Interior M60 Cupola. Plan and reflected plan.
Interior M60 Cupola. Sections.
Interior M60 Cupola. Lofting diagram. The propmakers needed these sections to build the cupola since it was too small and thin-walled to effectively carve in foam. I had to do this using only my brain and some drafting instruments. So there!
Interior/Exterior M1 Cupola. Plan and sections. After a month of drawing all the bits and pieces of the M60. The script changed and the unit depicted in the story used M1s. Also, we were going to shoot the top deck of the turret on stage.
Exterior M1. Shell plans. This was fitted over a Centurion tank. They were cheap and had a hull about the same size as an M1.
M1 Exterior Shell Elevations. The main difference between a real M1 and our M1 was that the turret had to sit a bit higher than the original or the gun would sit in the wrong position.
Exterior M1. Production still. you can see the exposed Centurion turret in this shot just under the main gun.
Exterior M1. Production still.
Courage Under Fire was a Rashomon Gate story set during the first Iraq war, so it had bunches of tanks. Unfortunately, the story was critical of the U.S. armed forces, so that organization was not going to cooperate with us. This meant that we had to build our own tanks. As it was, we knew we had to build an interior since you can’t easily cut a camera port through six inches of armor plate, but now we had to build exteriors too. We built the exteriors as sheet metal shells welded to surplus Centurion tanks shipped from the UK, which had no trouble with movies critical of the U.S. armed forces. Add to this, we switched from using M60 tanks to M1 tanks when everything was half drawn. So, between my friends and I, we have complete drawings for both an M60 and an M1. I did the M1 exterior drawings and both the M1 and M60 interior drawings of the cupolas (micro turrets on top of the big turret). I also got to drive tanks. Best. Ride. EVER.
