Military Collectors, Eat Your Heart Out!
Many people enjoy collecting things. Some even collect military items and other military memorabilia.
But this one is going to be pretty hard to top. In fact, maybe this guy went a bit overboard.
Seems a 78 year old German man in the town of Heikendorf had an interesting collection in his cellar. As you might guess, his collection included a few old German military items.
Including a torpedo, an anti-aircraft gun, some other old weapons . . . and a complete Panther tank, circa 1943.
The man also apparently made no real secret of the fact that he had the tank. The town’s mayor indicated he’d been seen driving it previously during the 1978 snow emergency in the region.
German authorities have at least temporarily confiscated the man’s collection. It’s unclear whether he’s broken German law or not, since the weapons the man owned appear to have been rendered inoperative.
“…a torpedo, an anti-aircraft gun, some other old weapons . . . and a complete Panther tank, circa 1943.”
Clearly a man who takes the zombie apocalypse seriously.
That comment just made my coworker look at me funny. Slow day at work today since everybody is probably still hung over from the 4 day and don’t feel like shooting.
Well…I’ll leave this link here and see what others think. It appears as though you CAN actually buy a tank.
http://www.mortarinvestments.eu/
May he just thought the reich would rise again? And you know ol’ buddy, it kinda has….HERE!
Man cave + 1000
So they’re inoperative, but still taken. I suppose they had some illegal Nazi markings stenciled on them, or something.
Having no Naval experience I could do without the torpedo. However, the tank and AA gun sound, just cool.
He had a tank, now that’s defensive driving!! 😀
I wonder if he got it from Oddball
A Panther? Seriously? He must be tight with some local mechanics. Those things were normally expected to use no more than half a tank of gas before they broke down and needed major shop work, usually the transmission, IIRC. Cool souvenir ride, but keeping the bitch running must be a pain in the ass.
In any event, I doubt anybody ever tried to cop a feel on his daughter!
In my time in Germany, I was shown more than a few private collections of weapons and uniforms. Always after I had the trust of my neighbors, and (almost) always under strict OPSEC and a few biers. I never asked…always got the “Can I show you something?” from the collector/owner.
Poland and France are still great places to go souvenir hunting. The Polish pottery guy my Frau frequented had a barn full of stuff, all for sale. But I never saw a Panzer für verkaufen…would have been hell to ship back. Emissions and oil leaks…
“military memorabilia”? He collects tanks for the memories!
While attending Georgia Tech back in 1977-78, my fraternity (Phi Kappa Sigma) acquired a WWII surplus tank engine from some govt agency for what I seem to remember was 40 dollars. It was packed in grease in a crate and took a bunch of us about a month and a half to restore to working order. We had a hell of a float in the annual Ramblin Wreck parade that year…
That was only part of the reason I flunked out of Tech….
That’s nothing. Last year, the Austrian government excavated what is thought to have been the SS’s nuclear development laboratory, buried underground. I kid you not. Radiation leaks gave it away.
http://www.newser.com/story/200626/secret-underground-nazi-wmd-factory-found-report.html
320,000 inmates of the local concentration camp worked and died down there to build The Bomb for the Reichstag.
The buzzbomb launch rails are still there. They were never taken down after WWII.
What else is over there?
Nice link.
I want a tank, I have this plan to make the worlds largest potato gun:)
I think I read somewhere recently (within the past year or two) about the finding of a WWII era tank (German? Russian?) found buried in the mud in the middle of a forest (again, German? Russian?).
Hell’of’a job to unbury it and pull it out.
Yeah, there’s lots of weird stuff still out there in the world, just waiting to be (re)found.
(Still looking for Bigfoot).
Finland, if memory serves.
You are right on both counts. A few years back they found a T-34 in Estonia that the Germans had captured and repurposed for their own use. Some kid saw the Germans drive it into a lake during their retreat west. He told folks about it 60 years later and they found it right where he said it was.
http://rense.com/general75/germ2.htm
That’s the one.
I remember seeing a documentary on the subject of old weapons found out in the forest near old battlefields. It was pretty cool. There are some guys that specialize in doing this type of thing kinda like metal detectors on a large scale. Involves tons of research to pinpoint engagements, troop movements etc. Really neat
I think that was a T-34 they found in a swamp.
http://www.military.com/video/combat-vehicles/combat-tanks/russian-tank-pulled-from-swamp/1990480415001/
The guy in Germany not only had a Panther tank, he had an 88mm anti-aircraft gun. I wonder if that was “inoperable”?
I’ve heard there’s a Stuart tank sitting out in the woods in central Louisiana, left behind from the Louisiana maneuvers. It’s on one of the old Army camps, and only a few people know it’s out there. Fairly well rusted up, and half buried, but still just sitting there, waiting for someone to come along and rehabilitate it.
I can think of a few places where that Panther Tank would come in handy….and not too far from here.
that wasn’t a “cellar”, it was a bunker.
Yeah…just how big of a cellar do you need to store a friggen tank? I’m also kinda wondering. If he was out cruising around in it why send recovery tanks and take so long to load it up? He could have just driven out into the yard and onto a heavy drop deck trailer
I like militaria as much as the next guy but, I must say, I prefer to see enemy tanks with at least one good hole in them.
Maybe that Panther tank is what was permanently seared into Paul Dean Fultz aka Terrell Anquoe’s memory…. aw, no it was Tiger tanks, never mind.
I just have a few patches and a couple of guns. I want to cruise around in a tank with a torpedo.
That old German dude is a god among collectors.
He’s impressive but falls way Short of God Status. Kevin Wheatcroft in England and the late Jaque Littlefield of California had hundreds of AFVs,,, Tigers Panthers, Shermans, T-34s.
I don’t he has been able to drive it for quite some time.
Just keeping the parts in the same area and painted is an accomplishment.
The guy had a shitload of cash top be able to do this. There used top be a show on the military Channel called “Tank Overhaul”. Loved it.
There are probably only 50 or so Pasnthers in museums today, or actually parts of them. Only about 7000 were built, and most of them fought in Russia.
Most of them were recovered and scrapped for metal.
Speaking of tank owners with loads of cash: https://www.yahoo.com/movies/bp/arnold-schwarzenegger-takes-own-personal-tank-spin-000359471.html
I had always heard the rumor that he bought his old tank from his days in the Austrian Army. Yahoo just confirmed it for me.
IIRC someone discovered an unopened bunker in Belgium a few years back. They discovered a large cashe of German small arms. The offshoot was that they flooded the market with Walther P-38’s.
I remember when I was doing Civil War Reenacting in the early 1990s when word came out that about 10,000 .58 caliber Springfield CW rifles were found in US Government storage. They were sold to collectors, thus the price of an original Springfield took a nosedive for a little while.
I did reenacting as well. I ran into a couple of guys that had been in it for a while, including a retired Navy Captain who put together his firts kit before the Centenial.
The first reenactors often used originals. Once in a while I would run into a guy that had an original piece. Most just took them for show.
Just checked out the article here – dude had a 88 as an AA gun! FREAKIN’ SWEET!!!
http://www.newser.com/story/209357/wwii-tank-was-stashed-in-78-year-olds-cellar.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=foxnews&utm_campaign=rss_science_syn
It was for ducks.
So, as most of you dickweeds know, I sometimes sit back, lurk …absorb comments and after deep introspection … I might comment … So here it is:
I loath everything about Nazi Germany and any remaining factions of belief that may still be alive anywhere in the world.
However, if this man had a connection with his branch of service and or truly believed in the preservation of history … then I owe him a beer!
A friggin’ torpedoe … OUTSTANDING!
Hey, this past weekend I remember reading an online article with a video about some of the small arms used in Syria – including a shitload of StG 44’s
When I was a Bde S4 in the FRG in th late 80s at an old grass strip we were putting in some quarters. Got a call and what did we find, but the fuel tanks for the WWII German night fighters still full of avgas. And then there were the panzerfausts as well in another location. The Corps G4 did not think my message requesting instructions on how to dispose of captured enemy war material was very funny.
Anybody that likes following restoration projects here is a facebook page that guy from England has.
He traded a working schimmwagen he had restored for a StugIII Tank destroyer. The man is an absolute wizard with steel, a cutting torch and welding machine.
https://www.facebook.com/StugIIIAusfDRestoration?fref=ts
Read on a german news site he helped a neighbor pull stumps with one of his vehicles
If I get a chance this weekend and it isn’t raining, I know some place nearby where I can shoot pictures of tanks no longer in use.
I’ll get some for you.
Never mind. This is simpler, and I don’t have to drive anywhere.
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x8860668a6f522005:0x5df73f1ef3ef53f1!2m5!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i100!3m1!7e1!4shttps://plus.google.com/110540180387615018109/photos?hl%3Den%26socfid%3Dweb:lu:kp:placepageimage%26socpid%3D1!5sMilitary+Museum+in+wisconsin+-+Google+Search&sa=X&ei=84edVeDvMYzBsAXkrLPYBQ&ved=0CKIBEKIqMAo