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Short Cuts

Updated: 05/07/02

Short Cuts = Long Delays
The Hidden Cost of Cutting Corners

Shawn Stanford, CadetStuff.org Staff

I spent last weekend on the tanks. For those who aren't familiar with my other hobby, I'm (as of this writing) a corporal in the Pennsylvania National Guard with Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 103rd Armor Regiment. It's an M1-A1 Abrams tank company and for those of you who've never pounded around the countryside in 70 tons of Uncle Sam's steel, I highly recommend it: it is so choice.

Anyway, back to the point of this little article, which is to explain how shaving a few minutes off of a task can cost you big...

We spent the weekend beating the snot out of the tanks and the countryside and ourselves. You see, when a tank is really moving cross-country, being onboard is sort of like taking a ride in a dryer: it's hot, it's noisy, it smells funny and you're bouncing around inside of a hard metal container. By the time we were done and parked the tanks after 2300 on Saturday night, we'd been on them for almost eighteen hours. A long day in anybody's book!

The next morning was turn-in, the tanks had to be cleaned and Preventative Maintenance Checks done. After this the 'checkers' would come around with their lists and, if everything was kosher, they'd sign off on the tank and we'd put it in the parking lot. Once all the tanks for the company (we drew five that weekend) were turned in, we could go home.

To start the morning's events, we lined up all five tanks, plus the M88 Tank Recovery Vehicle and the two M-113 Armored Personnel Carriers we'd had, at the wash racks. The wash racks, as you may have guessed, are where you go to wash military vehicles. This one featured a really neat water cannon setup to wash the mud off the tracks as well as the more normal fire hose type deal used to wash the hull, etc.

One by one the tracks rolled through the first wash area getting absolutely pounded by these high pressure water cannons. They were doing a good job of removing the worst of the mud from the road wheels and lower hulls. The guys on the cannons had been specifically instructed to stay off the upper hulls and turrets, as the water pressure would get inside the hatch seals and fill the tank with water if they weren't careful.

This meant that once the tracks and lower hull had been done by the cannons, the tank was rolled up to the fire hose type wash racks and given a more detailed going-over.

The detailed going-over involved things like opening the skirts (the armor plates covering the top part of the tracks) and washing the mud out of the return rollers (the little wheels that hold the track up as it comes back around), out from behind the torsion bars (part of the suspension) and from the insides of the skirts themselves. You also want to climb up on top of the turret and wash the mud off the top of the tank. All this, with a good pre-wash, is a fifteen minute process for one guy, ten minutes for two guys.

When we got the freshly-washed tanks back to the yard to do PMCS (preventative maintenance) and get them ready for turn in. I went back to the tank I'd been on all weekend and me and one other guy started opening up the skirts to grease the fittings in the suspension. When I opened the skirts I found that there was still a great deal of mud on the suspension and stuck on the inside of the skirts. Then I climbed up on the hull to find that the topside had barely been rinsed and our once green and black tank was still mostly tan

Tan? Yeah, tan.

We'd hit a big mud hole going way too fast on Saturday. The tank in front of us had stopped and the tank commander and I - who were sticking out of the turret hatches - we both screaming for the driver to stop as we hit the water. He stopped, but the bow wave went over the front slope of the hull to the base of the turret, then washed back and onto the rear deck of the tank in front of us. The splash went completely over our tank, covering the top of the turret and the back deck - and the tank commander and I - in tan mud. Our green tank was now desert camoflage!

So were we...

Anyway, Sunday morning as I checked out our tank, I was amazed that there was still so much dirt and mud on it. It should have come out of the wash rack with hardly any mud still stuck on. I asked the driver, who had been with it when it was in the wash rack (I was in charge of the water cannons) who had washed it. He named the soldier who had been on the fire hose, a guy not known for his attention to detail.

Looking over our tank, we both decided that another five miniutes of washing and a little accuracy with the hose would have done the trick and that this tank might well be too dirty to turn in. If that was the case, it would cost us at least forty minutes to get back through the wash rack, holding up a company of thirty guys in the process from getting packed up and going home.

The moral of the story: when you're given a job - even a job that seems stupid, and easy - make sure you do the best possible job. You never know when that stupid job will turn out to have big consequences at some point in the future. You might be saving yourself a few minutes, but you could be screwing your buddy Big Time; maybe even risking his life!

Here's an example that Cadets should be able to relate to: your squadron has an old army tent they use for the Head Shed on bivouacs. After a spring bivouac where it rains, you're given the task of cleaning it, waiting for it to dry in the sun and putting it away. You take a shortcut and only clean the side that's up, you then only let it dry halfway and fold it up so that the dirt doesn't show.

A few months later, it's now late November and your squadron is going to for the fall bivouac. You arrive after dark on a Friday night after driving 90 minutes to the bivouac site. The weather starts to go down the crapper but, not a problem, the commander decides that everyone can move into the GP tent. The common shelter will keep everyone in sight and there will be shared warmth. You pull out the tent, which has been stored since the previous spring, only to find that it is moldy and - in a couple places - gaping holes have rotted into it and it is now a big, green piece of Swiss cheese.

Farfetched? Nope. The same basic situation, without the ruined tent, happened to me and my squadron in MOWG a few years ago. Having the large tent allowed us to move everyone together in a cold rain which turned into sleet and then into six inches of snow.

Anyway, the checkers took the tank with the dirt on it, so there was no need to use my newly-minted super corporal powers to perform a little wall-to-wall counseling on the guy who hosed our tank.

Just don't let it happen to you, okay?