Photo
courtesy of Kenneth W. Estes
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Page Copyright © 2000, H.L. Spoelstra, All Rights Reserved
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Photo
courtesy of Kenneth W. Estes
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| Last February, the author identified what has to be the sole surviving USMC Marmon-Herrington light tank, now in the hands of a private collector in Southern California. The Michelson family and their American Military History Museum at So. El Monte, CA own the "Bob Hope tank," so-called because it was featured in movies and television. Altered over the years by studios as a prop, it displays the chassis of a Marmon-Herrington CTL-3 series, with a vintage Lincoln Zephyr V-12 engine, it certainly is one of the first five CTL-3 delivered to the USMC in 1937. This 60+ year old machine still runs. Sadly, it is a CTL-3 only from the fenders down, the superstructure having been removed. | ||||
| It has the unmistakable suspension of the CTL-3, modified [as the five original vehicles were in 1940] to CTL-3A standards with a trestle support, whence all 9 survivors were called CTL-3M. The Marine Corps dropped them for disposal in 1942. | ||||
| The present structure above the fenders consists of a ballistic front of a combat car or an M2A4 [itself a collector's item] light tank but everything else is just sheet metal, including the ridiculous turret added for “Briscoe County Jr.” TV episode. One set of driver's controls has been removed and the firewall is also missing internally. Someone has mounted a fierce-looking 20mm imitation in the fake hull position. This tank must have been reworked initially to be a representative of an M3 light tank for a movie, maybe later used as an Italian M11 fake in another. Craig Michelson told the author it had been also used as a Japanese tank in the MacArthur movie. | ||||
| Preserving the surviving Marmon-Herrington will require much mobilization of resources, but it demands restoration as a national historic relic. | ||||
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| Back to The ‘Marine Tank’ of 1936 | ||||
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Page Copyright © 2000, H.L. Spoelstra, All Rights Reserved |