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buried and abandoned tanks


eddy8men

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  • 1 month later...

 

That's a fascinating link!!..translating that website using Google and reading through .....it seems the vehicle is possibly / probably a Chenillette Lorraine 37L??? a sort of tracked prime mover / carrier in service with the French up til 1940 and then used also by the Germans afterwards.....pretty rare I would have thought?....I'd have said it'd be well worth heading into the woods with an excavator and digging her out..wonder if someone did???

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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

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Found some more about that Tiger II:-

 

"the Tigers turret is in a back yard of Saumur Tank museum, I've seen a picture of it. The hull is still beneath a main road and they have tried to get it out but can't because of disruption to the traffic etc."

 

Quote taken from:- http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/user-introductions/28117-king-tiger-tank-france.html

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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

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've just been reading 'Wild Roads - The story of transcontinental motoring'. One of the stories concerned an attempt in 1955 to drive from England to the far east (not counting the English Channel and the Bosphorus!); the route taking in the Stilwell Road:

 

Peering into the darkness, the travellers could see that the country was becoming flatter around them. After sixty-seven miles, covered in twelve hours, they reached the Kachin village of Shingbwiyang, where they stopped for the night in the inspection bungalow used by officials. The expedition were delighted with their progress so far. The last moonson had been light, and there had been no landslides. Their axes and shovels had barely been used. Here they learned that two or three trucks came up every year from Myitkyina, which was promising. All around now were the wrecks of trucks, tanks, bulldozers and other expensive equipment abandoned during the war...

 

Sorry folks, Burma again! Is it too much to expect that things will still be there?

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I've just been reading 'Wild Roads - The story of transcontinental motoring'. One of the stories concerned an attempt in 1955 to drive from England to the far east (not counting the English Channel and the Bosphorus!); the route taking in the Stilwell Road:

 

 

Sorry folks, Burma again! Is it too much to expect that things will still be there?

 

Very doubtful, with the price of scrap and China's voracious appetite for it, same as the planes littering the Indonesian & Phillipines upto the 1960s/70s.

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As some of you may know, most of the armored vehicles were removed from the Patton Museum at Fort Knox three years ago and sent to Fort Benning, Georgia. We are in the midst of creating a new museum called the Patton Museum of Leadership. In an effort to find some historical artifacts for the museum, the volunteers have been searching the post in hopes of finding something suitable. I do a web site for the Patton Museum volunteers, Armor for the Ages, which has two new sections, GHOSTS OF FORT KNOX Part I and Part II with photos and text of our searches. Although much of the stuff is shot to pieces, we have found some interesting things.

 

The first link takes you to the home page where you can go to the Patton Museum volunteers section or visit the Fort Benning section.

http://www.armorfortheages.com/

 

This link will take you directly to the Patton Museum volunteers section.

http://armorfortheages.com/GGPM/GGPMmain.htm

 

Garry Redmon

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  • 2 weeks later...
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

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