Army Tank Testing: "This is Aberdeen" 1954 US Army; The Big Picture TV-249

more at http://quickfound.net/

'This is an on-the-spot report from the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, as to the activities going on -- activities to prove our military equipment the finest in any Army. Lieutenant John Mortimer interviews key personnel at Aberdeen, bringing out the importance of the individual's job in "testing for the best."'

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen_Proving_Ground

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving Grounds) is a United States Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Maryland (in Harford County)...

History

APG is the U.S. Army's oldest active proving ground, established on October 20, 1917, six months after the U.S. entered World War I. Its location allowed design and testing of ordnance materiel to take place near contemporary industrial and shipping centers. The proving ground was created as a successor to the Sandy Hook Proving Ground, which was too small for some of the larger weapons being tested. At the peak of World War II, APG had billeting space for 2,348 officers and 24,189 enlisted personnel.

Edgewood Arsenal

Although civilian contractors produced the major portion of conventional munitions for World War I, the United States government built federally owned plants on Aberdeen Proving Ground for the manufacture of toxic gas. These poison gas manufacturing facilities came to be known as Edgewood Arsenal. Edgewood Arsenal included plants to manufacture mustard gas, chloropicrin and phosgene, and separate facilities to fill artillery shells with these chemicals. Production began in 1918, reached 2,756 tons per month, and totaled 10,817 tons of toxic gas manufactured at Edgewood Arsenal before the November 1918 armistice. Some of this gas was shipped overseas for use in French and British artillery shells.

The Edgewood area of Aberdeen Proving Ground is approximately 13,000 acres (5,300 ha). The Edgewood area was used for the development and testing of chemical agent munitions. From 1917 to the present, the Edgewood area conducted chemical research programs, manufactured chemical agents, and tested, stored, and disposed of toxic materials...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchville_Test_Area

The Churchville Test Area is a United States Army facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground, located northeast of Bel Air, Maryland (in Harford County, Maryland, U.S.).

The Churchville Test Area (39.596°N 76.253°WCoordinates: 39.596°N 76.253°W) is a hilly set of cross-country road test tracks providing a variety of steep natural grades and tight turns designed to stress engines, drivetrains and suspension systems for Army vehicles, such as the M1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley fighting vehicle and the Humvee.

The Test Area consists of 11 miles (18 km) of interconnected roads and test courses located on 250 acres (1.0 km2), with both 3-and-4-mile (4.8 and 6.4 km) closed loop courses, mud, dust and gravel surfaces, and grades ranging from 7% to 29%.

On March 21, 2007, the Army celebrated the designation of a 163.5-acre (0.662 km2) buffer-zone alongside the Churchville Test Area, in conjunction with the Harford County Government, the Harford Land Trust, and the Hopkins family. Part of the US Army's Compatible Use Buffer program, under the Pentagon's environmental protection initiative, this land-use purchase was $1.4M (US)...