12 Most Amazing And Incredible Abandoned Tanks

[Music] tanks are war machines that's the purpose that they're built for and that's the purpose that they serve whether they're fighting to win a battle or to keep the peace tanks are advanced armored vehicles that represent the best military technology around at the time of their creation for obvious reasons not all of them enjoy a happy retirement at the end of their service but even those that avoid being destroyed on a battlefield sometimes end up being abandoned that's a story every tank you're about to see could tell on the little-known u.s territory of guam in micronesia which is little more than a united states military base there's a leftover relic of the second world war known only to the few people who live in the area to be more specific it's a type 95 haggo tank also known as a light model tank and it's the former property of the japanese army comparable to the american m3 stuart tank of the same era it wasn't designed for tank to tank combat and was used more effectively against infantry the japanese briefly seized and occupied guam during the war but they were eventually beaten back and left some of their equipment behind this tank was one of three that was abandoned on cross island road but it's the only one that still remains the turret and gun of the tank were removed and scrapped shortly after the war but since 1979 it's been listed on the national register of historic places and is therefore protected from further tampering or harm our next tank is also a second world war relic but this one can be found in belgium tanks were abandoned all over the european mainland when combat operations came to an end but not all of them served with as much distinction of this m475 sherman it's a veteran and survivor of the famous battle of the bulge which took place in the ardennes in 1944. it's easy to see why it was abandoned after the battle there's an enormous hole in it caused by a hit taken from a 75 millimeter german shell by 1950 the villagers of wibrin had grown tired of its presence and started scrapping it but it was ultimately saved and renovated the renovation work performed on the tank is quite extensive when it was first found scrap dealers had already cut away most of the rear end it was in quite a state by the time it was rescued but you'd never know that today these days it's mounted on a plinth and receives regular maintenance but the damage from the german shelling has been deliberately left untouched disused american tanks seem to be everywhere here's a load of them hanging out on a beach in puerto rico these tanks weren't left behind after a battle though they were dumped on the beach and used as target practice by american bomber pilots training for the vietnam war in the 1960s they were old even before they were assigned that duty and at this point the rusted hulks are so badly damaged that it's hard to tell what model of tank they might have been before they were battered from above we wouldn't go so far as to call them ugly though because since 1975 when the puerto ricans managed to persuade the americans to stop bombing their beach they've been turned into unusual works of art thanks to graffiti painting the vivid colors make them a little bit less conspicuous amid their caribbean surroundings but it's still an odd experience to take a walk on a beautiful beach and stumble across the skeletons of shattered tanks just one single climate voraciolav tank was capable of stopping a german advance in its tracks during the second world war their armor was so thick that the guns mounted on the german panzer 3 and panzer 4 tanks had almost no impact on them whatsoever that changed a little as the war progressed and german firepower increased but there's no doubt that the soviet kv-2 assault tank was a feared sight on any european battlefield what separates the kv-2 from the kv-1 is the presence of the m10 152 millimeter howitzer which is why we can tell that this abandoned unit in le vue crane is definitely a kv-2 we're not sure how it came to be abandoned but it's possible that it simply got stuck the kv-2 was much heavier than the kv-1 due to its heavy gun and turret and as such it was slower on the ground and more prone to being captured by enemy forces the germans admired the tanks so much that they even used a few of the ones they captured renaming them storm panzerkampfwagen kv-2754 but the soviets knew that this model wasn't a winner they only produced a few hundred of them before focusing on the more agile kv-1 while we're on the topic of world war ii era soviet tanks the su-100 tank destroyer was also a very solid model not only was it the best russian-made tank destroyer unit of its time but it also enjoyed excellent longevity su-100 units were still in operation in the middle east at the end of the 20th century and a few of them are even still in use today as of 2002 the yemeni army had 30 su-100s in service some of those units were captured by houthi rebels in 2014 that might explain why this 70 year old su-100 ended up being used for a photo opportunity on a hillside most of the surviving su-100s were probably built in the middle east or built in czechoslovakia in the years immediately after the second world war ended due to necessity the russians had to use unskilled workers on the production line during the war which led to the creation of a few defective tank units the czechs who weren't under any such pressure used professional workforces and as a result the tanks they built tended to be more durable even though they were made according to the same design [Music] the kero veloce l-333 tank was a mainstay of the italian army during the 1930s approximately 1200 units of the vehicle were built between 1933 and 1935 and they were based on the uk's kardon lloyd mark iv which was first built at the end of the 1920s based on their size it would perhaps be more accurate to refer to them as tankettes than tanks by the time the second world war reached its peak in terms of combat everybody knew that these tanks weren't up to the job their armor was too thin and their only armaments were mid-range machine guns that didn't stop them from being deployed across every front the italians faced though and so there are several abandoned examples of them to be found including one surrounded by rubble on a hillside in greece despite their obsolescence iraq bought several surviving units of the cv-33 from italy during the early 1940s to the amazement of american troops the 70 year old tanks were used during the operation iraqi freedom at the start of the 21st century needless to say they didn't fare very well against modern american weapons [Music] returning to the soviet union for a moment the most famous of all the soviet-era russian tanks was the t-34 it's a contentious issue but many war historians consider it to be the most capable and durable tank available to any nation during the second world war one of the key strengths of the tank is that it was easy to mass produce including the t-3485 variant that went into production with a new c85 anti-tank gun in 1944 that's the model that was most commonly exported to other nations and the most likely to remain in use long after the second world war came to an end they're less common sites today but the last time they were used in anger in the middle east was in the six day war in 1967 in which israel captured and occupied the gaza strip along with the west bank and east jerusalem the egyptian army deployed several t-3485 units to the golan heights and the sinai peninsula all of which were destroyed there's still an abandoned t-3485 on the roadside at golan today another place you can find an abandoned t-34 unit in modern times is ulan uday siberia where for many years there was one standing as a monument at divisiona station as of 2019 though it was no longer on its pedestal it was taken down during that year so it could be restored repaired and driven for the first time in decades to take part in a parade marking 75 years since the soviet victory on the eastern front of the second world war the tank traveled along the main square of buryatia as the leader of a military parade conducted by the ulan uday garrison on that special day it was joined by a second abandoned t-34 this one came from blago veszensk and had a somewhat less salubrious history rather than being a celebrated monument in a plinth it had spent years inside an abandoned military unit and was under threat of being melted down and recycled before it was rescued and repaired the ulan uday t-34 is expected to return to its pedestal eventually although that hasn't happened yet the fate of the second one is unclear although now it's been restored it ought to make a good museum exhibit somewhere we've looked at plenty of russian world war ii era tanks now so let's have a look at some german ones as well we've already mentioned that the most commonly seen german tank during the war was the panzer and there are shattered pieces of panzer all over several countries that includes bulgaria although the ones you'll find in bulgaria arrived by design rather than by accident during the years of the cold war bulgaria was a communist nation and it was paranoid about the threat of invasion from turkey to stave off the threat they fortified their border and to do it they set dozens of abandoned panzer tanks into a series of concrete bunkers the bunkers were rarely used and by 2004 when the no longer communist country joined nato they'd been all but forgotten scrap dealers and thieves have picked the bones of some of the tanks over the years but as you can see from these images several of them are still there in mostly complete condition we're not saying that they could move or be driven again but there's enough left of them to take them indoors and use them in a museum they're not really needed to guard the border anymore unlike the bulgarian tanks some world war ii relics do get picked up and used for exhibits and displays during times of peace one of them is the vimutiere tiger tank as the name suggests this is a type 1 german tiger tank that saw action during the war but was left abandoned when its crew fled as the 1944 battle of normandy drew to a close for more than 30 years after that it was forgotten about and left rusting at the side of a road but in 1975 a local commune called vimutier took ownership of it and put it on display since then it's been designated as a french national monument which might be because it's one of only seven known to remain in existence anywhere in the world after over 75 years outside though it could do with a little restoration work the current paint scheme was applied by an uninformed volunteer and isn't faithful to the original decor and it's making several bad cracks in rust all of its original hatches have been replaced by modern steel plates too which has rendered access to the vehicle's interior impossible [Music] travel to huffali's in belgium and you'll find another old german tank on display and this one's hanging around right in the middle of a town center it's a panther tank that once belonged to the 116th german panzer division and went by the nickname vindhund during fighting in the area during december 1944 it was struck by a bomb which incredibly flipped the 40-ton tank and left it upside down in the river orta it couldn't be retrieved at the time and so it became embedded in a thick layer of mud and silt the mud and silt turned out to be an excellent preservative years later when the local authorities finally decided that they didn't want an upside down nazi tank in their river anymore the belgian army was called in to retrieve it they were surprised to find that it was in excellent condition with even the original paintwork and markings still intact it now sits on a plinth as an official monument to the battle of the bulge in which huffalize was a strategically important crossroads town and took heavy fire in 2016 the united kingdom wanted to do something to mark the 100th anniversary of the first time the nation had used tanks in combat and so it sent a very very old tank to trafalgar square for the public to admire this is a mark iv tank of the kind that saw action during the first world war and participated in the notoriously deadly battle of the somme in september 1916. it was one of several british tanks on display at the event including the british challenger 2 but given its age and its service history it was the one that drew the most attention from the gathered crowds while the tanks were armored using one on the battlefield during the first world war made you a sitting duck it moved at only three miles an hour which seriously limited their combat capabilities the mark iv was withdrawn from active service almost as soon as the war was over although a couple of captured units were used during the german revolution of 1918-1919 today only seven of them 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Channel: Lightning Top

Views: 196,540

Rating: 4.7010407 out of 5

Keywords: 12 Most Amazing Incredible Abandoned Tanks, Abandoned Tanks, top 12 Abandoned Tanks, Incredible Tanks, Tanks, Amazing Military, 12 most, top 12, lightning top, compilation, lightningtop, EverSee, Military

Id: AqWWhspaG3A

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020