Club Is Armed to the Teeth--All for the Sake of History

With the ring of alarm bells a 42-foot surface-to-air Nike missile rises on its platform out of a bunker beneath the rolling dunes just a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Then it stops, pointing west.

But this is an abandoned military site and the missile is disarmed and harmless. The “soldiers” surrounding it wear an odd mixture of historic uniforms and are members of the Military Vehicles Collectors Club working to restore this 1950s coastal defense base, a nationally registered historic site owned by the National Park Service.

The 500 members of the club’s rapidly growing Northern and Southern California chapters own or restore “anything that moves or rolls” from World War I to Vietnam, said Lee Hutchins, a Korean War veteran and club member from El Sobrante, Calif.

Their collections and restorations run from collapsible bicycles used by British troops in the Netherlands in 1944 to a Liberty-class merchant marine ship that carried invading American soldiers to the Normandy beaches. Some members have their own World War II tanks. None of these vehicles, however, has a working weapon. All firearms are disabled.

Throughout the year and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, club members show off their hardware in parades, at club meets, or at military air shows and open houses. Some of the members’ vehicles are used in movies and television commercials.

And every month, club members from Northern California and their families converge on the Golden Gate Recreational Area to show off their array of vintage vehicles and work on the three Nike missile launchers at Ft. Cronkhite.

Usually, this display of military history stirs fascination and nostalgia.

But occasionally, members’ activities trigger resentment, as Lee Edwards, a 34-year-old businessmen and vice president of the Northern California chapter, found out.

Eight months ago, Edwards moved to Livermore, Calif., with his wife, a 3-year-old daughter, a 14-year-old son and eight World War II vehicles, including a 16-ton 1944 Stuart tank and a four-ton 1942 Diamond T tow truck. Almost immediately he received complaints from a neighbor.

“It’s uncomfortable when he turns his turret in our general direction and puts his .30-caliber machine gun on top without (us) knowing if any of this works,” said Phil Molina, whose home is adjacent to a 15-foot garage Edwards built to store his collection. Molina, a 40-year-old accountant for the city of Dublin, Calif., and a Vietnam veteran, said the garage obstructs his view, but he also has philosophical objections to Edwards’ pastime.

“If people stopped glorifying war to their children, perhaps, as they became adults, they wouldn’t see it as a viable alternative,” Molina said. “I am sure the craftsmanship is excellent, but I just don’t appreciate the restoration of these tools of destruction.”

But even though many of the members wear uniforms when meeting or parading, and go out of their way to give an authentic military appearance, Art Noran, 42, president of the club’s 15-year-old Northern California chapter, said there are strict rules about the use of weapons.

“No one is allowed to bring guns, except the ones that are a part of the original vehicle,” he said. Even then, the weapons are replicas or are welded shut, Noran explained, because the goal of the club is the preservation of the historical vehicles, not the armaments.

Despite occasional disapproval, the club is growing rapidly. Over the last year the Northern California chapter, which was founded 15 years ago, grew by 25%, Edwards said. The Southern California chapter, based in Glendale, started in early 1984 and now has 200 members, said Francis Blake, former editor of the chapter’s newsletter. Blake’s chapter grew by 15% over the last year.

Nationally, the club increased its membership by 20% to 4,400 over the same period, said Sondra McCoy from the club’s Denver headquarters. She ascribes the club’s popularity to increasing nostalgia and patriotism.

Mike Mattos, a businessman and club member from Patterson, Calif., started collecting military vehicles only five years ago and now has 30 World War II pieces in his collection. All together, they have cost him almost $100,000. But he recently discovered a way to cover some of the expenses: the film industry.

So far this year, Mattos, a Korean War veteran, has earned about $15,000 from movies, television series and commercials. Six of his tanks, Jeeps and half-tracks, for example, are soon to appear in ABC’s “War and Remembrance,” a 30-hour sequel to “The Winds of War.” They were used to represent Allied troops at the 1942 Battle of El Alamein in North Africa. The desert scene was filmed near Barstow.

“For me it’s a paying hobby,” said Bill Barker, 73, a retired aircraft designer from Los Angeles, who owns 70 military vehicles. “And . . . it keeps me young.”

Uses the Automobiles

Barker said he keeps several smaller command cars in the garage of his home and occasionally drives them around. The others are kept on his ranch in the San Fernando Valley. He never gets complaints from his neighbors, one of whom is restoring two Jungmeisters (pre-WW II German biplanes), he said.

Eighteen of Barker’s vehicles were used in the “War and Remembrance” series.

“It’s the only way to go,” said Norman Honath, transportation manager and picture coordinator for ABC, who tapped into the club’s network to get the 60 to 80 vehicles needed for battle scenes. “Not only are World War II vehicles harder to find elsewhere, but the condition these guys keep them in is really important.”

Nelson Dionne, the club’s national vice president, said restoration and collection doesn’t have to be expensive.

“We still have members retrieving old Jeeps from behind gas stations or farms for a couple of hundred dollars,” he said. “They don’t have all the chrome and luxury gadgets, so they are easy and cheap to restore.”

Registered With DMV

The club’s military vehicles must be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles if they are used on California highways, said Bill Gengler, DMV spokesman. Those at least 25 years old can be licensed with historic plates, he said, but the department does not distinguish between military or civilian historic vehicles, so no accurate statistics on their numbers are available for California, he said.

Military equipment weighing more than 40 tons, which would include the rare and coveted Sherman tank, needs a special permit from the Department of Transportation for use on state or county roads, said Bruce Thompson, a spokesman for the department.

Edwards said the club isn’t just interested in motor vehicles.

Six enthusiasts are part of the 42-member volunteer crew aboard the Jeremiah O’Brien, a 1943 Liberty class cargo ship. The merchant marine vessel made 11 trips between England and France carrying Allied troops to the Omaha and Utah beachheads during the 1944 Normandy invasion.

Ready to Go

Now, she is docked at Pier 3 in San Francisco, “ready to go at the push of a button,” as her captain, James Nolan, puts it. Restoration of the ship, which is owned by the U.S. Maritime Commission and run by the National Liberty Ship Memorial Inc., a nonprofit organization, began in 1979 and it is now fully operational. Visitors pay $2 to see a museum in the ship’s hold and businesses pay as much as $30,000 for daylong cruises of San Francisco Bay.

Jim Causey, a 43-year-old road maintenance worker and club member from Oroville, Calif., said he and 20 other volunteers spend weekends restoring two vintage military trainer aircraft and a B-17 Flying Fortress for the Beale Air Force Base museum. With a collection of armored cars, Causey is one of several club members who save both rolling and flying military history from extinction.

“Fifty years from now young people aren’t even going to know what they looked like,” Causey said. “I like to keep things for the future.”