A LT-35 light tank, captured during the war by USA and taken to APG, was given to our Military Institute of History. Today it was unloaded in Hamburg and should arrive tomorrow.
The mil-tech museum is planning to restore the vehicle back to a running condition. Yay! Looking forward to it. On the downside, it means that the Ah-IV-Sv tankette (I believe in Sweden it was Strv. M/37) reconstruction will be delayed, but it's worth it!

http://zpravy.idnes.cz/historicky-tank-uko...zajimavosti_lpo

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Awesome!

For some strange reason the LT-35 is one of my favourite tanks.

I'm having a hard time resisting the temptation to quibble about it being a light tank, I always thought of it as a medium in its day.

It'd be great to see her running again, not that I need an excuse to go back to the Czech Republic, Praha was lovely when I visited.

Congratulations!

Yet another benefit of being friends with those of Sam eh?

We'll gladly take beer and cute Czech women as thanks!

If you'd want to see our mil. technical museum, come from May to September. If you want to see tankies driving around, come on the last weekend of August or first of September. And anyway let me know in advance you're coming

Glad you guys get it instead of Aberdeen. That operation is the greatest travesty of AFV preservation I have yet seen.

Saw pictures of the inside. All rusty, but according to the chief of our museum, seems the engine and transmission are complete so it will be possible to use some parts and there will be musters in case new parts have to be built. Yay!

Yeah. Unfortunate too. Great collection that is just rusting away.

Scott speaks words of wisdom and truth. Every time I think about it I get angry.

Funny thing is, aberdeen cant preserve anything. Their entire budget goes to painting them and making them envoronmentaly 'safe". It costs a fortune and all you get is 1-2 painted tanks per year with all the POL drained out.

Freakin fiasco.

We've got cheap assed ware houses all over the US. Move the frikken vehicles from out of the rain and weather and put them on concrete inside something like a bloody pole barn. They'd be 100 times better in there.

"Hey, we drained all the oil out of this thing years ago. I can't understand why the crank and block are all rusted up on the inside?!"

or

"I've got a great idea. Let's put all these rare, historical vehicles outside and throw a tarp over them. That'll show the Brits and Frenchies we know how to preserve history!"

and lastly:

"Damn, we've ruined every single piece we have here by neglect, incompetence, and sheer stupidity. Let's go after the private collections, we can confiscate them so we'll have new pieces to replace the ones we ruined (I wonder if we can confiscate their tarps too-wouldn't that be great?)

You made those statements up, right? Right?

I had to ask; while I tend toward irrational optimism, I'm aware that otherwise intelligent, reasonable humans can be inexplicably dumb...

And you wouldn't have to bother about environment-proofing them either, most likely.

I made up the statements but I have seen every one of those things for myself first hand as they happened.

Why does Aberdeenneglect their exponates this way?? Disgusting!








100 miles are a long way, 100years long time...

Life is like this. Aberdeen's Ordnance Museum is a training aid of the Ordnance School. It administers much besides the AFV collection: perhaps the world's finest collection of machine guns for instance, as well as other small arms, etc. As it is located on the same base as the proving ground, where much scientific exploitation of foreign armor occured, plus some testing of US prototypes, it has access to these vehicles in their final state of rest. This is why the notorious cutaways of German vehicles occurred, later partially covered with thin sheet metal. They were training aids.

The Ordnance Museum acquired the collection by default. Now for the reality. How many Chiefs of Ordnance vs. armor generals become C/S of the army? How many ordnance officers are there in the Ordnance Assn, vs. armor officers in the Armor Assn? So, Ft Knox has resources far exceeding Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Ordnance Schools.

The recently retired Dr. Jack Atwater inherited the problem: lots of deteriorating vehicles and few resources. He made use of the environmental laws [cleverly in my opinion] to begin hauling them into a facility funded to strip the lead paint, pull the radium dials, etc. The vehicles I have seen in the works have been stripped out internally and externally, repainted and placed in shelter provided by old warehouses. The process is slow and there are lots of vehicles.

In addition, this is hardly a case for how great the Knox Museum is and how crappy is the Ordnance Museum. Both are 'owned' by the Chief of Military History, not the museum curators, and it is CMH who allocates the scarce resources, leaving the rest to the donations and volunteers attracted by the museums, hence the relative importance of the number of Ordnance officers vs. number of Armor officers in the army.

The moving of the Ordnance School and its Museum to Virginia will greatly complicate things; but Ft. Knox will apparently keep the Armor Museum, while the Armor Center moves to Georgia [Ft Benning]. Thus the massive Boatwright Maint Facility of Ft Knox will decline to a brigade maint area, Benning's will swell to serve the Armor Center of Excellence. Then the Armor Museum will have fewer resources and likely depend on more volunteers. Neither of these events augers well for the future.

It is not simply case of, well, send them all to Knox. Knox neither wants them all, nor has it any resources for them all.

Well said Ken. I'm curious about your statement above. Have you heard something new? As far was we know, most of the Patton Museum's armor and other vehicles are still going to the new Armor Museum at Benning to support the new Armor Center.

Garry

Well, I am behind the times, then. I thought that the locals had won their case. I knew Col Gold, the C/S there in 2006 and he was tearing out his hair over the log problems of the potential move. This will amke for more curiosities, such as the considerable investment made in the memorial garden of the present Armor Museum.