Do remember that the end of their service came on May 7, 1945 at 2:41am b=
y
which time the vast majority had already been destroyed, those remaining
were quickly rendered seriously inoperative by the allied forces and ther=
e
was an urgent need to render the "swords to
ploughshares".................................
Whilst it was possible to wangle shipment home for a wheeled "souvenir",
heavyweight armour was a different story; officialdom doubtless took a fe=
w
for evaluation and then passed these on to formal museums or just shot th=
em
to bits as range targets. There may be the odd example half buried in th=
e
hedgerows of France, the sands of N. Africa or in Russia; all these would=
be well along the self-recycling process by now.
The 2,000+ vehicles at Beltring this Sunday just gone had just one German=
tank and one SP gun in the number.
The best hopes are with the non-belligerents who equipped with German
armour eg., Spain and some S. American countries. There was a tidy examp=
le
(but possibly empty inside) at RR Motor Services in Kent earlier this yea=
r
but has not appeared in any advert here.
Far be it for anyone to tell you to give up, let alone me, but in all
practicality you may want to check that you have a bank account that
resembles a bottomless pit and all the free time in the world.
Good luck
Richard
(Southampton UK)
===
To unsubscribe from the mil-veh mailing list, send the single word
UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to <mil-veh-request@skylee.com>.