All we got were rectangular mirrors in the 80s. I guess it was an upgrade in the military over the small round ones. Most of the ones I remembered getting were in Chrysler marked boxes. The problem with these was that there was only a rubber outer that held the mirror glass onto the metal back. The glass would fall out if the jeep was run through light bush, or even hitting a decent pothole. We used to glue the glass to the metal with contact cement. I am pretty sure we helped Chrysler on to it's first bankruptcy, because without the glue we would have gone through a lot more mirrors.
There was a mod towards the latter life of the jeeps (both the M38A1s and the M151A2s) to relocate the mirrors to the front fenders, with a second mirror arm added for stability. We would add a third arm to this to make it more stable, especially on the M151A2s, otherwise the mirror shook so bad on idle you couldn't see out of it. As well, both fleets of vehicle's fenders were prone to cracking with only the pair of arms. Most collectors relocate them back to the windshield hinges where they were originally. We can get away with this because most collectors do not drive theirs daily with the tarp and doors, which led to the visibility problem.
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