Interesting. I wonder if it could be restored? And how many others are out there, still buried?
Now you see right there is camouflage (it protects from observation) and cover (it protects from fire).
I thought it would be a Sherman, but this is a less-common M5. It would be quite a bit rarer. Europe is covered with this stuff. (Or more accurately, Europe covers this stuff.) After war, priority was on getting things back to normal as quickly and cheaply as possible. Lots of artifacts of war were just tossed aside. Even dud bombs were just covered up.
(It is worth note that WWI munitions are still uncovered in France by the ton.)
The M5 was a variant on the M3, the Stuart tank.
And… in DC comics, it was The Haunted Tank.
A TPB collection of which I have 12 inches from my left elbow as I type this.
I hope they don’t open it and let the zombies out.
Technically, who owns such recovered vehicles?
The zombies.
Who would you get to Repo them, Indiana Jones?
Back when I wore green (well, mottled camo) in Denmark, the tankers from our regiment had a “friendship regiment” in (then) West Germany - they’d go there to train quite often, and a bunch of traditions had sprung up, as tends to happen when soldiers congregate - one of them being a gift exchange at the end of the deployment.
One year, a WWII relic had been uncovered at a nearby Danish Air Force base: During the occupation of Denmark, the German commander of the base had apparently improvised a pillbox for close defense by mounting the turret from a Panzer Mark1 on a concrete fortification. After liberation, the gun had been removed and the pillbox had been forgotten for 40some years.
The turret was moved to our tank repair facility and brought back to near-mint condition over a few weeks, crowned by a gleaming layer of Wehrmacht Field Gray paint. And then gift-wrapped.
At the end of the next deployment in Germany, the Danish CO made the traditional speech expressing gratitude for hospitality and cameraderie, ending in him hinting that this year’s gift was more of a return of lost property, really. And stepping aside with a wicked grin.
It appears that there’s no standard procedure for accepting a WWII tank turret in the West German Army regulations. The German CO went through an array of facial colors and expressions, until he managed to sputter something about yesterday’s enemies being today’s allies and thanking for a most unexpected present. Much beer was consumed and presents henceforth had to be cleared on the regimental level.
(The turret incidentally turned out to be rather rare variant and is now displayed in a German armor museum.)
There is a Churchill AVRE on display at Graye-sur-Mer which was dug out of a hole in the road in the 1970s
Chuchill AVRE
