Bugger...

Looks like they ballasted aft to lift the bow out of the water after the collision.

 

It would take a lot of duct tape to fix that one.

 

Tweeted? They had twitter back then?

 

Tweety - Wikipedia
Tweety

 

When I was in BAOR in 1980 a couple of lads from the armoured regt in the same barracks got thrown out of a local club for drunkenness. So they climbed into the tank park and 'borrowed' a Chieftain which they then drove around the club's car park. Some poor Dutch guy from a neighbouring unit drove his Datsun around for the next year with the imprint of a Chieftain reshaping its back end and bearing a forlorn sign which read: "Here was ein Chieftain tank"

 

This appears to be a Fieseler Storch - which flew so slowly you'd have expected it just to bounce off the building!

 

205532 - Captain Ernest James MARTIN, REME - Mention In Despatches (Sicily/Italy) - 23rd Armoured Brigade REME Workshops - Recovery Section

My father's boss in Greece in 1944.

Gus

 

I have a love/hate relationship with mysteries.

There is no crossing point in the stream. If the M10 was driven into the rapids by mistake, why is it facing in the opposite direction. The turret is missing. There is a steep cliff on the opposite bank. What happened here?

 

Found another picture of this Sherman at the National Army Museum UK. It was christened as the CYCLOPS.

 

It occurred to me that the vehicle in the stream might be a decapped prime mover. But it looks like the main gun travel brace is still in place on the rear deck and there is a '77' mark on the front.

I tried unsuccessfully to find more information about the M35 used by the British Army.


https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5nRpIMCM...UK+-+Europe+-+Armoured+Division+-+1944-01.png

M35 Prime Mover (1944)

 

1941 mishap on overloaded bridge. The kids in the picture were apparently enroute to school and it looks like one of them is, inexplicably, trying to cross through the wreckage.


https://www.theshermantank.com/wp-c..._Troops_Help_Children_Past_Crashed_M3_lee.jpg

 

More encounters of tanks and railway trains ...

Caption from militaryimages.net: Flamethrower tank OT-55 after a collision with a freight train. How the tank ended up on the railway and what caused the tragedy is not known. Armenian SSR, Leninakan, 1976.




https://www.militaryimages.net/thre...y-of-the-soviet-army.9818/page-25#post-162170


***


Forst Zinna Rail disaster in East Germany, January 1988. Collision of Soviet T-64A and express train on the Berlin–Halle railway, leaving six persons dead and 33 injured.







Forst Zinna rail disaster - Wikipedia
https://en.topwar.ru/198548-zhelezn...etskij-tank-t-64-protiv-nemeckogo-poezda.html


***


Bad things can happen on a snowbound slope. During a January 1966 training exercise in Germany, two 3rd Armored Division M60 tanks careened down this hill, out of control. One tank hit some trees and stopped before reaching the bottom, while the other slid into a train. Collision near Würzburg.






Story from the usarmygermany.com:

Maneuver Damage (FTX Silver Talon, 1966)
(Source: Email from Hans-Bernd Glanz, Germany)

The following photos and information are about a maneuver accident that occurred during 3rd AD's FTX "Silver Talon" on January 11, 1966 near the small town of Burgbernheim, between Ansbach and Würzburg. 

Hans-Bernd's father worked for the Bundesbahn (German railway) on that day in a nearby train station ("Steinach bei Rothenburg"). It was a cold and snowy day and an armored unit participating in the field exercise drove down a narrow icy country road near the town of Burgbernheim.

In a sharp curve one of the tanks went straight on and slid down the escarpment (Photo #1) to the train tracks below. When soldiers noticed an oncoming freight train, they tried to warn the train, but it was too late. The train collided with the tank and several boxcars and coal hopper cars were derailed and seriously damaged. Newspapers said that two soldiers suffered serious injuries, two other persons (including a train engineer) had minor injuries. Damages were estimated at 1 million German marks.

200 meters further up the road, another tank of the unit slid down the same escarpment but was stopped by some trees. 

The destroyed tank was evemtually loaded onto a railway flatcar and sent to Hanau.

USAREUR Units & Kasernes, 1945 - 1989

 

It would seem this was the back-up plan for a low budget, self-propelled gun ...


https://catalog.archives.gov/id/292567

 

ARGYLL II belonged to 91st Anti-Tank Regiment, 5th Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, A Troop 14 Battery.
Great images. Where did they come from?

Cheers

Kevin

 

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