Northwest Area High School student Alan Lane gets the driver’s seat of a restored 1942 U.S. Army Jeep owned by Bill Hartzell, a World War II re-enactor and member of the board of the Stuart Tank Museum in Berwick. Hartzell and museum curator Tom McLaughlin gave a presentation Tuesday at the school about the production of Stuart Tanks manufactured the American Car and Foundry Company in Berwick.
Mark Guydish | Times Leader
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Stuart Tank Museum board member Bill Hartzell sports authentic WWII GI garb with tech sargeant stripes while museum curator Tom McLaughlin talks to students at Northwest Area High School about the many lightweight (by today’s standards) Stuart tanks manufactured in Berwick during World War II. Artifacts from the museum on the table include a civil defense helmet, a tank crewman helmet, a periscope used when tanks were sealed for battle, and a 37mm shell fired by the Stuart’s main gun.
Mark Guydish | Times Leader
Stuart Tank Museum curator Tom McLaughlin brought a picture of the last Stuart tank manufactured in Berwick, along with an enlarged letter about the tank, as part of a talk Tuesday to students from Bryan Glahn’s history class at Northwest Area High School.
Mark Guydish | Times Leader
UNION TWP. — It was rarely the biggest tank in the battle, but it was homegrown, and Stuart Tank Museum curator Tom McLaughlin freely admitted he could “talk until Thursday” during a presentation at Northwest Area High School.
It would have been a long talk; he started around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.
With an seven-cylinder circular “airplane engine,” the little tank made by the thousands in Berwick for World War II could go 35 miles an hour. When first introduced, its 37 mm main gun was up to the task in dueling with the earlier tanks of Nazi Germany. Alas, McLaughlin conceded, German tanks kept getting more powerful and more heavily armored, prompting the development of the American Sherman tank.
Stuarts still had a place though, thanks to the speed. “They became scout tanks,” McLaughlin explained to the ninth and tenth grade students, hunting for Germans, maybe taking a shot, then getting away while letting allies know where the enemy was.
“They called it ‘shoot and scoot.’”
The Stuarts also became a mainstay for other nations, in part because of the light shipping weight, which also made them nimble in unfavorable terrain like African deserts or Pacific Theater marshes.“Paraguay has five Stuarts in active service,” McLaughlin said.
Even after the tanks became too antiquated to see battle, they found other uses. “They sold 360 to Brazil,” McLaughlin said. After their battle usefulness ended, “they were sold to plantation owners and used as tractors.”
Which is how the museum managed to get its hands on “Lady Lois,” a tank sold to Great Britain, sold and used elsewhere, ending up in Brazil until a gentleman in England bought 16 of the vintage armored vehicles along with a lot of spare parts and brought them back to his home country. The museum managed to procure one of those and bring it not only across the pond, but straight to its spawning site in Berwick.
Lady Lois is still under renovations, but the museum does have an older Stuart model on display, loaned from the Marines. When the museum opened in April 2022, McLaughlin expected a few people a day average. “We’ve had more than 2,000 in one year.”
Rules of the loan say the Marine tank must remain in the museum, so there was no tank at the school for the youngsters of history teacher Bryan Glahn’s history classes to see in person. But museum board member Bill Hartzell did park a restored 1942 U.S. Army Jeep out front for the students to marvel it. A WWII reenactor who wore authentic GI fatigues with tech-Sargeant patches, Hartzell stood and answered questions as students took pics or sat inside for selfies.
“It’s pretty cool,” Alan Lane, ninth grade, said after being the first behind the steering wheel.
“I love World War II history,” Russel Cramer, grade 10, said after sitting “shotgun” with Lane.
Then he started asking Hartzell more questions.
Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish
