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Hundreds of abandoned Soviet tanks.....


RattlesnakeBob

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Don't know if anyone has ever seen this?...A absolutely breathtaking number of tanks dumped here at a disused facility somewhere in the former Soviet Union....

http://defensetech.org/2012/06/05/tanks-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see/

 

If anyone saw that TV programme the other day about the BOAR?....these photos do make you think about just how many tanks the Soviets could have rolled into Germany....

Edited by RattlesnakeBob
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holy moly ! looks like Hursts & also Harry Pounds yard used to !:-D

seeing pictures like that really does bring home to you how much the Soviets used to spend on defence / preparing for war .......

Just out of interest does anyone have any idea of how many main battle tanks the Soviets had say in around 1980???? I do recall my cousin who was in Chieftains at the time in the BOAR told me, they would have had to knock them out at something like the rate of 6 to 1 of ours to even have a hope of staying ahead????????..scary stuff.

Edited by RattlesnakeBob
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In reply to "How many tanks the soviets had" here's some stats from the IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies) "Military Balance" 1981 - 82, an annual review of forces.

 

UK: An army of 176,248 with 900 Chieftains, + 60 in reserve, 243 Saladins, 1,429 Ferrets, 2338 FV432, 600 Saracens, 200 Fox, 271 Scorpion.

 

The German army had 1,200 M48, 2,437 Leopard 1, 150 leopard 2 with 1550 on order.

 

The US Army had some 11,500 Tanks, this was before the Abrams so mostly M60s and M48s.

 

The USSR: 1,825,000 troops ((of which 1,400,000 conscripts) 45,000 tanks with a mix of IS 2 / 3, T10 T54 plus 10,000 T64 / 72 (medium tanks)

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If there are around 460+ tanks here of some 55,000 in total then this graveyard may be the tip (literally) of a large number of graveyards.

I recall about 4 or 5 years ago there was a picture in one of the Sunday papers of a tank cutting operation going on in Russia....It was all part and parcel of the arms reduction treaties at the time that said the Russkies had to get rid of so many Battle tanks and it had to be done somewhere out in the open where satelites could keep an eye on how the job was going I guess.........

..in the aerial photo there was probably at least a 1000 tanks parked up nose to tail on a flat piece of open ground...the 'zoom in' on the picture showed just one crew of only 3 or 4 fellas working away on a tank with cutting gear....I think the story said they were managing to reduce no more than 2 tanks a week and at that rate they were going to be working for at least the next 10 years to do the job.....:cheesy: and taking those figures above into account...there has to be many thousands of tanks somewhere in the former Soviet Union........

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