----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan M Gill" <rmgill@mindspring.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [MV] Overseas purchases?
> At 11:21 AM -0800 1/17/02, Horrocks, Aaron wrote:
> >This topic interests me...
> >
> >There is a company in Russia that I get e-mails from time to time. Their
> >company scouts out rivers, lakes, swamps, forests, etc and find tanks and
> >other military vehicles, pulls them out from decay and cleans 'em up.
> >
> >Yes, you've got it: They want to sell me a tank. I wonder what the laws are,
> >and what the transportation costs would be like?
>
Bear in mind some Eastern Bloc countries have very different values to what you
expect, one "dealer" so far, acting as an agent for a very rich collector, has
met his end out there for the princely sum of $50 US.
One complete, running Panther, properly paid for (think along the lines of
$400K) and destined for these shores, was stopped within the Russian area of
influence and "impounded", possibly being considered a state heirloom no matter
how many bits of stamped paper you have. Around two years later and with the
turret off and "vandalised", plus its Maybach V12 has gone walkies (NAPA are no
help with these), it may finally get here. Allegedly.
Be very, very sure you fully understand caveat emptor.
> You know, I've thought that such expeditions could be a fun and
> interesting (as well as potentially profitable) thing. 4-8 people
> with an equal share and some recovery gear go over to a site known to
> have been the locale of a WWII battle and hunt up old wrecks of rare
> items for recovery and restoration.
>
I'd be extremely cautious, re-read the bit above if you're thinking of digging
over Kursk or the like for the odd Tiger and remember even after several years
of necessary bureaucratic permit hassle and minor official "lubrication" any
find is most likely to be declared govt property and summarily confiscated. As
for "safer" euro countries do remember there are many very well off MV
collectors over here that have already trawled the place bare apart from bits
that turn up now and again.
> If I were into German armour, I'd go for it in a heartbeat. I'd be
> more interested in British gear though. That means North Africa and
> western Europe. Hmm, perhaps I need to take a trip to Egypt.
>
Sorry, I'd forget that too; you'd have to deal with that nice Col. Gaddaffi for
a large part of "North Africa" and the Egyptian authorities too, just being an
American might not enamour either of them greatly, further, my mid 90's relative
who did his unsuccessful best to shoot holes in Erwin's panzers with a 2pdr pop
gun in a Stuart (Honey), and later a Grant, some 60 years ago, tells me the
"Sand People" ("now there's a name I've not heard for many a long year") were
rifling the battlefield for scrap whilst the shooting was still going on and we
know Erwin, and the Wehrmacht generally, were so short of tanks that their
recovery/repair arrangements were truly excellent. Many or most of the heavily
battle damaged tanks would return to the fray later as StuGs for instance.
Do not overlook that the German armour production in total from 39 to 45 was
just one quarter of that made by the UK, adding in the vast numbers of Russian,
Canadian and US armour one could reasonably ask what took us so long; it tends
to illustrate the competency of the Wehrmacht and its capability to recover and
return armour to the battlefield; thank Heavens for our secret weapon in the
shape of Mr Schickelgruber.
We can all pontificate that it should have ended at Falaise sensibly, but in
fact carried on until, in all effect, there were no Wehrmact soldiers, vehicles
or tanks left to fight with. Most complete Panzer examples were captured by the
Russians and reside in Kubinka, we know the last two Jagdtigers out from
Nibelungenwerke (St Valentin) went east being driven by their scratch crews and
were captured.
What fraction was left went down the furnace in the understandable swords to
ploughshares mentality of the time with a few better examples being evaluated
both sides of the pond and those not shot to oblivion on the range were given to
the national institutions like APG, Samur, Bovington and the like; regrettably
APG left their priceless artefacts out in the rain for the last 60 years with a
whitewash and rust camo paint job. We hope the Patton Museum does a bit now to
redress the ravages of time outdoors.
Richard
Southampton - England
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