The final area to look at is the front hull, where the driver and assistant driver sit.
The driver has a seat which has positions forwards or backwards by four inches, and upwards and downwards by ten inches.
His hatch, known in the manual as a ‘door’, swings forward and has a periscope mounted in it.
Now, why it’s called a ’door’, I don’t know.
As another example, I was looking recently in the manual for an M123 6x6 truck.
Now, those of you who have been around a while will remember cars used to have this thing in the door
and you would crank round and around and the window would go up or down.
We always called that a window handle.
In the Army, it is a ‘Door Glass Regulator Handle.
I bet somebody got a good OER mark (Officer Evaluation Report) for that one.
Anyway, the interior compartment is pretty similar to what we’ve already seen in the M37.
The dash is as near to identical as makes no difference.
We have ignitions, one for each engine, starter buttons, one for each engine, external lights,
outlet for an internal light, power socket and so on, temperature and tachometer for each engine, one on each side.
One speedometer, one amperage.
Steering levers, one for each side.
The handbrake is simply this plunger:
You pull it back as far as you can, depress the plunger, let go, your handbrake, or parking brake, is now set.
The signature part of all this is the combination transfer case and transmission.
The transmission has three settings.
Neutral, Drive and Low.
There are four speeds, “Drive” allows you to access all four, “Low” is just the bottom two.
There is no reverse in the transmission.
This is handled by the transfer unit.
The transfer unit has neutral, reverse, low or high.
The transfer unit is the item which combines the power output from both the transmissions
pushes them through the propeller shaft which runs along the centre of the hull, forward to the differential
before being split out to the final drives.
Again, one of the signature features of the driver’s compartment is that there are two pedals.
The accelerator in the normal position, and this one here, which is not the clutch or the brake, because of course the brakes are these.
This is the neutral pedal.
The reason this exists is that if you wanted to change the transfer case from one setting to another,
such as from low to high, or reverse to forward,
the transmissions must be in neutral, otherwise you have gears grinding all over the place.
To save you from having to put the transmission in neutral, then going over to the transfer case, then going back to the transmission,
all you have to do is press down on the neutral pedal.
It overrides whatever the setting is on the transmission select lever, puts it in neutral, you change the transfer case,
let go of the neutral pedal, and the transmission will re-engage whatever the gear was that you had it set as previously.
So, hypothetically, if I actually wanted to go somewhere, the first thing I’d want to do is make sure I had master power.
Master power is a little red switch located over your left shoulder.
You turn it from a slight angle to horizontal, you’re good to go.
The next thing you want to do is make sure your parking brake is set,
and make sure the transfer case and transmission are both in neutral.
Now, the manual states that the transfer case should be in a particular range and that the engines should be started simultaneously,
but exactly why is unclear, and oftentimes you err on the side of caution.
Next thing you want to do is you want to start fuel flowing to the engines,
so there is a fuel pump switch on the right hand side, you select whichever tank you want to run.
Once that’s done, turn on the ignition for one of the engines, and push to start.
One engine complete, next you want to do is the other engine.
Give it a little bit of revs to warm up.
Eventually you see the ammeter kick in, the generators are now cranking.
Leave it there for about 30 seconds and away you go.
And since we seem to have a working tank, let’s take it for a drive.
So the first thing you want to do is put the transfer unit into range,
pull back to release the handbrakes.
That’s not right.
Transmission into gear, pull back to release the handbrakes, and away we go.
It really is very easy to drive this vehicle.
Short, sharp flicks with the steering brake to avoid overheating.
The manual states that when you’re not actually using the brake, push forward on the levers.
If you need the brake, just pull back, push down on the plungers, and that applies your brakes.
OK, so I’m just going to change the transfer case: Push down on the neutral pedal, the transmission is now in neutral.
I can now change from Drive into Reverse.
Let go of the neutral pedal, this now re-engages the drive, so I am now driving forward on the transmission and reverse on the transfer case.
Fortunately, steering is not reversed.
OK. And now we’re going to go forward again.
So, back down on the neutral pedal.
Transfer unit back into drive, you then let go of the neutral pedal, and away we go again.
It must be said, this is an extremely quiet vehicle.
Compared to the M4 Medium we had a bit earlier, you can really sneak up on people.
Though admittedly, the horse to my right doesn’t seem too happy.
So after having come to a stop, you pull back, depress on the plungers to apply the parking brake.
Come down here, let's see what to do. Next put the transmission into neutral.
Transfer case can come into neutral as well.
You now have a cool-down period.
Well, the engine has been idling for a few minutes, so we can consider ourselves to be cooled down.
Next is to kill one of the ignitions, see the tach drops on the left engine, kill the other one and tach drops on the right engine.
Turn off the fuel pump, close the fuel valve.
And the last thing you want to do is turn off Master Power.
Always, always always turn off Master Power.
There is nothing more annoying than realizing that you’ve left your Master Power on and your tank won’t start.
Anyone that rents airplanes will know the problem with that as well.
Always switch off Master Power.
That’s it.
So we’ve come to our last position in M24, the assistant driver’s travel position.
Now, you will remember that he does have a combat position behind me in the turret.
There is a caveat to all this.
The manual states that you can have a crew of five if you add a cannoneer, which in today’s parlance, is a loader.
As near as I can tell, this is simply a manpower reduction issue.
Don’t put five people into a recon vehicle which isn’t really designed to fight, and that way they save the manpower for other things.
But on past experience in real life what will often happen is you will hijack infantrymen and engineers, crewmen from abandoned or lost tanks,
and you will make a five-man crew that way.
So then you will always have someone in the assistant driver’s position and you will have a dedicated loader slash cannoneer.
When he is in the travel position, obviously the first thing he’ll see in front of him is the periscope for looking around.
I’ll just get the hatch out of the way.
Unlock it, pull down, and up, swings around,
locks into position by use of a spring here,
hatch is now locked.
To his front he has a.30 cal of his own, and an ingenious little travel lock I have to say.
You push right and it frees it up.
As you can see, there is absolutely no way for the sight to be used, this is simply spray and pray.
Hopefully he’ll have lots of tracer rounds and you can see roughly where you’re shooting through the periscope.
He only has one pedal, the accelerator pedal.
Neutral pedal, no such luck.
His seat is adjustable in elevation up or down, not forwards or backwards that I can see,
and even the brakes don’t have a handbrake lock, but he does have a tiller for each side.
So that’s pretty much it for M24.
I don’t think there’s anything else we can show you short of engaging targets with service ammunition.
M24 went on to see service in the Korean War, and indeed they were there first tanks to get there.
One M24 by the name of “Rebel’s Roost” was reportedly the first tank to engage another tank in action.
However, by 1953 the replacement had shown up, the M41 known as the Walker Bulldog.
M24s then left US Army service and dispatched around the globe to other countries to serve on for many more years.
This particular vehicle was found on a Norwegian firing range in pretty terrible condition,
and I have to say credit to the Museum of the American GI for fixing it up, they’ve done a hell of a job.
So that was M24, and we’ll see you on the next one.
I’m going to fling it in and hope for the best.
Going to get this in eventually.
Now I suspect that part of the reason that took so much effort was that that wasn’t actually a proper cartridge.
Ah, for the love of…
I think I have an explanation.
This shell casing is deformed.
This particular one has something.
And that is why you inspect your ammunition before you load it.