Abrams tank recovery or ultimate camouflage?

[RonW]

I stumbled across this picture and wondered what the story behind it was…

As you can see it was stuck pretty bad. I recognized a Swedish uniform, but also that mud. Real horrible stuff. It is called “blålera” or “blue mud” and if you get stuck in that… you have an issue!

So I dug a bit more. Turns out it was during an exercise in Sweden, 2017… and things got from bad to worse.
1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armor on Facebook

So… what happened??
Knowing this kind of “soil” I figured it would have dug in, whilst being pulled out… and yes, indeed it did! A full hulldown!!
reddit - M1A1 Abrams stuck in mud

Figured I’d share it with you all. Great references ‘n’ all…

[Tank_1812]

That tank crew is going to be busy for a while.

[Dan]

I know a guy who was there!

[Tank_1812]

A good idea for the Tamiya kit as you don’t need to worry about adding anti skid or care about rubber band tracks.

You can use the Trumpeter kit for the hull down position.

[Frenchy]

Replicating this

should make the paint chipping/no paint chipping question take second place…

H.P.

[TopSmith]

Just pile up dirt. Paint dark chocholate and stick a gun tube in it. A 30 minute build. If you want to up the detail, have two tow cables coming out of the chocolate pile.

[SableLiger]

Yeah; that’s gonna be one hell of a clean-up at the wash rack. Everyone in the platoon will be there with shovels and pressure hoses.

That’s almost as bad as pulling an old T-34 out of a bog.

Russian T34 pulled from a bog

[Delta21]

Lol. Solid drive into a ditch at night by D-33 in 1985. A few days after this happened, the tank was in a rollover on the way back to Schweinfurt from Area Mud.

[SableLiger]

“become a tanker” they said… “It’ll be fun” they said.

[tankerken]

Isn’t that one that they sent to Ukraine?
Ken

[SableLiger]

I think that particular T-34, complete with genuine “Balkenkreutz” was fished out of the Narva River, in Estonia.