I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved.

We always drove around in uparmored humvees and those things have a suprisingly soft ride.

Given A's obsession with Gilligan's Island I thought this would be the appropriate thread to announce that the Professor died yesterday at age 89.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/russell-johnson-dead-dies_n_4612127.html

I always hated Strykers and thought they were pointless. Originally they were supposed to be light weight wheeled light armored vehicles which were faster than bradley's but light enough to be be flown in by aircraft. Sadly, the aluminium armor was so ineffective they had to put uparmored kits on it... Which made it so heavy it could no longer be flown in by aircraft which defeated the whole point of them. Even the Soviet wheeled armored vehicles were better and cheaper though, if I was paying for it, the Swedish wheeled armored vehicles looked great plus they were amphibious though I might have had my opinion influenced by all the hot blonde chicks I saw in the Swedish Army in Kosovo.

Did you guys have the big wire cage around your Stryker to help protect it against RPGs? Even with the uparmor the Stryker just didn't do well against armor piercing stuff.

Everyone talked shit about Strykers... up until they actually deployed. Then once we proved to be fucking ass kickers in the battlespace (deep-v hull means IED blast goes over and up, not through, who cares about armor they only have small arms, RPG cage takes care of RPGs) and so Gates mandated that one Stryker brigade be in country at all times, we were that mission critical. My battalion, 1-23INF was fucking THEATER QRF. Lazy Douchebags like 1st Cav or 10th Mountain lost control of their AO we got sent in to make it right. In fact, we had fucking waivers to allow us to roll without A/C. Any other Vic would be redlined in Iraq without A/C EXCEPT Strykers. Our drivers had to be hooked up to IVs sometimes (right next to that big Cat semi-truck engine) but we still rolled.

So yeah, anyone that talks shit about Strykers hasn't paid attention to the last ten years of war.

The AC in the uparmored humvees sucked. It could hold the line at about 90 but that's it. On the upside they did seem to hold up well even against shape charges; at least for everyone but the gunner. Sucks to be him.

The whole of the ABDA fought with the same bravery and aggression, but against an enemy that was as good as the Japanese surface forces at the time were, they stood little chance. One of the biggest hurdles was the language barrier, since the Admiral in charge, Karel Doorman, spoke little or no English nor did most Dutch ships under his command.

Only issue I had was early on whiping my dick out and peeing when I could reach out and touch 9 other dudes. But that cherry got popped pretty quick and next then you know your leaned back against the ramp shitting in an MRE bag with each leg pressed up against two other dudes' legs. -Anc

Wow.....I guess I had it easy compared to you. BTW that could explain why MRE's taste like shit.
Luckily I never had to shit during a convoy. One of the females in our unit had to during a long convoy.
She kind of did the Claude Van Damme thing by going spread -eagle between two trucks parked side-by-side (not moving but that would be cool)
She shit into a big cardboard box so she had a pretty big target. Yes, pics are available so it DID happen.

AC? Wait, let me rephrase that...A motherfucking C in a vehicle?
I went in 2003 with our vehicles straight out of Germany. No AC, no armor, no desert camo paint job.
Our gunner was a weed head with borderline narcolepsy - no shit, but a great technician and one of my hardest working soldiers.
Our 50 cal was a SINGLE-SHOT! Yes, it would fire one (sometimes several though) rounds then jam up completely.
Is that some Barney Fife one bullet shit or what?
Our armorer told the commander he had two choices of how his truck could be armed:
with a fully functional M-60 with several men trained/certified on it, or the FUBAR 50 cal. and the only one trained/certified was
the narcoleptic weed head. Keep in mind our commander is a pilot, so he's not a total idiot.
He chose the 50 cal. because it was more intimidating.

Yeah.....the Haji's are intimidated by an Air Traffic Control unit with a single shot AFTER we just decimated them and all
their aircraft and most of their tanks and vehicles are smoldering wrecks and we bombed all their airfields and control towers.
One shot will surely send them packing!

Without AC those armored vehicles turn into an oven in the hot desert sun. Imagine what it is like when it is 125 degrees outside but you're sitting in a metal box.

Oh I didn't think about that. I guess you would need AC if there's no ventilation. I never got to experience the armored vehicles.
We could take our plastic doors off so that helped somewhat. Flak vests/body armor SUCKED because they made you 15 degrees hotter
and didn't protect you from shit. We didn't have the ceramic plates in ours.