By Michael Scudder
How the project found me.
It all started innocently enough, the reading of an article on the Ontos in a military vehicle magazine. The article reminded me of the Ontos (I don't know the plural of Ontos) I saw while serving in the US Marine Corps. I thought it was great that the Marine Corps would buy a little hot rod tank (OK anti tank). The vehicle was fast and had more fire power than the main battle tank. I had always appreciated the assistance that the Ontos crews gave us with firepower from the six 106-mm rifles. The crews also carried water, ammo and mail for us, so they were always a welcome sight. My reading of the Ontos article coincided with seeing an Ontos chassis for sale. I began to wonder how difficult it would be to build the straight-sided hull and make an Ontos look-a-like. It was in this time period that I was preparing for retirement and was looking for an impossible task to keep me busy.
I then had a conversation with Bill Watson of Greensboro, NC about buying one of his restored M274 mules. In a "by the way" conversation, I asked him how hard he thought it would be to build a hull for an Ontos. Bill then laid the bombshell on me. He said that he owned an Ontos chassis that was running and it was stored in a chicken house on his father's old farm and yes he may want to sell it. He said that he had swapped a mule for it. It had been converted into a test-boring machine.
It was more than 6 months later that my wife and I traveled from Houston, Texas to Greensboro, NC to pick up the mule. I was really more focused on seeing the Ontos than anything else. Bill gave us directions to the unoccupied chicken house. The Ontos had a well-made plate steel body that overlaid what remained of the armored chassis. I was determined to make a try at building an upper hull for it. Bill also gave me the name of White Owl Parts of Kinston, NC. Bill said that he had seen some Ontos armor in their yards several years ago.
A call to White Owl Parts and a conversation with Jerry Hill revealed that: 1.Yes, he had several Ontos chassis that lay in an overgrown area of his yard, 2. No, he could not photograph them because it would take too much tree cutting to even find them again, and 3. If you want to see them you should travel to White Owl. What he didn't say was that he believed that I was another "looker" that most likely had little intention of buying anything.
A return call to Bill Watson lead to a telephone meeting with Dave MacGillivary of Jacksonville, NC. Dave was a retired Marine Gunny Sergeant and maintained an extensive collection of military vehicles that he sometimes rented to movie companies. Dave had long term business connections with White Owl Parts and traveled to White Owl often. Maybe he would photograph the Ontos for me. Several conversations with Dave and in a few weeks I had a photo of the only Ontos that wasn't buried in the NC jungle. That clinched it. I had to have this project.
I got a couple of free airline "buddy passes" and flew to White Owl Parts and met Dave MacGillivary. I had bought a machete in a nearby hardware and Dave had some brush cutters. Both the temperature and humidity were in the 90's. A perfect day for two retired guys to clear jungle vegetation from seven rusted Ontos.
It took more than 4 hours to clear enough brush to photograph just the rear of the machines. Three of the machines had some of the front armor still intact and there were bits and pieces of armor scattered around. It wasn't much, but there was more Ontos buried in the yard than I had hoped.
The Purchase and Movement of my finds to Texas
White Owl was in the process of clearing the overgrown areas of their yard and the Ontos would be sold as a lot to facilitate the clearing. I made a deal to take all Ontos and Ontos parts for one price. The lot amounted to seven Ontos chassis and scattered parts. The State of NC had made several of the machines into fire fighting buggies. These buggies had probably run when sold approximately 12 years prior to my arrival. I made a separate agreement with Bill Watson on his Ontos.
I then returned home to decide on how many machines I could ship home. I located a 18-wheeler driver that had experience in driving his rig into pastures in order to haul hay. I needed this trucker to get the rig close enough to Bill's chicken coop to get the Ontos loaded. I also relied on Bill to arrange for a mobile crane to lift the Ontos onto the trailer.
In August 1999, while still fighting the after effects of walking pneumonia, I climbed into the cab of Freddy's 18-wheeler. Freddie was a retired rodeo clown and had as many stories as I had old jokes. After dropping a load of scaffolding in Georgia, we headed for White Owl Parts.
The loading of the best three Ontos at White Owl was an ordeal for everyone concerned. The weather had gotten even hotter than on my first trip. One of the Ontos was in a muddy section of the yard and their wrecker had a bad clutch. Everyone was nearing heat exhaustion when one of White Owl's trusty 5-ton trucks utilized its front winch and pulled the machine out without any strain. The folks at White Owl were great people to know and they made me feel at home.
The next day found us nearing Bill Watson's family farm. We had guessed that the Ontos chassis weighed about 6,000 pounds and so ordered a mobile crane of that capacity. The Ontos lifted off the ground about 3' and stalled. The crane operator guessed he had lifted closer to 11,000 pounds. Another, larger, crane was delivered and the forth chassis was chained to the trailer.
Upon arriving home, I hired another crane to off load the four chassis. The trip had taken six days to deliver about 42,000 pounds of rusted junk; none of which looked like an Ontos. How could a college-educated man do this?
Home on the range
The Ontos chassis were off loaded from the trailer in one of my pastures. I have about 25 acres of cow pasture adjacent to our house and shop. The machine purchased from Bill Watson was to be the basis of the first of two rebuilds. I pulled this chassis by using my 40 HP tractor to a spot close to the shop until I could get it running enough to drive around a small lake and into my shop. The tractor could pull the Ontos as long as no steering was attempted. As soon as a steering lever was pulled, the extra drag stalled the tractor. Steering was accomplished by pulling a corner of the Ontos with the tractor until it was aimed in the desired direction. An electric fuel pump was exchanged and a little dirt was removed from the carb and the Ontos fired up. The 200-yard drive into the shop was exciting for me. I had already skinned up a small oak tree prior to the attempt at negotiating the door into the shop.
Inventory of what I bought and what was missing
I had purchased and delivered to my home two fairly complete Ontos chassis. One had been made into a fire buggy and one had been made into a drilling machine. The fire buggy had not run in about 12 years and the engine had been exposed to the NC weather and swamp-like conditions.
I had two parts chassis. Neither of the parts machines had tracks, but both had the sloped armored front and about 1/3 of the plates that made up the sides to the top hull. One hull was missing both engine and transmission. The parts machines had been used for spare parts to keep the fire fighting buggies running and so some of the military related equipment was left intact.
What was missing was the rear 2/3 of the hull, the gun mount / turret, guns, rear doors and the armored engine covers.
One of the biggest challenges on this project was the removal of parts from the parts machines. These machines had sat exposed in the weather and vegetation of NC for about 12 years and water had collected in the interior like a kid's swimming pool. There were times when I felt like an anthropologist. One of the machines had a tree with a base or about 1-½ inches growing in the gunner's seat area. Its roots wove all through the ammunition storage area under the gunner's seat.
Rebuilding
I utilized the Internet to contact about 19 former Ontos crewmen. These contacts proved to be the best tool and most rewarding part of my project. Through them, I was able to document much of the Ontos's contributions in Vietnam. It surprised me how little had been written on the history of the machine. The guys were a constant source of encouragement and they assisted me through their submission of photos. I was able to document commonly carried equipment, markings and operating procedures. Two of the men had been Ontos mechanics, and their help had saved the day on several occasions. I would strongly encourage anyone working on an uncommon machine to use whatever contacts can be made to former crewmen or mechanics.
I removed about 1,000 pounds of non-military steel body from the chassis. Three 8" dia. holes had been cut in the floor and the remains of several I beams were still in evidence as part of the floor.
The small interior had to be sandblasted, cleaned and painted prior to building the top hull. I could not imagine painting and welding within the confines of a hull smaller than the interior of a subcompact car.
I removed what remained of the top hull from a parts machine. I had been successful at removing a majority of the bolts that held the hull to the chassis and the fenders to the hull. After sandblasting and painting, the hull was hosted onto the chassis. My chassis was starting to look like something military.
I had donated the four machines left behind to Dave MacGivarllary who is determined to build an Ontos for movie rentals. He wanted to secure the six 106 mm rifles for his machine and I joined him to buy six more for the first of my Ontos. Dave found the best price on a 12-rifle sale from New Bedford, Indiana. They had been demilled by cutting 2" out of the center of the tubes and having torch cuts in the chambers and breaches. Dave drove into Houston pulling a trailer of what looked like old oil field drill pipe. As demilled 106-mm recoilless rifles go, these were not too bad to reweld. The purchase included two 50 caliber spotting rifles for each six gun order. I found one of the spotting rifle barrels had the factory paper still in its bore. The guns were joined by splicing the barrel sections together with 4" outside dia. pipe about 2' long and shimmed in order to attain a straight appearance. The missing 2" was filled in with standard fiberglass body filler. A plug was welded into the chamber in order to conform to the rule of not having a weapon that can chamber a round. The steel of the rifle was fairly soft was easy to weld and grind.
Neither of the good chassis had their ammunition lockers. The ammunition was stored in 8 steel tubes that had internal inserts to hold the rounds from moving. The 8 tubes lay on the floor of the rear section of the Ontos. Access into the tubes is gained by opening an armored door that faces rearward. The ends of the tubes are isolated from the chassis by rubber rings. A 12-gage floor is laid on top of the tubes. This floor is the area that the gunner and loader occupy. I used an ax to remove the old 12-gage floor from a parts machine. The tubes laid in a 2" water/rust mixture that smelled a lot like a NC swamp.
The ammo tubes were cleaned, painted and laid on the floor of the reworked chassis and a new 12-gage floor was fabricated and installed.
The rear 2/3 of the hull was first built from ½" plywood that would act as patterns for the ½" steel plates. The hull construction was straightforward with few troubles.
The rear doors were also constructed from ½" steel plate. I cut the plate to the shape of both rear doors without the separating cut. I cut a grove in the plate where I wanted the bend to go. I then laid the plate on two timbers and used the blade of my friend's bulldozer to make the bend. I continued to drop the bulldozer's blade until the bend in the plate conformed to a wire pattern I made from the hull.
I made the four hinges from 11/4" plate and mounted them on the plate that was to become the two rear doors. After the plate and hinges were welded to the hull, I made the cut that separated the plate into two doors. After the cut was completed, I had two rear doors that aligned.
The original 12 gage fenders were strapped to a steel beam and pounded into shape with progressively smaller hammers, starting with a sledgehammer and ending with a bumping hammer.
At this writing, I am negotiating on the purchase of turrets/gun mounts. I hope the project will speed up at the purchase of the turrets. I will post any significant progress on the Ontos to this site.
Semper Fi,
Mike Scudder
