12 Most Amazing Unexpected Military Finds

[Music] the world's military forces create an enormous amount of hardware ranging from bombs and weaponry to tanks planes armored cars and boats most of the time military hardware is destined to either be destroyed or retired from service when it becomes obsolete but sometimes fate has other ideas in mind for it sometimes it becomes a forgotten curiosity discovered by accident years after it was last seen there are plenty of unexpected military discovery stories in this video plus some other military surprises the arid conditions of the sahara desert are well suited to preserving anything that gets lost in the area and the desert is so big that whatever's lost might not be found again for years that was certainly the case for this downed kitty hawk p-40 a british royal air force plane that crashed 200 miles away from civilization in june 1942 it wasn't found until march 2012 the pilot wasn't found among the wreckage but was never seen again so his fate will forever remain a mystery the wreck of the plane was discovered by jacob perka a polish oil worker who went into the desert on an expedition and found it purely by chance the plane saw action against forces commanded by nazi general rommel in north africa but was on its way home to base for urgent repairs when it crashed presumably hindered by the damage it had taken in battle the aircraft still had its guns attached and ammunition on board when it was found but these have since been confiscated by the egyptian army the raf museum in london england would like to take possession of the plane but for now it remains in egypt 70 years sounds like a long time for a plane to go missing for but it isn't the first time it's happened on december 12th 1940 a northrop a17a nomad took off from royal canadian air force borden in ontario canada with two men on board it went missing over lake muskoka and was never heard from again it was snowing heavily that day and it was presumed that the plane had crashed because of the poor weather that theory was probably correct the plane was eventually discovered at the bottom of the lake not far from browning island in july 2011. the plane was eventually raised allowing some of the personal possessions of pilot ted bates to be returned to his 84 year old brother more than 400 canadian planes went missing during training exercises and transport missions during the second world war so it's likely that this is far from being the only lost plane at the bottom of the icy waters salvage missions are difficult and expensive but as the end of this story tells you where there's a will there's often a way [Music] if you try to drive anything as heavy as a tank over wet boggy ground there's always a risk that it might be too much for the ground to deal with and the tank will sink that fate befell a stuart m5a1 light tank in the philippines in march 1945 and it couldn't be retrieved until april 2020. the tank was part of the american force that liberated the philippines from the japanese between 1944 and 1945 and appears to have got stuck while trying to cross a local river in meadowland province that made it a sitting duck for japanese mortar rounds which tore into the side of the vehicle the exact location of the tank has been known since a storm washed away some of the mud in the 1980s but attempts to free it at the time ended in failure the cadillac engine and the turret were removed at the time but the tank couldn't be freed until a more sophisticated effort involving better technology was made 30 years later it will remain in the philippines having spent 75 years there already and will likely go on permanent display in a museum the border between north korea and south korea is as many people are already aware one of the most heavily militarized areas in the world both sides have gone to enormous expense to arm their side of the border and beaches haven't been spared from the effort officially speaking the 38th parallel beach in yangyang south korea is part of the korean demilitarized zone but nothing about these huge lines of fortifications says demilitarized to us what makes this long stretch of beach so bizarre is despite the armaments and the strong military presence it attracts more than one million tourists every year it's even become a popular spot for surfing there's still a military base here but there's also a rest stop surf shacks and beach chalets to make things even stranger surfers sometimes have to wade through inches of snow taking care to avoid barbed wire fences as they go in order to catch a few waves with the carefree nature of the surfers and the stark military hostility between the two halves of korea on open display simultaneously it's one of the strangest and most surreal places in the world nobody really knows how many shipwrecks there are in the world's oceans although the number probably runs into tens of thousands the sad truth is that we'll probably never find all of them especially when some of them are so deep in the water the record for the deepest shipwreck discovery of all time was set in october 2019 when the u.s navy destroyer uss johnston dd-557 was found at a depth of four miles below the surface the vessel went down during the battle of late gulf on october 25 1944 and is now at the bottom of the philippine sea the battle raged for more than three days and is one of the largest sea battles in history with more than 200 000 naval personnel involved it's famous for other reasons including being the last direct conflict between battleships in world history and the first recorded instance of japanese kamikaze attacks from the air the wreck of the lost warship is badly damaged but some parts of it including its gun turrets are clearly visible in the images of the wreck site we've already seen one american tank pulled out of the mud in the philippines and now here's another that was dredged out of manila bay in september 2009 the old m-401 sherman tank had been stuck in the mud of the bay's sea floor for more than 60 years by the time it was extracted having become embedded there during the second world war unlike the first tank we looked at the discovery of this one was a total surprise to the people who found it a dredging company found it while they were working close to the mouth of the pasig river and for want of a better term dredged up more than they were bargaining for there were no human remains inside the tank and the vehicle's tracks and turret appeared to have been deliberately removed so it might have been made safe and then abandoned by its crew when they were unable to free it manila saw some of the heaviest fighting between the usa and japanese forces toward the end of the mission to liberate the philippines in 1945 and so this is almost certainly a relic of one of those battles not every scrap of military equipment at the bottom of the ocean found its way there because it was attacked or because it encountered an accident some of it was sent there deliberately by the people who owned it there's a whole arsenal of american military equipment at the bottom of the pacific ocean all of which was abandoned after the end of the second world war because dumping it was deemed to be a cheaper option than shipping it all the way back home in these images from the waters of vanuatu we can see american jeeps bulldozers forklifts and even coca-cola bottles and items of clothing the area has become a popular diving site and has been nicknamed million-dollar point because of the value of the hardware left behind there but the reality is that the discarded items were probably worth more than that when they were thrown away most of the goods come from two u.s military bases code-named buttons and roses which were based on the island of esperitu santo and were the launching point for numerous missions against the japanese the americans initially tried to sell the gear to the locals but when that failed they used bulldozers to shove it all into the water and then sent the bulldozers in after them the image you're about to see here looks like a traditional family beach vacation photograph it's two children a four and six-year-old brother and sister posing in front of what their parents thought was a harmless beach buoy covered in barnacles they were understandably horrified when they later found out it was an unexploded bomb the shocking incident happened in bury port beach whales in august 2015. the oblivious parents even let their children touch and climb onto the bomb and only found out what they were really dealing with when they posted the pictures on instagram and a military savvy friend alerted them to the danger they informed the local authorities who investigated the washed-up object and confirmed that it was a long-lost united states military mine bomb and almost certainly a leftover from the second world war it had probably been in the sea for decades before being washed up on the beach although the bomb almost certainly didn't pose a danger the authorities decided it was better to be safe than sorry and destroyed it in a controlled detonation finding one bomb on a beach is surprising finding 170 of them is unthinkable and yet that's the site that bomb disposal experts were faced with in mapleton england in july 2020 when the huge collection of explosives appeared on a beach there overnight mapleton beach is the fastest eroding stretch of coastline in the united kingdom and that coupled with the fact that it was once used by both the british royal air force and the united states air force as a practice bombing range has led to a lot of unexploded ordnance being exposed as the coastline washes away more than 1 000 explosives have been identified and made safe in the area since 1998 which is when the military stopped using it but 170 bombs appearing at the same time is a new record among the explosives were 2-inch howitzers aircraft projectiles and practice bombs surprisingly the beach has been open to the public since the military moved out and continues to remain open despite the frequent discovery of explosives but red flags and exclusion zones are in place around what are thought to be the worst affected areas [Music] nobody knew quite what this next device was when it washed up on the beaches of kill devil hills in north carolina usa in march 2020 but the residents who saw it feared it might be an explosive and so they called the police they were right to do so it's not actually a bomb but it is a military device as some of you might have correctly worked out already this is a very old anti-submarine mine the pictures might not do justice to the artifact because they don't provide a sense of scale the mine is actually three and a half feet tall it's not the first anti-submarine mine to show up on north carolina's coast in recent years which has prompted experts to wonder where the rusted barnacle-encrusted munitions have been for so many years and why they're suddenly making frequent appearances now while most of the world war ii era mines that have been recovered so far were inert some have been found to be live and so the authorities should be contacted every time one is spotted if you live in north carolina and you ever see one of these on the beach you know what to do [Music] a little piece of history was pulled out of a river in the south of russia in july 2016. this muddy relic which required a team of over a dozen people using heavy machinery to free it from the mud is believed to be the last surviving soviet t-3476 tank from the stalingrad tractor factory there are two theories about how the unique tank became embedded in the river close to ukraine skya boilova the first is that it was sunk deliberately by soviet troops as they retreated from the area to ensure that it wouldn't fall into nazi hands that's possible but perhaps unlikely as the tank's armament was still attached the second version which is that the tank fell from a pontoon bridge and couldn't be freed is therefore more likely to be true in any case the discovery of the tank was a delight for russian military enthusiasts it was previously believed that every tank of its class that was built at the factory was destroyed during the early years of the second world war the mud of the river has preserved the tank so well that it might even be possible to restore it to running condition one day [Music] that soviet tank was found and recovered by a team of qualified professionals working together this next one was found by a young boy although it took him a while a young estonian boy was playing by lake mertner matasjarv in 1944 when he saw tank tracks leading to the lake's edge as he cast his eyes across the lake he noticed air bubbles rising to the surface even as a child he thought that was odd six months later he was playing by the lake again and noticed that the tracks were gone but the bubbles were still rising it took him another 50 years to come back and finally find out what was at the bottom of that lake and he brought a volunteer team with him together they found a soviet-built t-3476a tank it appears that the tank was driven into the lake deliberately during the war to keep it safe and then forgotten about for unknown reasons it's fully intact and other than being a little muddy it hasn't suffered at all from its long rest under the water it took a 70 ton bulldozer to pull it out of the mud in the end but once that was done and the worst of the mud was washed off the tank appeared to be in near pristine condition 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 Amazing Unexpected Military Finds, Military Finds, Unexpected Military, 12 Most Unexpected, Incredible Finds, Finds, 12 most, top 12, lightning top, compilation, lightningtop, EverSee, Mysterious Military

Id: n7S7uWAmxJI

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021