir, re: obat13 USMC use of M48s, here's what I've got so far: per Hunnicutt's PATTON, pilot T48 #6 was delivered to the Marines; since pilot #5 was delivered in November 1952, that must be the earliest date #6 was delivered. A photo of pilot #6 appears in Jim Mesko's M48 Patton In Action, with small drivers hatch and cylindrical blast deflector.

A website history of the 1st Marine Tank Battalion indicated that the Marines got only enough M46 Pattons for the 1st Marine Division in Korea, but CONUS units had to wait for the M47; photos in Hunnicutt show Quantico testing M47s by February 1953, and when the 3rd Marine Division deployed to Japan in August 1953, they had M47s. 1st Marine Division left Korea for Camp Pendleton in early 1955; it is possible that the Marines only picked up enough M47s for the 2nd and 3rd Divisions and the Force level battalions, and the 1st was reconstituted in early 1955 with M48A1s, leaving its M46s in Korea, but I don't have written data to the effect. It is also a given that the 2nd Marine Division had M48A1s by the time they deployed to Beirut in July 1958. The website also listed total M48A1 acquisition at 421 tanks, 419 of which were dieselized in 1963-64.

Lacking further M48A1 deployment info, I can extrapolate based on parallel development of the M67 flamethrower tank; Hunnicutt goes into considerable detail on this, starting with the T66 prototype based on the M47 hull (the turret was scavenged from the T42 tank program, and had the pistol port on the left side of the turret which was eliminated from the M47). The sole T66 was produced under Army Chemical Corps auspices, as well as the subsequent T67 pilot based on the hull and turret of the M48 with small drivers hatch, external .50cal MG, and no track tension idler wheel; photos of this pilot undergoing tests at Aberdeen are dated November 1953. The flame gun M7-6 mounted in an M48A1 turret was standardized on 13 October 1954, and the Marines ordered 56 complete T67 tanks, 17 T7 flamethrower turrets to be fitted to redundant M48A1 hulls, and the pilot T67 was rebuilt to M48A1 standard (larger drivers hatch, M1 commanders cupola, track tension idler wheel installed) for a total of 74 flame tanks. T67 standardized as Flame Thrower Tank M67, and T7 turret standardized as Flame Thrower Tank Turret M1 on 1 June 1955.

So it can be deduced that at some time between October 1954 and June 1955, the Marines were receiving M48A1 Pattons. Since M48A1 production apparently ran until the end of 1957, the fact that 3rd Marine Division was reequipped two years later might indicate they were second hand Army tanks acquired after production to make up a shortfall in the initial procurement.

The only changes I might recommend in obat13 availability:

012/531 M47 Patton - 8/53 to 7/59 (so they don't appear during either the Korean or Vietnam wars)
007/013/532/635 M48A1 Patton - 4/55 to 11/64

The ENSURE 202 mine rollers for M48A3s weren't deployed until late in the Vietnam War; photo evidence is dated 1970, and only 27 sets were deployed. The earlier Larruping Lou, ERDL I/II and Birmingham rollers were experimental and never fielded.

John