Landships II

Pzkpfw-e · Commander in Chief

Ex-Aberdeen Proving Ground tanks at Anniston

Gwyn Evans · Legend

Thanks for the links, depressing though the state of these historic vehicles is.

Gwyn

James H · Legend

Anniston, Alabama? Acc to this http://www.ordmusfound.org/ APG's stock is being moved to Virginia. Article dated today.

CharlieC · Legend

The date may be today's but it seems to be written into the page on the webserver. A quick check with archive.org shows this page has the same text

and varying dates. I haven't worked through the archive.org snapshots to figure out when the likely article date was.

As far as I know the Aberdeen collection has been dispersed to Fort Lee, VA, some of the artillery to Fort Sill, OK and the residue to storage at Anniston.

Regards,

Charlie

-- Edited by CharlieC on Monday 9th of February 2015 01:22:18 AM

Tim R · Hero

Anniston Alabama wink

28juni14 · Hero

The demise of many, many tanks, artillery, and support vehicles at Aberdeen is a sad story. After the armistice, literally tons of German material was brought back to the USA; ostensibly for evaluation. There was so much that most wasn't even examined.( Hundreds of vehicles sat on the warves at Hoboken, NJ for a couple years waiting for transit to Aberdeen. (Finally, they were all reloaded on barges and dumped in the Atlantic.) The Aberdeen collection sat undisturbed until the WW2 scrap drives. Then a decision was made to get rid of all WW1 items, hence the disappearance of the A7v, 42CM möser, and a host of artillery pieces. The only surviving WW1 items were the Ruski 152mm Howitzer, and the 8,8cm K Flak; and then only because they were mistaken as WW2 items. Oh, but our administrators weren't through, The Korean War gave fresh effort to thinning out the storage grounds and more stuff went in 1954 during yet another scrap drive ( yes, after the 1953 armistice ). Some more rare stuff went again, tanks and more tanks; to include the rare Jap Engineer mine clearing armored vehicle.

I might add all this was done by uniformed Army field grade personnel; not civilian administrators. But lest you chose to forget, the Brits are also culpable in this shameful behavior; remember the ultra rare Ausf. F Panther turret used on the target range over there.

James H · Legend

We can hardly point the finger when you consider our Crystal Palace episode.

But what strikes me now is that I've lost track of surviving WWI vehicles in the US. At one time they were all comfortably in two or three locations (Fort Knox, Aberdeen, etc) but now they seem to be dispersed ever more widely. Is there an up-to-date list of where everything is?

Massimo Foti · Colonel

When it comes to tanks, the PDF files available here are usually very much up to date:
the.shadock.free.fr/ww1.html

Pzkpfw-e · Commander in Chief

28juni14 wrote:

But lest you chose to forget, the Brits are also culpable in this shameful behavior; remember the ultra rare Ausf. F Panther turret used on the target range over there.

As an aside, that was many years ago, firstly sat outside Bovington (I remember seeing it in the 1970's*) as a rusty object, now it's been cleaned & painted, and put inside. Sturmtiger & Bergepanther were consigned to the ranges too. Our junking of captured A7V is well know to members. None of these items, however, were in the national museum's care. That's what annoys me the most.

It's the way they've been left outside to rot that bugs me, even we managed to get the WW1 stuff undercover 30+ years ago.

* Recovered from Larkhill in 1976, I see.

28juni14 · Hero

Oh, I could not agree with you more. We, in America, may not have the corner on historical ignorance, but I'm sure we're near the top. Examples of naivety are endless. As an example, shortly after the war, the French government sent 48 box cars( 40 or 8 as they were refereed to by the AEF ), one for each US state. Most are gone today; rotted, stolen, or torn apart for metal scrap. In the early 20s the army tried to get rid of surplus war booty at Aberdeen by making cannon available for display at the newly crated American Legion parks. Most of them were allowed to rust away into ugly oblivion.

However, once in awhile someone steps forward and rescues these pieces from extinction; even as Ralph Lovett did with the only surviving( that I'm aware of) Ger. articulated MG wagon from the artillery range at Ft. Hood.

LincolnTanker · Commander in Chief

A bit off topic, but its not only Historic Landships that are lost, Historic Seaships can suffer the same fate. This happened in 2004, please note the comment at the end of the fist paragraph http://www.prinzeugen.com/S97.htm

This gladdens the heart though. http://www.bmpt.org.uk/boats/S130/index1.htm

-- Edited by LincolnTanker on Friday 13th of February 2015 08:24:22 PM

CharlieC · Legend

One of the more interesting tanks ex-Aberdeen was the M1922 - it's the only surviving tank with a snake track and cable suspension. It seems the Ordnance Corps were

interested in exploring Johnson's designs and reworked the M1921 medium tank prototype with the advanced track and suspension. I haven't seen any recent images

of the M1922 at Anniston - I hope it just hasn't rotted away.

Regards,

Charlie

Rob · Legend

Was going to a post a new thread but spotted this one - is there any update as to the condition of the ex-Aberdeen Mk IV and Whippet?

lostiznaos · Field Marshal

Aberdeen is an important place in the US tanks history, but it seems to be close to some hell regarding the conservation of armoured vehicles...