UTMC

How fucking cool would this be?

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It always amazes me how strong steel cable is.
Also, watching them drag it upside down was a little gut wrenching. Probably the only way to do it without making the process super expensive, but still, I wonder what kind of small parts and details got messed up, or broken off and left in the bog.

WeAintFoundShit wrote:It always amazes me how strong steel cable is.
Also, watching them drag it upside down was a little gut wrenching. Probably the only way to do it without making the process super expensive, but still, I wonder what kind of small parts and details got messed up, or broken off and left in the bog.

I can't believe they got the treads to turn....

Judging by the still frames of the related videos after the end, it would appear that similar discoveries/recoveries happen from time to time, and are not entierly uncommon. Which then begs the question, Finders Keepers?
Also, I wonder if the drivetrain has to be in neutral in order to pull it with the tracks spinning, or is that turning the engine at the same time like it would pushing a bike stuck in gear?

I was composing a joke in my mind about how 'now the tanker truck of WD-40 will pull up', and then I saw the treads start to turn and was really impressed. I guess that bog stuff must be 'neutral' in some way that inhibits corrosion as well as sometimes preserving mammalian tissue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body


And yeah, hat's off to the strength of steel cable in this vid. Steel cable, making it look easy.

I suspect that any force strong enough to get such a lump of metal moving would be strong enoug to turn the entire drivetrain.

I also suspect that the amount of things they could have broken off in the overturning would have been limited.
I mean, for real, it's a tank. It's built to survive being shot at, being flamethrowered, having enormous explosions happen around it all the time while keeping frail humans inside alive. There is only one expression, doubly appropriate - it's built like a tank.

Bogs are excellent at preserving organic things because of the lack of oxygen and stuff, whatever grease was on them axles was probably not only not-attacked but preserved.

Between here, where I'm sitting, and Moscow or Kiev for that matter, there must be hundreds if not thoursands of tanks and other military items like artillery pieces, stacks of ammo, trucks, not to mention soldiers, buried in bogs, inaccessible valleys, etc. Very few, of course, in anything like what seems to be the museum-ready state of this one, but many largely in one piece (if only with an enormous hole in it).

From what I understand, they find these things and then sell them or restore them themselves. But yeah, quite a find. I'm thinking it was in neutral, otherwise they'd be trying to turn an engine that's hydrolocked. Not likely.
But steel cable, yeah. Good stuff. I work with it every day.

On edit, though it'd be cool to have one of these things just to wrench on, the price other people have paid to make it even exist really wouldn't make it worth it, considering what it stands for. But if I lived over there, you bet I'd find my way to ownership of one.

I understand that it's a tank and all, but tanks still probably had mounts for antennae, ammo cans, shovels, and whatever else one may want to bolt on a tank. Plus you can see some damage on the fenders that may or may not have been there beforehand. And what of things like hinges on access hatches machine guns, and armor for the machine gunner?

So while I don't expect any real structural damage or anything, it still kind of made me cringe a little bit to imagine all of these details getting scraped off and left in the mud.

I checked the specs on that thing. Just south of 24 tons. That's a lot of dead weight to move around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmgesch%C3%BCtz_III

Ah, a self-propelled artillery piece, not a battle tank. Though I'd imagine it would do a lot of damage in such a role, too.

24 tons is resonably light for a large armored vehilce, the Sherman tank put down 30 tons, the Soviet Iosef Stalin tank 46 tons.

Pattio wrote:And yeah, hat's off to the strength of steel cable in this vid. Steel cable, making it look easy.

...until it doesn't. A friend of mine was the XO on a fairly large navy ship (destroyer tender? I'm not sure), they had to attempt to tow another ship, nearly as large, disabled in foul weather and in danger of turning broadside to the waves and capsizing. The steel tow cable parted under load, snapped back, and went right through 6 inches of steel armor plating.

I worked with a guy that was on an MSC vessel over in...I dunno, over in the Gulf. They were getting off the dock with a pilot, and the pilot gave the order for ahead half or something and had forgotten to let go one of the wires that holds the ship to the dock. The line handler was standing next to the bollard, waiting to take it off.
Turned him into a red mist.
The pilot refused to get off the ship because he would have been summarily executed, so they had to take him all the way back to the States for political asylum. He left his country and everything else that day, family, all his worldy posessions, etc with the clothes on his back and a cell phone.

But yeah wire typically gives little warning. Rope, at least, will stretch (which actually makes things waaaay more exciting) and if there's any moisture in it will actually steam right before it breaks.
The more modern aramids not so much, they just kind of fall apart.