It's right next to a divided highway...
...I believe it (or a similar turret) used to sit South of Kokomo, only that owner wasn't as careful of muzzle direction: that installation was aimed right at passing cars! A form of criticism?Also up that way, what appears to be a very nice little range -- and probably in no way public, given that it is right outside a correctional facility (note fence and one of several buildings at right).
Still, it catches my eye every time I drive past. Three-story backstop!(All pictures in this post shot from a moving car by just holding the camera up and shooting without looking. I manage to get about 75% of what I'm after as long as I plan for the shot well ahead of time. The main trick is to not worry about composition or even capturing the image at all -- hold it up and snap, you get what you get.)
...Suddenly, I want a cast-concrete copy of a Gatling gun or perhaps a little mountain gun for the front yard. Or maybe a copy of one of those little French tanks. We'll grow ivy on it. What?
"Three-story backstop!"
ReplyDeleteWell since it is for government employees perhaps it should be higher still, and covered too, with armor plate.
Range was used by security police, when Grissom AFB was a SAC Base.
ReplyDeleteThat range predates the prison by many years. It's on the grounds of what used to be Grissom Air Force Base, so of course it needs a high back drop. It's airmen that were shooting there!
ReplyDeleteIf you look just a little north and west of that prison on the map, you can see 8 flying gas stations on the tarmac at Grissom.
Hell of a Nice Air Museum Too... That range sits where the Hustlers were at the ready during the cuban Missle Crisis... I had the same Dream as the Kid in the Movie "Matinee"
ReplyDeleteIt looks as if it is still kept up. So I would suppose the NG or some entity at Grissom still uses it.
ReplyDelete3"-50cal twin mount, spent some of my formative years on the open version-now I say "Hunh?" a lot. 73 R
ReplyDeleteConvert that to 12 gauge, put a trap thrower in front and it would be a blast.
ReplyDeleteI've driven by those guns many a time, man and boy. (Dad was from Peru. Got a lot of family up that way.)
ReplyDeleteSure would be nice if that were a public range, wouldn't it?
Oh, and FWIW, Kokomo still has its little Sherman tank sitting in the park just north of Wildcat Creek on Washington Street. With the muzzle depressed and pointing right at the street.
ReplyDeleteI remember the set of guns south of Kokomo, too, and I also remember that there was (maybe still is; haven't looked for awhile) an old junkyard on the north side of Kokomo, right at what we used to call "the point", where North Washington Street angles away from the US 31 bypass. In that junkyard were a bunch of wrecked Army vehicles and the fuselage of what appeared to be an F-4 or some other fighter jet of that vintage. That was too cool for school when I was a kid riding in the car passing by.
He is a tank collector.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.doubledstatuary.com/misscellaneous/m01.htm has a concrete "Civil War cannon" for $676. They also list a small cannon in their 2012 supplemental, but do not list the price.
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