Tank graveyard

[Legbreaker]

Absolutely heartbreaking to a military enthusiast.
I wonder how many more places like it are scattered around the world.
How much drooling would the average PC group be doing if they stumbled across it How much wailing once they realised they'd all seized up and were almost all basically irreparable

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015/07/abandoned-soviet-tank-graveyard-kharkov-ukraine/

[aspqrz]

Irrepairable

Almost certainly not.

As long as the hulls are sound all they need is a new engine, drive train, transmission, probably a new suspension, new road wheels (or can they replace the rubber rims never been a Tanker, don't know), a new gun and fire control system, new electronics etc.

And the finished result would be fine ...

... but it would be costly.

And you could buy more modern tanks.

The real reason would be mainly because the old Soviet era idea of massed tank attacks where 2-3 cheap Soviet tanks can die for each expensive western one and yet still win ... don't cut it any more.

So, economically, there's no need to refurbish them ... it's not that it's impossible.

AIUI there were similar depots scattered across the USSR (when it was still the USSR) into the 1980s with T-34s and T-44s and late WW2 or immediate postwar armoured vehicles in mothballs, with small maintenance cadres at a TO&E level below even Category III units, all waiting for their day of need ... which, of course, never came.

If something like the Twilight War had been fought, you would have seen them back in service ... eventually ...

Different times.

Phil

[Legbreaker]

Irrepairable

In the T2K sense I meant where the PCs only have the resources at their finger tips. In other words, maybe they'd be able to cobble together a handful of tanks out of the hundreds in the facility, but the rest would be essentially impossible with the available resources.

Of course in T2K those particular tanks wouldn't be anywhere near as deteriorated (20 years less than in the pictures) and almost certainly have already been refurbished and put back into service by 1997 at the latest. The facility, and the factory down the road the article mentioned, would also likely attract a nuke.

However, throwing something like that at PCs (perhaps a forgotten underground storage facility full of T-34s) could be fun for the more evil GM.

[rcaf_777]

Hard to say what your PC could find, in areas of recent fighting you find AFV that are awaiting salvage or repair and possible the repair recovery or salvage crew

In other areas you might find AFV hulls strip of all their usefully parts. I could see this being a business done by military and civilians, hulls would be the only thing left behind, and that would depend on the demand of scrap metal and weather someone could recycle it.

There was a Canadian LAV that a combat loss in Afghanistan after all the useable materials and components were removed the LAV was basically destroyed by an airstrike. Locals then came out cut up what they could with torches and sold it for scrap in Pakistan. There was still a lot of metal left behind as they did have anything an industrial scale.

I will look around for some pictures that I might have.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Those tanks would have all been long-before committed to the front. What they'd find is an empty, weedy lot.

[Raellus]

A lot of those tanks appear to covered in reactive armor blocks. Wouldn't that mean that there was explosive still in there How would that hold up over time and exposed to the elements

[Targan]

I saw that article earlier this week on a T2K page on Facebook. Incredible pictures.

[Targan]

A lot of those tanks appear to covered in reactive armor blocks. Wouldn't that mean that there was explosive still in there How would that hold up over time and exposed to the elements

I wondered the same thing.

[Legbreaker]

Those tanks would have all been long-before committed to the front. What they'd find is an empty, weedy lot.

Undoubtedly, but what if by some miracle they were still there Or it was full of battle damaged tanks - not impossible since the facility was meant to refurbish tanks.

A lot of those tanks appear to covered in reactive armour blocks. Wouldn't that mean that there was explosive still in there How would that hold up over time and exposed to the elements

I would think the blocks are sealed from the elements, but after 20 years or so who knows VERY slack to have left them installed I'd think, even with the guards the facility is supposed to have, but then it is in the Ukraine and nobody ever accused communist/socialist workers of being particularly efficient at anything...

[ArmySGT.]

Visit the German tank graveyard if you are playing a later timeline.

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015/07/rockensussra-german-tank-graveyard-dismantling-facility/

[Legbreaker]

Visit the German tank graveyard if you are playing a later timeline.

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015...ling-facility/

All that hardware being scrapped! I could almost cry!

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Undoubtedly, but what if by some miracle they were still there Or it was full of battle damaged tanks - not impossible since the facility was meant to refurbish tanks.

And when the same question gets brought up about the Littlefield Collection or the Patton Museum the response is that it's an impossibility. So I would rate this junkyard the same, then.

[Legbreaker]

Museums aren't large workshops specifically intended to refurbish and repair AFVs (although they may have a small workshop attached). Therefore the likelihood of vehicles being present has to be greater (although still relatively low).
This of course presumes the facility and the factory down the road weren't targeted by nukes or bombed conventionally until they were wastelands (highly likely).

[StainlessSteelCynic]

The other important distinction is that a museum like the Littlefield Collection or the Patton Museum typically has one, two, maybe three examples of a given vehicle and they have a large range of different vehicles, all with their own requirements for parts & maintenance.
A refurbishing/maintenance/repair depot has dozens upon dozens of the same vehicle moving through so the likelihood of having the right repair gear and the correct spare parts for that vehicle is much, much higher.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Museums aren't large workshops specifically intended to refurbish and repair AFVs (although they may have a small workshop attached).

Littlefield and a handful of volunteers took absolute wrecks and turned them into not only factory-fresh looking but running and fully operational examples of AFVs, and not just WWII vehicles either (and what of it if they were WWII-era: if I have a tank, even if it's very very old and you have no tank at all I win).

His "small machine shop" helped get a hundred various AFVs up and running. So discounting some of the Soviet equipment he might not have in the T2k setting and...what, that still leaves 80-90 pieces.

I'm not trying to rehash the seemingly endless debate about whether or not the MVTS is a viable resource, but I think it's utterly hypocritical for anyone to say "Oh look a bunch of non-running Soviet tanks that have been sitting in the elements for over a decade, these are totally usable" and then dismiss the MVTS as useless, or next-to as the sometimes conciliatory posts seem to be. More to the point, I reiterate: those tanks would have already been used, and would have never fallen to that state anyway. At the worst they'd have been a Category-B division, well before the bombs.