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As the Vietnam conflict swelled to engulf more that 164,000 U.S. service personnel by the end of 1964, Allison's wartime capability was again tapped, this time to manufacture vehicles and ammunition at the Cleveland Army Tank Plant. The new responsibility marked Allison's first effort in the design, development and production of complete military vehicles. From 1965 to 1970, Allison operated the plant, making not only the M551, the U.S. Army's principal vehicle in Vietnam, and the M109, but huge quantities of 81MM shells.
As Allison Transmission operations approached what would be its most trying corporate challenges, its men and women looked back on their enterprise's first quarter century.
The achievements are a worthy roster of innovation and quality, including these benchmarks: first powershift marine gear, powershift for highway trucks, the crossdrive for tracked vehicles, hydraulic retarders incorporated into the transmission, fully automatic transmission for trucks, twin-turbine transmission for material handling equipment, variable-input power torque converter for material handling equipment, and a durability test stand able to duplicate field operating conditions.
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