It’s an old video, though I hadn’t seen it before, but thought I’d share. I often wonder if, 10,000 years from now some future human civilization might find one of these things under the mud in the same way we find mammoths occasionally. And what they might think of them.
Cools part, I though, was that after all these years the thing still rolled on it’s tracks, seemingly as if it fell into the mud yesterday. I’ve seen some abandoned tanks from WWII before in various countries, but they are usually rusted hulks that you couldn’t move unless you dropped them off a cliff, especially if they haven’t been touched since the war. These tank in Russian bogs though seem almost untouched by time. Anyway, like I said, thought I’d share.
And, what was the story? Why did they decide to take the time and expense to retrieve this particular tank. I could see if was a classic car or something, but is there not already an extant surplus of decrepit old tanks?
From WW II not as many as you would think; and especially not in totally original condition. Much was scrapped to make the next generation of tanks and many were updated along the way. A large part were also sold off to small nations that didn’t have the ability to maintain them as well. Support vehicles you can find sometimes but battle tanks are another story. As someone said earlier, gutted or rusted hulks you can find easy but something worth putting back into functioning condition is pretty rare.
Actually, only the second bulldozer was slipping its treads. The front driver knew how to do slow-and-steady. They’d have gotten it out a lot quicker if the second driver had known what he was doing, too.
Huh. On the one hand, a Soviet tank which was obsolete even for its time, with a rather light gun and a horrible one-man turret, and yet on the other hand there turns out to be a documented case of one of these little terrors killing a Panzer V!
, although he had to spend the rest of his life in the tank as his balls were several sizes too large to fit through the hatch.
As a T-70, it’s a tiny little tank. At 9.2 tonnes and 4.29 m in length it’s a lot smaller than the Soviet T-34 medium tank (26.5 tonnes/6.68 m length) and is dwarfed by the largest operational tank of the war, the German Tiger II (68.5 tonnes/7.38 m). One would have no problem getting it into a parking space if using it to go to the shops.
