willysmjeeps.com

All,

I am currently looking to assign bumper numbers to my M38A1 (dod 3/55). Since my uncle is classified as MIA in Vietnam, I would like to represent his unit on the vehicle.

His unit was:

B Troop, 1st Squad, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division

Could anyone give me assistance on how this would be represented?

Thanks.

Markings are grouped from left to right in the following order;

1. The Major Command it is assigned to
2. The Intermediate Command it is assigned to
3. The Unit or Activity it is assigned to
4. The vehicle number for convoy purposes, aka: Order of March

So it would more than likely looked something along the lines of;
1CAV 1/9 (star) B-(# order of march)

Beast,

Since 9th Cav is higher up the food chain than 1st Squad I would think it should read: 1CAV 9/1 (star) B-(# order of march)

1st Cav Div, 9th Cav Regiment, 1 Squad, B Troop, #___.

But I see in the examples that the units are not listed by size from left to right. They have major units left, then digress to the lower level Squad use a / and then back up to the higher level regiment then to troop and vehicle number.

At any rate the article Ken points out below is good but for the Vietnam era you want to use TB 746-93-1 dated 1964.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rficcwzlh9ek5 ... OCT+64.pdf

http://olive-drab.com/od_mvg_markings.php
this may help

Tom located a period photo of the bumper markings of an M37 taken by his uncle's buddy. Note that even there they did not follow the rule book to the T. another CAV should have followed the 9.

wesk wrote:Beast,

Since 9th Cav is higher up the food chain than 1st Squad I would think it should read: 1CAV 9/1 (star) B-(# order of march)

1st Cav Div, 9th Cav Regiment, 1 Squad, B Troop, #___.

But I see in the examples that the units are not listed by size from left to right. They have major units left, then digress to the lower level Squad use a / and then back up to the higher level regiment then to troop and vehicle number.

At any rate the article Ken points out below is good but for the Vietnam era you want to use TB 746-93-1 dated 1964.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rficcwzlh9ek5 ... OCT+64.pdf

Sorry, I cheated because I knew what he was asking and did not explain it well as to where the markings came from. From years of doing these markings I knew from references what he was wanting. In the markings I showed, 1CAV 1/9, the 1/9 was not 1st squad of the 9th cavalry, but represents the 1st Battalion of the 9th Cavalry Regiment. The 1st squad or any other squad is really irrelevant in the markings and not applied. So the markings do flow from left to right in order of command.