by Nick Drew | Tue 20 Nov 2018
Old Military Cat preserved as historical monument
The Cat D7 was always a popular choice for military applications, with many special versions being manufactured, including armoured machines which saw action in World War 2 and many other theatres after, including the Vietnam conflict.
Some years ago, regular Digger Man Blog reader and contributor Timo Akerlund, from Finland was on holiday in Vietnam where he came across this fine example of a Caterpillar D7E at the HCMC war remnants museum.
According to the information at the museum, these machines were used in large scale ground clearance projects, razing forests, orchards, rice fields, cemeteries and transforming large areas into “no man’s land”. By the end of July 1969, the US Army had around 1417 bulldozers deployed in Vietnam.
Old machine’s like this are a credit to the Caterpillar products durability and the fact that so many of them and older models are still putting in a good day’s work around the world are testament to that.
This particular machine is not in full working order but I am sure it would not take much effort to get it back up and running again.
Check out this video footage of a similar vintage example preserved in Florida.