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shadow_wolf

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    buried and abandoned tanks

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted

    I love hearing things like this, would love to visit some of these site and rummage around. but there is not a lot in my area of Essex/Suffolk

     

    Hi ya.

     

    I was brought up in Essex, and have heard a few stories from veterans about what is in the area.

     

    One story, that appears to be true, is of the Bren Gun Carriers loaded with ammo that were buried in the grounds of Hylands House in Chelmsford. The story goes that the SAS had 'acquired' more ammunition than they were issued with, so when they left Hylands, they buried three Bren Gun Carriers stacked with the 'acquired' ammo somewhere in the grounds of the stately home. I was told where they might be buried, and after a bit of asking about it seems that Essex County Council know the exact location of these vehicles.

     

    More tales of buried vehicles in Essex if you are interested....

    buried and abandoned tanks

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted

    I too have heard stories from friends who were tasked with similar jobs at the end of the war. My family knew an old soldier who used to pop round and help with the garden. As a kid I used to hound him for stories about his time during the war. I was always asking him where could I find a Tiger tank, to which he would answer look in the dunes in North Africa if you want to find a German tank.

    Anyway, he told me that after the war he was he stationed in Essex, one of the duties he performed was to help bury a tank on Galleywood Common in Essex. Story goes that the vehicle had had engine troubles, the engine was removed, war ends, tank gets forgotten about, and then buried a few years latter without its engine.

    This would sound like a wild goose chase if it were not for the fact that other local residents remember the tank being there. Still have not tracked down where exactly the vehicle is, and still have not been able to find any hard proof of its being there, yet I have heard there was a photo taken of it which was printed in a local newspaper.

    I also know of an WW2 American jeep in a pond on private land in the same area, but thats another story...

     

    Just found this on the web, proof that tanks were at Galleywood common:-

     

    "FIVE British Army tanks staged a morale-boosting demonstration on Galleywood Common watched by thousands of spectators during the Second World War.Four Valentines and one Matilda of the Royal Tank Corps, led by Lieutenant Peter Gunter, rumbled into Chelmsford to encourage townspeople to raise money to buy more metal monsters.

    The patriotic Essex Chronicle carried banner headlines proclaiming "Matilda Waltzes In – Crowds Cheer Tanks – Mayor in Turret".

    The object of the exercise was to make locals "tank-minded" and show how essential War Savings and Salvage campaigns were to the war effort."

     

    http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/Demonstration-tanks-aid-war-effort/story-13288269-detail/story.html#axzz2RKDYyrMc

    buried and abandoned tanks

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted

    Taken from The Shadock's Surviving Panzer Website:-

     

    "Kingtiger turret parts found in 2001 near Mantes-la-Jolie (France) This tank from the 101 SS.s.Abteilung was lost in a crater on 26 August 1944. It was blown up by a scrap dealer after the war and

    the small metal bits were buried when the D913 road was constructed. Bruno Renoult, a local historian, discovered and recovered

    parts of the turret, including the roof and parts of the turret’s left side.The hull of the tank still remain (in bits) under the road. There is a

    project to recover all the bits still remaining under the road, to reconstruct the tank and to build a monument where the tank will be

    displayed, but it encounters technical and administrative difficulties."

     

    http://the.shadock.free.fr/Surviving_Tigers.pdf

    buried and abandoned tanks

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted

    On a win tonight, also found pictures of buried tanks http://www.forum-auto.com/automobiles-mythiques-exception/section5/sujet380655-35.htm'>http://www.forum-auto.com/automobiles-mythiques-exception/section5/sujet380655-35.htm'>http://www.forum-auto.com/automobiles-mythiques-exception/section5/sujet380655-35.htm

     

    Cheers for that link.

     

    After further reading of the thread on that forum it appears that there is a Tiger II still buried under a road in France, its turret is above ground and appears in a couple of photos. From what I can see it is too expensive to recover the Tiger II, and no one is willing to pay for the job.

    There is also mention of a Panzer III:-

     

    "Now if you really want a German tank it must still remain a PzIII in Lyon, it is at the bottom of the Saône under a bridge I think ... And no more than 4m deep. The only worry is the authorization of the City: Never given despite several projects very well tied."

     

    And mention of a Tiger I:-

     

    ""Tiger I in France, perhaps one along the Seine north Paris, but in very bad condition it seems."

     

    And mention of another Tiger II:-

     

    "A Tiger 2 was found in a monastery in Normandy in the early 80s, but negotiations with the responsible would hooded, the latter requiring an astronomical price."

     

    Does anyone have any more info on these?

     

    All the quoted sections are what Google Translate has translated from the http://www.forum-auto.com/ website

    Howitzer Display

    in Artillery & Anti-Tank Weapons

    Posted

    i was lucky really, A contact I have found 14 of them in Belguim, then some were brought at military fairs over time. I'll let you into a little secret, not all of them are real, i had some made out of fibreglass, I bet you cant tell which ones :)

     

    The ones marked 'Gas' do not seem to be as heavy as the others. The other shells look like they are weighing down the pallets that they are standing on, where as the Gas shells don't seem to be pushing the pallet in to the ground.

     

    Am I correct?

    Tank "Tiger I" replica of Russia.

    in German Vehicles

    Posted

    That's not it, the entire film in Russian language is on YouTube and the Tiger replica is quite poor, not the on shown in this thread. However they do have a Matilda II and a BT3.

     

    From what I can find on the web, it is the same film. Yes I agree the Tiger replica is quite poor in this, it looks like a converted T55 or similar. If you check the official link out and compare it to the cast on the IMDB page that I posted, they are the same :-(

     

    Official page:- http://whitetiger-en.mosfilm.ru/about-film

     

    IMDB:- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2318405/

     

    perhaps they decided to use another replica Tiger for the film......

     

    I'll pm Anatoliy Step and ask him what happened.

    Spares box ID please

    in I may be stupid, but......

    Posted

    I spent my late teens and early twenties cutting the stuff up in our family business, anything from tanks down to bren gun carriers, if my memory serves me well we got about £7 per tonne, but then wages were about £10 per week. Every day was a pleasure to go to work, you never knew what was coming in, some trucks would come in with anything from a Jeep to motorcycles or even hand tools, everything did not go for scrap, lots of parts were sold to third parties who had a use for them. We would send drive axles down to north Devon, the farmers put the axles under their trailers and fed a propshaft from the PTO to the axle, giving than trailer drive up the steep hills of North Devon. Searchlight trailers, minus the serchlight , they went to an agricultural machinery manufacturer in Lincolnshire to be converted into farm trailers and the list goes on.......... great days, great times for a young man ( My friend also worked with me, making the days work a lot of fun for us.)

     

    Wow, goes to show that if we could go back with what we now Know, we'd be richer people. Mind you alot of it also comes down to where to store stuff, such as my old Morris Minor Traveller that I scraped, and my MK1 Mini that met the same fate, if only I had the space to keep it all.

    buried and abandoned tanks

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted · Edited by shadow_wolf
    adding photos

    The current status of these tanks (& others like the Crusaders & 15cm sFH 13/1(Sf) auf Gw Lorraine Schlepper(f) are unknown.

    It's also unknown to me, why the hell this is all underlined!

     

    Ive seen pictures of the Lorraine Schlepper, it needs saving :)

    Sd. Kfz 135-1.jpg

    IMG_0020.jpg

    Lorraine_Irak.jpg

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