12 Most Amazing Abandoned Tanks In The World

[Music] there aren't many good retirement options for tanks as machines of war or peacekeeping many of them are made with the expectation that they'll one day be destroyed on a battlefield those that survive their military service are generally scrapped and recycled and sometimes pieces of them even end up being used to make brand new tanks very occasionally though they simply become abandoned there are some stunning examples of abandoned tanks to be found all over the world and we put the very best of them in this video for you if you ask the japanese who owns the island of shikkotan they will tell you with 100 confidence that it's theirs the problem with that is the russians are just as positive about their own rights to ownership it's a small piece of land with barely 1 000 people on it but it's seen more than its fair share of conflict over the years after being gifted to japan in 1855 and then taken back by the russians in the final stages of the second world war the japanese reject the russian claim to ownership and at one point the russians stationed tanks there in case the japanese ever came to fight for it these days those tanks are abandoned and immobile there's a whole fleet of is-2s is-3s ts-542 and ts-55s but these days they're just silent sentries awaiting an invasion that's never going to come based on the level of rust and decay that's visible on these images it's doubtful if many if any at all could ever be started up or driven again once upon a time the afghani army had hundreds of tanks ready to roll on a moment's notice these days it's thought that the entire number at its disposal is less than 60. that's not because all the rest of their tanks have been destroyed or sold they're all still there they're just boiling away in the sun and falling to pieces after years of disuse many of the tanks you'll see in these images are t-62s left over from the conflict between afghanistan and the soviet union and unmoved since that time not even during more recent american and allied military action in the country did anyone try to shift these tanks again which implies that they're well beyond the point of use the t-62s are joined by t-55s which are in such a poor state that they'd barely even be considered useful as scrap officially the hope of the afghan government is that some of these units could be provided with new armor and restored but the reality is that much of the afghan military's funding comes from nato and nato isn't interested in paying for that kind of work areas where tanks gather and get left to rot are sometimes informally known as tank cemeteries and there's an enormous one in sogol germany the collection of 24 tanks is standing out in a field in the lower saxony region and nobody appears to want to take responsibility for them or do anything with them there are two types of tanks you might find at the site leopard 1 units and m47 patent units as the tanks are lined up in neat rows it's clear that someone left them here deliberately but even the official signage near to them is confusing one sign proclaims the field to be nepen shooting range but the town of meppen is 15 miles away another warns the people will be prosecuted for unauthorized entry onto the field but there are no fences nor any guards some of the people who live in sogol claim that the tanks are used for target practice by helicopters but if that's true the helicopter pilots must be terrible shots because the tanks are mostly undamaged can anybody solve this mystery in total the british army built 50 units of the churchill gun carrier a22d during the second world war despite the fact that more than one thousand were initially ordered this strange-looking creation was the one and only attempt ever made to turn the churchill into a tank destroyer and it didn't go well there was nothing necessarily wrong with its 3.5 inch thick superstructure in the terms of armor but the 3-inch anti-aircraft gun it was fitted with was obsolete even by 1941. had it been equipped with a 17-pound gun which the original plan called for it might have proved to be a lot more useful as problems became apparent during the design and building stage that order of 1000 dropped to 100 then 50 and then 24. although by the time the final reduced order arrived all 50 had already been built none of them ever saw any action during the war and only one of them is believed to have survived to the modern age it's a museum piece although quite what it's done to deserve that honor is debatable earlier on we showed you a tank graveyard in germany perhaps we should therefore call this next item a tank mausoleum this is the battle tank dismantling yard in edelben germany and it has a backlog of tanks to be scrapped that goes back decades pictures taken from above the yard show row upon row of martyr light tanks of the kind that used to serve the west german army during the time before german reunification and they're just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the units that are waiting to meet their doom here the plant doesn't just deal with german tanks it takes unwanted tanks from all over europe including ex-soviet models that were built during the days of the cold war between france austria germany spain and other european nations there are over 15 000 tanks at the site all of which are to be cut into pieces or otherwise destroyed some of them like the small number of gephold anti-aircraft cannon tanks are specialized units and it's unclear why anyone would want to dispose of them in this way the tale of stompy the british graffiti tank is a classic example of what happens when you try to make an englishman do something he doesn't want to do the old t34 was once part of the czech military and saw action during the prague spring of the 1960s but was brought to england during the making of the movie richard iii in 1995 after it was used for filming it was offered for sale and local london businessman russell gray bought it at first he didn't know what to do with it but shortly afterward he was refused permission by the local council to build an apartment complex on an empty piece of land infuriated by the rejection he reapplied for permission to put a tank on the land instead the council thinking he meant a septic tank signed off on the idea and that's when russell's tank by this time known as stompy rolled into position the council tried to order him to remove it but their own paperwork says he can keep a tank there permanently amusingly the turret is pointed in the direction of the council's head office [Music] culebra in puerto rico is a more glamorous location than london but it would look a whole lot more glamorous if it weren't covered in pieces of abandoned tanks the locals have done their best to make them fit better with the tropical scenery but even so they stick out like a sore thumb the flamenco beach area of kulebra was once used for target practice by the united states military starting with bombing raids in 1936 and intensifying as the u.s prepared for war in vietnam during the 1960s the locals understandably hate the use of their otherwise beautiful beach for this purpose and began protesting and occupying the land until the military finally had to withdraw in 1975. in an act of pettiness they decided not to clean up behind themselves and left the locals to deal with the battered broken frames of these second world war tanks they occasionally attract the attention of graffiti artists who visit them sometimes to give them a new look but they're still a bizarre sight to be struck by if you arrive in culebra without knowing they're there a little earlier on we discussed a british churchill tank from the second world war era and how it became obsolete as the war went on the same fate befell the mark ii churchill tank which was perfectly serviceable when the war began but quickly became outdated as enemy weaponry became more advanced as the tanks became obsolete they were pulled back from the front lines and returned home to england where they were used in training exercises that might explain the presence of the rusting hulk of a mark ii churchill in the south downs area of storington which is thought to have been given to the canadian army during their stay in the country based on the number of bullet holes on the side of the tank we can safely say that it was used for target practice when the war ended there was supposed to be a nationwide cleanup to deal with items like this but obviously this poor old churchill didn't get noticed by the cleanup teams given its exceptionally rural location perhaps that's understandable [Music] in 1936 with heavy military conflict on the agenda for the foreseeable future the soviet union decided it would make sense to build a large-scale military repair facility in varushalov four years later in may 1940 that facility opened its doors for the first time under the catchy name of repair base 77 tasked with repairing tanks tractors and any other equipment the government deemed fit a lot has changed since then including the name of the city from borussia love to usuryus and the plant hasn't survived the changing of the times regrettably it looks like there were still a lot of tanks there waiting to be repaired when it closed its doors for the final time 13 years after it opened its job was changed and it stopped dealing with any vehicles other than tanks from then until the day it went bankrupt shortly after the dissolution of the soviet union some of its assets were bought by private companies presumably including the tanks but nobody's ever come to attempt to move any of them looking at the state of them today it's doubtful any of them could be saved as you've already seen the soviet union amassed a lot of tanks during its years of existence and we're still not done finding or counting them all here's another tank graveyard full of them in kakri of ukraine barely 30 miles from the country's border with russia like the russian said in osuris this was once a tank repair plant but appears to have fallen silent at some point in the semi-recent past and left all of these tanks without an owner or a purpose its average output in terms of repairs was approximately 60 fully functional tanks per month so based on the volume here it seems that the plant was dealing with a near six month backlog at the time of its closure there are just over 400 tanks lined up in the yard most of which have their turrets pointing in the same direction for unknown reasons the majority of them are t-64s t-72s and t-80s some of which would still have a value to the military now if they could be refurbished so it's strange that they've been left here for so long we don't know much about the story behind the kugelpanzer and that's because the germans are reluctant to talk about it part of that will be because it's a piece of second world war equipment but another part of it will be down to the fact that it was a colossal failure of an idea only one prototype version of the vehicle was ever created with the idea that it could be a one-man tank used for scouting duties in truth it barely deserves to be called a tank at all the armor is only five millimeters thick and wouldn't necessarily protect the occupant from even light gunfire its top speed was 5 miles per hour and the driver had to rely on a letterbox-like slit at the top of the tank to see where they were going at some point during the war it was captured by the russian army and these days you'll find it on display at moscow oblast's kubinka tank museum where it's labeled as item 47 with no additional information while the russians might have been amused when they captured the kugelpanzer they've had embarrassing tank failures of their own in the past the most notable of them is the tsar tank which was invented in 1915. back then the concept of a tank was a new one and there was no consensus on what a tank should look like to the inventor of this strange vehicle the shape of a penny farthing bicycle was apparently the most logical idea all the benefits of having an armored compartment would be nullified on the battlefield by the fact that the wheels were so large and so exposed so it's probably just as well that it never saw one during a demonstration in front of military officials the tank became stuck in the mud and couldn't be freed the military officials left in disgust and the humiliated design team decided to leave their tank in the mud and wash their hands of it it stayed there until 1923 when it was finally reclaimed so the steel involved in its construction could be used as scrap subscribe to the channel turn on the notification bell and enjoy watching new videos on my channel thanks for watching and see you soon

Channel: Lightning Top

Views: 257,848

Rating: 4.6493545 out of 5

Keywords: 12 Most Amazing Abandoned Tanks In The World, Unexpected Military, top 12 Abandoned Tanks, Amazing Unexpected Military Finds, Military Finds, Amazing Military Finds, 12 most, top 12, lightning top, compilation, lightningtop, EverSee, Military

Id: lC_dMyoQHds

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020

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