12 Most Amazing Unexpected Military Finds

it would probably be inaccurate to say that anyone considers themselves to be a fan of the military but the world's military forces certainly have millions of admirers each of us knows someone who either buys military memorabilia or can name the type and title of a tank just by looking at it that's because the military is innately fascinating and so are the stories that sometimes surround it we hope you'll find these tales of unexpected military finds just as fascinating as we did our first discovery is quite a scary one when a 51 year old man passed away in a quiet town in yorkshire england in march 2014 his home was found to be stuffed full of so much military memorabilia that police experts had to be summoned to ensure the home was safe neighbors contacted the authorities after becoming concerned that they hadn't seen martin johnson for several days but when the authorities broke into his home they found a collection of machine guns grenades and shells dating back to the second world war the police were so concerned that some of the grenades might be live and also that some of the shells may have contained mustard gas that they evacuated more than 100 people and called in the bomb squad munitions and weapons were piled onto every surface in every room of the house along with knuckle dusters and swords many of the weapons are illegal to own in the united kingdom so mr johnson must have acquired them on the black market people who knew martin said he wasn't a violent man he just loved military memorabilia and spent his whole life building his arsenal [Music] in december 2018 a couple decided to venture into the attic of the home they'd recently purchased in norwich england and found a relic of the second world war waiting there for them it's a soldiers service paybook belonging to british war veteran henry charles herbert according to the content of the book henry worked as a laborer before joining the british war effort in 1943 as an 18 year old he remained with the army for the rest of the war and left in 1948 with a commendation from his commander who described him as a hard-working honest man there were also a few photos in the service book pointing to a possible connection between henry and a woman who lived in italy henry would have been 94 by the time the service book was found which sadly makes it unlikely he'd have been alive to get his property back but the family spent a while trying to find his family to pass it on to before surrendering it to a local museum this is an artifact that shows us the personal side of the biggest war in history not far from norwich you'll find the town of wizbeck where another war treasure was discovered in another attic in november 2017. this time it was a biscuit tin full of photographs letters and even a few medals belonging to another british war veteran the medals are inscribed with the name of claude clark a former butcher who joined the british navy during the war the family who found the biscuit 10 weren't sure what to do with it so they handed it over to the royal british legion during an armistice day remembrance ceremony the same month the royal british legion carried out some research and were sad to discover that they narrowly missed the chance to give claude his medals back he passed away at a nearby nursing home in 2015 aged 89. medals like this weren't given away to everybody who signed up to fight during the war so whatever claude did during his time with the navy it must have been significant this story has a happy ending the medals and personal possessions are now back in the hands of his family [Music] we're moving on to much bigger things with our next unexpected military find it's three whole german u-boats which were entombed in a bunker in the elba close to hamborg during the second world war and weren't found until 1985 the germans realized that their open-top u-boat enclosures were an easy target for allied bombing raids in the early 1940s and created new purpose-built storage bunkers to solve the problem the bunker known as elba ii was amongst the first to be finished three boats were put inside it for safe keeping and then never came out again the bunker was hit with 32 tons of bombs by british forces toward the end of the war collapsing the roof and trapping the u-2505 the u-3004 and the u-350 inside archaeologists and military historians wolfgang hirschfield walter klutz and jacques p malman shovel found the bunker in 1985 after years of searching and took a few pictures before alerting the authorities to their horror the authorities subsequently decided that the bunker and the rotting boats were hazard so they ordered it to be filled with concrete and gravel entombing the boats a second time this time their entombment will last forever it was a poignant day in eastern france in february 2014 when archaeologists uncovered an old german shelter from the first world war and inside it the perfectly preserved remains of 21 german soldiers buried and forgotten about for almost a century historical records show that the shelter collapsed when struck by an allied shell in 1918 it was then buried under debris and went unnoticed until it was accidentally disturbed during excavation work ahead of a planned road building project in the area the first archaeologists to survey the scene compared it to pompeii some of the soldiers were still sitting upright on a bench while others were in bed when the end came it must have been mercifully quick the men were found with their helmets boots uniforms cigarette cases pipes and bottles of wine there was even a goat in the shelter with them presumably to provide them with fresh milk because the explosion filled the shelter with soil no air light or water could get in which helped with the excellent state of preservation even the newspapers the men were reading were still legible the road building project still went ahead and the remains were interred at a german war cemetery in ilford it's one thing to have a collection of military weapons in your home if you've built up the collection yourself it's quite another to move into a house and find someone else's collection of weapons waiting for you a young french couple who wish to remain anonymous found a secret cache of weapons hidden in a wall cavity as they remodeled their home in the burgundy region of france in 2017. although it's impossible to say for sure it's likely that the weapons were hidden by the french resistance during the second world war the collection includes three pistols three sten submachine guns more than one thousand rounds of ammunition and fifteen grenades the couple has handed their unexpected arsenal over to the museum of the resistance in morven which has made them all safe and placed them on display members of the french resistance who fought in small groups known as maki had to go to great lengths to operate in secrecy right under the noses of the german occupiers so hidden weapon caches like this are quite common in old homes in some parts of france in 1914 the german vessel known as the sv carl was impounded in cardiff wales on account of the fact that it was a german-registered ship and the first world war had broken out the ship had all the characteristics of a mine lair and some in the british government feared it had already gone about such duties on its way to cardiff three years after it was impounded it was being towed around the coastline of cornwall by the british royal navy on its way to being scrapped but it got stuck on a reef and the tow rope snapped the sand of the pad stove beach covered the stricken vessel and then it lay forgotten about for more than a century before a storm shifted the sands in january 2020 and revealed its broken remains the majority of the hull of the 60-foot long steel ship is still in one piece with its mast laying a few feet away it was recorded in logs at the time that the sv carl was undamaged by its unplanned beaching and ought to have been salvageable but a second attempt to attach a tow rope also failed and so the navy was forced to give up on it you've probably gathered by this point that the british isles are covered in reminders of the first and second world wars and here's another discovery to add to that extensive collection in october 2016 sonar technology revealed the presence of a previously unknown german u-boat off the coast of scotland still largely intact after a century in the water it's difficult to positively identify the vessel but there's a strong chance it's the wreck of the ub-85 which was sunk in 1918 by the hms coreopsis the potential site of the wreck had been reported to authorities by engineers who said they'd seen something unusual in the water while diving to lay undersea power cables based on its size and shape the submarine is of the ub3 class of which only two are known to have been sunk in this area it's either the ub-85 or its sister ship the ub-82 several members of the crew of the ub-85 survived the sinking and were rescued after which they were surprised to be told that their vessel had been attacked by a british ship and not as they initially suspected a sea monster [Music] old military ships tanks and planes don't have any say in where they are left but if they were able to choose we think the pacific islands would be a popular choice there are dozens of world war ii wrecks to be found amid the jungles and waters of the pacific's most remote islands all of which bear the scars of the fierce battles that raged between imperial japan and allied forces the wreck of a u.s navy transport vessel pokes halfway out of the waters of the ungala islands part of the solomon islands the hulk of the kinugawa maru a japanese imperial navy transport vessel is clearly visible from the edge of the water at tassafaranga beach wander into the jungles of guadalcanal island and you're reasonably likely to find the wreck of a long forgotten plane like this japanese a6 m0 fighter jet there's also the shell of a japanese type 95 hago tank at an old command post in saipan on the northern mariana islands these days it has plants growing out of its shell military discoveries in the area are so common that they're not even thought of as unexpected anymore they're a fact of everyday life for the islanders when the weather conditions on the welsh coast are just right and the tide is out you can sometimes see the remains of the plane known as the maid of harlock embedded on the coastline of the town for which it's named it's been there since the second world war and it will stay there until it rots away completely the local government has made sure of that they've given the well-known wreck protected status which means nobody's allowed to move or otherwise interfere with it in any way the maid of harlock is an american fighter plane a lockheed p-38 lightning to be specific and crashed in september 1942 while being flown by 24 year old pilot robert f elliott originally from north carolina elliot got into difficulties during a gunnery practice mission and was forced to crash land he walked away unscathed from the incident but his plane wasn't so lucky the shifting sands of the harlock coastline have unveiled the plane only three times since it crashed once during the 1970s once in 2007 and again in 2014 with the aircraft remaining visible for a few days on each occasion the shorter distance between the last two appearances suggests that the landscape of the area might be changing so locals might see a lot more of their famous plane in the future [Music] our next story sounds so improbable that it could pass for the plot of a hollywood blockbuster and yet it's all true in 2011 a team of historians and archaeologists used surveillance photos taken by british royal air force pilots during the second world war to pinpoint the precise location of a nazi bunker containing third reich gold reserves worth more than half a billion dollars rumors of the bunker have existed in and around leipzig ever since the end of the war but experts finally tracked it down to an area of the l'nevald forest close to the city german records from the war show that battalions of workers were ordered into the forest in 1944 by order of albert speer hitler's minister of armaments further records showing that the area was bombed by the germans themselves a mere one month before the end of the war during a time when there were no allied planes in the area strongly suggest there was something in the forest that the nazis didn't want anybody else to find a photo taken from the air in august 1944 appears to show a marking on the forest floor in the shape of a human skull which eventually turned out to mark the entrance to the bunker the nazis stole the gold to begin with so we see no harm in anyone stealing it back from them of all the places in russia you'd expect to be secure and safe from bombs the kremlin is at the top of the list as the official residence of the russian president it's one of the most secure buildings in the entire world nevertheless an unexploded world war ii era bomb was found there in august 2019 and it provoked quite a panic somehow the explosive had managed to spend the past 70 years undetected in a czar era cellar that hadn't been used for decades it's thought that it was left behind by the nazi wehrmacht who advanced well into moscow in 1942 before eventually being turned around and forced to flee the bomb was only found when the long abandoned section of the palace was undergoing renovation work but still had an active fuse and so theoretically could have gone off at any time it speaks volumes about the size of the building that an enormous german bomb can hide in its cellar and avoid detection by anybody for such a long time but something tells us that kremlin security will have to be stepped up a little since the discovery was made and the rest of the complex will now have been thoroughly checked for unwanted wartime leftovers [Music] 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

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Keywords: 12 Most Unexpected And Mysterious Military Finds, Military Finds, Unexpected Military, 12 Most Unexpected, Incredible Finds, Finds, 12 most, top 12, lightning top, compilation, lightningtop, EverSee, Mysterious Military

Id: hiTbyajt0IE

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021