Armor mystery

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:20 pm

So here's an interesting one: today I was driving through Virginia when I happened upon the Danville Armor Museum, which boasts that at 114 vehicles, the largest private armor collection. They have stuff going from WW1 to present day, including A Mk IV H that they received in trade with the Israelis. Apparently it was captured from the Syrians in 67...so here's the mystery. I spent awhile chatting with the eccentric curator/owner of the museum, who desribed to me the shady wolrd of armor collectors and restorers. (who knew?) When we got on the subject of German armor, specifically Tiger Is, IIs and Panthers, I went over the known list of museum vehicles that i knew of. He laughed and said that there were many, many more, mostly in Eastern Europe that are in a "black market". He went so far as to say that he once was shown a warehouse with 7 fully restored Tiger Is, all ready for sale with pricetags of $7 million each. When I asked him where and when this was, he became very evasive. He also said there are many many others in private collections, more than just the ones Littlefield has in CA. what do you all think of this guy? his museum IS impressive, but dozens of Tigers & Panthers? many in running order? opinions?

Jason Pipes · Post by **Jason Pipes** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:34 pm

I doubt it... and at 114 examples I think Littlefield has more. I visited his collection and it was simply massive.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 6:06 pm

Hmmmmm....brings to mind the oficial "scam" run a couple of years ago; an official Russian govt. surplus auction website announced the sale of some running PZIVs and various personnel carriers, and a lot of German infantry weapons....

After a few weeks of getting bombarded by emails from collectors and interested parties from all over the world, and not answering, a notice went up on the site that - sorry, we don't have any PZIVs after all, but they DID have lot of surplus Warsaw Pact vehicles if anyone wanted to buy them LMAO

Only problem was - at THAT point the post-Cold War surplus world was literally flooded with Russian vehicles. You could buy T34s in Europe for $1000! I've heard of one guy in Essex in England who bought his ten year old warfilm-mad kid one for a birthday present!!!

Good advertsing scam - I wonder what would have given it away to anyone actually visiting the premises? Maybe the feckin' big Red Star on the turret???

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 6:37 pm

I've seen some of Littlefield's stuff on the net--does he have more than 114? I mean, I'm not knocking the Danville museum--they did have some rare and cool stuff. But what this guy was saying was interesting. He also told anecdotes about his travels to the former USSR where there were "tanks rusting in fields" and local museums ans still others hidden from the authoriites in barns. Aside for the 7 operational Tigers, he also claimed to have witnessed another site with several additional Tigers/Panthers. I mean, why would a guy with all those vehicles, with a nice collection, but limited means (most of the vehciles were donations and unrestored) tell me, an innocent joe, these tall tales?

http://www.aaftankmuseum.com

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 6:50 pm

Because you can't verify it? Maybe "but limited means" is the key; a prosperous but gullible would-be collector might be persuaded to dig deep in his pockets...

Jason Pipes · Post by **Jason Pipes** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 7:21 pm

I believe Littlefield has 200-250 AFVs in his collection, and the vast majority of them are restored or being restored. It's not in Danville either. It's in the South Bay, south of San Francisco. Danville is in the East Bay in another area.

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:16 pm

Jason Pipes wrote:I believe Littlefield has 200-250 AFVs in his collection, and the vast majority of them are restored or being restored. It's not in Danville either. It's in the South Bay, south of San Francisco. Danville is in the East Bay in another area.

LOL! I meant the one I was at today, Danville, Virginia.......far east bay

The guy admitted that Littlefield had more...but the thing I'm still scratching my head over is if there really are more Panzers than we the public know of that still exist. I mean why would this guy be talking smack?

Jason Pipes · Post by **Jason Pipes** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:35 pm

I am sure there are more than we collectively know of. To assume we know of them all would be silly. But multiple fully working Tigers waiting to be purchased in some back room? Sounds like fish stories to me.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:45 pm

I would certainly believe about the rusting hulks tale. There are old AFVs all over Europe...NATO wasn't the only Cold War bloc to shoot the sh1t out of some pretty rare Range Queens. Ages ago I posted up a link to a site where a group of guys had taken or collected pictures of range wrecks ALL over Western Europe - you'd be amazed what's sitting out there perforated....or even no badly damaged at all

Further East there's the whole problem of WHY collect all the scrap metal? In many cases it must surely have been more expensive to drag wrecked Panzers a batch at a time out of the steppe and ship them off to the tractor factories as to simply dig and process more iron ore a thousand miles closer to said factories

It made a LOT of sense to rescue and bring the mechanical non-runners back to life by cannibalisation; and these weren't squirrled away - there were nations like France who fielded several units of German AFVs in their armies IMMEDIATELY after the war, not JUST in the late 1950s and 1960s. There have been several threads on Feldgrau already about that. Bulgaria was I believe another; they had so much running German armour at the end of the war they held off for many years buying Russian despite the pressure to standardise on common Warsaw Pact equipment, and the Russians actually supplied them with a lot of salvaged items to flesh out their contribution to the Warsaw Pact numbers-wise.

Certainly enough survived in the 1960s to equip several regiments of Syrian armour - not ONLY did they buy Spanish and Turkish PzIVs as discussed before, but also large quantities of the Bulgarian items, and StuGs from all these sources. Remember - by then NONE of these will have come with spares kits! So to keep dozens running they'll have had dozens MORE to cannibalise!

We already know about Turkish, Bulgarian, Norwegian and other German-built types dug in as pillboxes when they reached the end of their mechanical lives - what we don't know is how many. Well, you don't build a defensive line with half a dozen pillboxes...! THAT will have taken dozens if not hundreds of time-expired tanks out of circulation through the 1950s and 1960s.

Finally, if all THAT doesn't account for the hundreds of Axis AFVs that must have survived the war...don't forget the recent attempts to STEAL various tanks from museums around Europe...

If these are supposedly available in such numbers already - why STEAL them from secure locations???

Carl Schwamberger · Post by **Carl Schwamberger** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:56 am

phylo_roadking wrote:

Further East there's the whole problem of WHY collect all the scrap metal? In many cases it must surely have been more expensive to drag wrecked Panzers a batch at a time out of the steppe and ship them off to the tractor factories as to simply dig and process more iron ore a thousand miles closer to said factories

From working in the steel fabricating industry I knw that scrap steep is much prefered to ore or pig iron for making raw steel. Salvaging the wrecks would depend on how close to a railroad they were.

phylo_roadking wrote: It made a LOT of sense to rescue and bring the mechanical non-runners back to life by cannibalisation; and these weren't squirrled away - there were nations like France who fielded several units of German AFVs in their armies IMMEDIATELY after the war, not JUST in the late 1950s and 1960s. There have been several threads on Feldgrau already about that. Bulgaria was I believe another; they had so much running German armour at the end of the war they held off for many years buying Russian despite the pressure to standardise on common Warsaw Pact equipment, and the Russians actually supplied them with a lot of salvaged items to flesh out their contribution to the Warsaw Pact numbers-wise.

Certainly enough survived in the 1960s to equip several regiments of Syrian armour - not ONLY did they buy Spanish and Turkish PzIVs as discussed before, but also large quantities of the Bulgarian items, and StuGs from all these sources. Remember - by then NONE of these will have come with spares kits! So to keep dozens running they'll have had dozens MORE to cannibalise!

We already know about Turkish, Bulgarian, Norwegian and other German-built types dug in as pillboxes when they reached the end of their mechanical lives - what we don't know is how many. Well, you don't build a defensive line with half a dozen pillboxes...! THAT will have taken dozens if not hundreds of time-expired tanks out of circulation through the 1950s and 1960s.

Finally, if all THAT doesn't account for the hundreds of Axis AFVs that must have survived the war...don't forget the recent attempts to STEAL various tanks from museums around Europe...

If these are supposedly available in such numbers already - why STEAL them from secure locations???

Nut cases with excess money wil buy anything. Be they millionares or someone with a agenda. As for theft, a large protion of theves are rather stupid and dont operate according to top drawer logic. The thieves may have been after the tanks for scrap sales. The prices for scrap metals have been rising steadily the past decade and the fools may have thought to drag the tank across the scales of the local scrap buyer.

I'll have to raise these questions at the nearby tank mueseum. Some eccentric millionare has a private collection, and a small but nice facility for restoring old tanks. They have a FT17 in better than new running condition

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:14 am

From working in the steel fabricating industry I knw that scrap steep is much prefered to ore or pig iron for making raw steel.

Agreed. But in large parts of Russia and Eastern Europe we're talking many hundreds of miles and often in VERY adverse terrain...Just this morning I came across a thread in an obscure forum about recovering AFVs in Russia - StuGs out of rivers , that sort of thing - from a guy who spends a part of his holidays trekking far into the interior in search of wrecks.

Scroll down to the bottom of the link...and scope out the condition of the PzIV in an otherwise bleak and totally empty landscape! I don't think there's a railway for some considerable distance. Or even a road...

http://rolfask.proboards56.com/index.cg ... 1201127638

Carl, I don't think the thing about stealing for scrap holds up. The investigations - all sub judice at the moment but some details have reached the press - seem to indicate stealing to order of various items, and very specifically targeted. One of those under investigation is on museum staff and knowledgeable about the material, and many of the missing items are known to have crossed national boundaries. My point is - why try to steal a rusty, crumbly PzIII covered in concrete...when for the same sort of money and less ultimate risk you can purchase a wreck or even a running type if your pockets are deep enough that's already on the black market???

Which is better? The threat of a conspiracy or theft charge hanging over your head, together with various breaches of export/import regulations to obtain a wreck you can never let see the light of day - or one with JUST the breaches of regulations hanging over its provenance? Erik's story could also be explained as "tank envy" (LOL) on the part of his museum owner tha HE'S stuck with scrap he can't afford to restore compared with the urban legends he hears about farmers with running Tigers in chicken sheds...

http://ww2chat.com/forums/news-articles ... theft.html
http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/ ... p?t=261705

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:32 am

Mind you, I did once accidently discover a collection of over 60 classic cars hdden in a club-owned chicken shed here in Northern Ireland! The farmer had built four new intensive-rearing sheds but regulations stopped him using them...so he converted two into small business units - and a local classic car club rents a thrid to pool and store their vehicles. I had a drop to a software house in one of the other sheds on the day before a huge classic car festival here - and drove past the open door of the storage unit where the club's private mechanic (!) was checking POL and batteries on vehicles for the next day! No external signs AT ALL of occupancy - and a VERY large dog!

Sixty British cars, or a Tiger tank...I'd take the Tiger, it would be marginally more reliable!

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:50 am

Eccentric millionaires are nice people!

http://alpinefighter.co.nz/pages/afc.html

...'cos they get to being millionaires by knowing how to manage tax write-offs!!!

michael kenny · Post by **michael kenny** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:34 pm

and scope out the condition of the PzIV in an otherwise bleak and totally empty landscape

The PzIV looks 'Syrian' to me. I doubt it is Russia.

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:03 am

. As for theft, a large protion of theves are rather stupid and dont operate according to top drawer logic.

how right you are! listen to this: when I was growing up, my dad was friends with an old man in the neighborhood. Seems he was in the US Army in the war and participated in the campaigns in the west from Normandy until shrapnel from a mortar round hit him in the head in April or May of 45. He still has a bad constant ringing in his ears...All across France and Germany, he sent home multiple boxes full of artifacts that he collected along the way. He was a bit of an eccentric, and throughout his house he had the most extensive collection I have ever seen in one place. I'm saying the guy had hundreds of uniforms, from Afrika Korps officers tunics to Allegemeine SS to everything in between. Most were on manequins throughout the house (creepy, I know). He had Lugers, 2 working MP40s, several K98s...He had trays and trays of medals, china, artworks, sculptures, everything. Even a Dachau SS camp guard's uniform with cuff title.

One day he called my dad in a panic saying his house had been burglarized. I feared the worst. When we got there, the only thing missing was his (betamax!) VCR and an old 19" TV.....

Ive often wondered if old John is still alive and what his ignorant and greedy offspring has done with his proceless collection....