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The man who drove M3 last week was typical of the civilian machinists and mechanics who do the dirty work at Aberdeen. Stubby, crinkle-eyed Johnny Day was born on the Aberdeen reservation. At 34, he has never had and never wants a job other than Ordnance testing.
To find out how M3 would take shell holes, Johnny Day drove the tank (at about 15 m.p.h.) up and over two steep thank-you-ma'ams. Before he tackled the first one, Johnny Day said: "You know, it's just posslble that this tank may go pants-over-teakettle here. But there's nothing like finding out, is there?"
He horsed M3 into low gear, poured on the coal. The front end bucked straight up, hung in the air for a moment, then crashed into the test pit. The rear end rose about four feet, happily did not go over. Said Johnny Day: "God, what punishment this machine can take!" He and his tank took it again in the Aberdeen mud bath: a 100-ft. concrete trough, full of muddy water. When M3 hit the water, photographers got their best shots of the morning, Johnny Day got soaked from chin to shin.
Also on exhibition at Aberdeen was a cast-armor tank hull which may well revolutionize tank construction. M3's hull took 1,100 man-hours to fabricate. The experimental hull, cast as a single piece of armor, was completed in 100 man-hours. OPM Director General William S. Knudsen recently inspected a model of the cast-armor hull, said: "That's the way to build tanks."
*No kin to the late, famed soldier of fortune, General Lee Christmas.