The Problem With Captured Tanks

Sort of the same thing with fighter aircraft. The gasoline the mustangs used was far better than the gasoline the Germans had. Made a big difference in performance.

your post is interesting, and here’s why. At Freeman field they flew German, Japanese airplanes against U.S. equipment. My ex’s uncle was part of that group, and I can still hear Raymond talking about those long nosed FW’s. They used clean 130 Octane gas on everything, and the D9 and Ta152 out classed everything at nearly all altitudes. They used everything from the P47 to the P51 with a few Navy planes tossed in there as well. Would never have thought the difference between 103 Octane and 130 Octane would be that much of a difference.
gary

but a flawed design. Fire a round, and you cannot reload it till you depress the barrel to a certain position. Plus the 75mm anti tank round in the Panther would penetrate the IS2 from the side or front anyway. It’s just that reloading the IS2 seriously slowed it down.
gary

Just asking, could it have been possible that the Germans captured one of the up armored T-34 E tanks and put it to use?

~ Eddy :tophat:

That’s very similar to a local story that floated around an old air base here in Indiana that was used to evaluate WW2 fighters during and after the war.

freeman Field is located down in southern Indiana. There even a video clip is a show and tell they did down there. Remember the giant JU290 flying in. Now thy have been searching for the sight they buried the aircraft. They’ve found some bits and piece, but nothing major last I heard. Problem is that Raymond was one of the very last ones that were there, and he died about twenty years ago. Probably under the highway that goes near it.
gary

That’s it. Hadn’t heard anymore about the buried and or missing planes.

they contacted me once or twice trying to find Raymond, but he died in a car wreck in Columbus IN. Miss hunting with him.
gary

That’s a sad turn of event’s.

Probably true. Nellis Air Force Base, supposedly where we keep space aliens, is actually a proving ground for captured enemy aircraft and experimental designs.

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Why would they take the effort to bury the aircraft? Just cut them up for scrap like they do for other aircraft. Sounds like an urban legend.

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UL possible…however the planes were at the base and evaluated there. That was established. The story I was told was 17 planes were discovered as unaccounted for as scrap. It was said they were buried…the real UL is that they were not buried but relocated…and some of them are still around…

Sort of like that story of a Panther in some guys basement in Germany…

While that might seem far feteched, in the Mid-West land with lots of farms, big barns, hot sun & Good Ole Boys …I wouldn’t rule out the possibility one or more of those planes eventually showing up…

As for time? Crush with bull dozer and push some dirt over the remains…way faster.

As for not selling for scrap no idea…I do know sometimes brand new jet engines get tossed into the ocean when a carrier is coming in for refit…there are some areas of military logistics I won’t claim to understand :wink:

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When I was a manager at Borders Books we ripped covers off paperbacks when returning excess inventory and just sent those back for credit. The books themselves we dumped to be shredded. When factoring in the labor of sending them back to a warehouse and having people resort returning inventory and put it away or process to send elsewhere, it was considered cheaper to just order more from the publisher.

Apparently those new engines weren’t considered worth their weight in scrap? Which seems awfully unlikely to me.

apparently not! They did bury them, but now the NASM wants them. They have found some landing gear struts from an FW190 or TA152, but not the big find so far. The real problem is that they may be buried in the surrounding farm land (back in the 1940’s), and now there is at least one housing development near there. The highway was not there then, and the road it replaced is several hundred yards to the north. It’s quite possible that they are under the highway. Raymond’s daughter Carol was asked about it, but she was too young to have been there (as in not born yet). His wife had Dementia when she passed on, so that was a dead end.

You take a look at the videos of Freeman Field, and look at it now. It’s like a different planet! The only thing I see unchanged is the runway direction. Plus it looks to me like it’s a quarter mile further north. As for scrap metal, aluminum was worth much of anything in 1946.

The Fed losses stuff all the time, and a lot of the time doesn’t miss it till found. Take the case of four brand new Jumo 004 jet engines found in their shipping crates in 2001. They’d been stored in an off site test cell since 1945, and were simply forgotten about. I that same test cell was everything to build V1710 engines minus the cylinder blocks (several engines).
gary