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Admittedly, its not an AFV, but its more significant than it may look... Only hint I can give is that it was once in the Ordnance Museum collection (in fact thats where the picture was taken) - unfortunately I can only suspect that it was long ago destroyed... I was extremely surprised when I came across this in the museum's archives...



Neil

Is this part of a 'super cannon' commonly called V-3 that the Germans were building in France to bombard England?

Okay, I guess that was too easy... Not many things that look like pipes that tend to be that significant... Apparently, it was brought back to Aberdeen Proving Ground. I cant imagine they ever reassembled it for testing... I suspect it was probably lost in the great 1952/1953 scrapping catastrophe...



Neil

Until you said that you suspected it had been destroyed I wondered if it was the Skeleton tank disassembled

I love this picture, great action shot... It was in the Ordnance Museum's Panther II (the one now at the Patton Museum) file... Is this the Panther II by chance? Unfortunately sometimes the files have extraneous pictures, although this is a great one even if its not the Panther II.



Neil

Are they righting it or turning it on it's side? The cables look like they are pulling it to th eright which would be turning it on it's side.

Or am I missing something?

Yeah, I'll admit I noticed that too... Not quite sure why they're pulling it on its side apparently...

Neil

If it was sitting in the middle of the road and they were pulling it off I could possibly see it but it looks like it will fall in the middle of the road.

Kinda' looks to me like it had been vehicle left side down in a ditch to side of the road (on the right as we're looking at it) and they are removing it and dragging to the center of the road (perhaps with some forward motion as well). I wonder if the turret was traversed to the rear when it was immobilized or if they did that for the recovery?

We're missing something here. Look at the dust/smoke. If they were just tipping the tank would there be that much dust? I think Doug may be on to something. the cables may be running at an angle causing the tank to be pulled towards the camera as it sits on the edge of the track.

The other interesting thing is the way they have the cables attached to the turret. It looks like a cable runs in through the rear hatch and out through the cupola. There are no cables that I see running to the hull. I would think that they would be putting most of the pulling effort on the hull not the turret.

I wich we had a film sequence of this

Some ID help needed - is this a Centaur IV or a Cromwell VI?



Neil

- Neil_Baumgardner

Some ID help needed - is this a Centaur IV or a Cromwell VI?

Neither! Thats one of the Cavalier prototypes!

What about the gun, isnt that a 95mm howitzer (in recoil perhaps?)? Or possibly a fake barrel?

Neil

Hi Folks!

Very odd photo of that Panther.

I agree with Doug, I think they are trying to recover it from the ditch. Look at the ground under the tank, it is mess up some as if the tank had been setting in the ditch.

A recovery operation is dealing with one set of weights when a vehicle can roll on it own wheels or tracks. Put the hull in contact with the ground and the weight doubles or triplies. While we can not see the type of vehicles being used, it's a sure bet that they were never designed to handle that 45 ton monster.

The recovery teams may have ran the cables through the turret hatchs because that gave them a better angle vis trying to hook to the hull. If so I would guess they turned the turret to rear so the rear hatch would face forward. Pulling from the turret would get the hull off the ground and cause the hull to roll forward and out into the road way before the cables lost enough angle.

With no movie film, it sure would be nice if a set of before and after shots turned up.

I think we are looking at the action of someone who had a mission,
had equipment that could not do the job in a normal way,
and had to get VERY creative.

My 2 cents on that very odd photo.
Sgt, Scouts Out!

- bsmart

Until you said that you suspected it had been destroyed I wondered if it was the Skeleton tank disassembled

Actually I guess it was known that it had been brought back to APG, and even tested! From wikipedia:

"Soon after the last shell had been fired the firing site along with the disassembled cannons was captured by advancing American forces and the equipment was sent back to the US where the cannons were tested and evaluated at the Aberdeen Proving Ground before being finally scrapped in 1948"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon

Neil