Pages

▼

Sunday, 8 June 2014

Holidays and Tiger Tanks...Northern France around 1967


Picture says it all. We were driving along a French main road somewhere in the North of France (caravan holiday as was the habit back then) when my mum shouted out to stop. Lo and behold at the side of the road in a small wooded area was a knocked out Tiger I......I have another slide somewhere and will post it if I can ever find it. That will be a side shot so there may be marking on it to help identification...or not. I picked it up to get it printed off some years back and it is somewhere in my hobby collection.....this slide I found whilst watching family pics with my munchkins and my mum over the weekend. It is me at the front of the picture so I am guessing I am about 6 there...so around 1967.


Edit; Thanks to Laurent (aka Tufoo  from the excellent Lead Adventure Forum) the tank has been identified...here was me thinking I had months of research to do.....it is known as the Vimoutiers Tiger Tank.  Disabled by it's crew when they ran out of fuel in the final days of the battle for Normandy. Bulldozed off the road down this very embankment by the 2nd Canadian Division. It had been sitting there since August 21st, 1944 just waiting for me and my family to come along. Thank you little Tiger. A good article here on the Wikipedia;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimoutiers_Tiger_tank

Contains a links to many more pics of the renovated vehicle here;

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vimoutiers_Tiger_Tank

and some superb pictures of it being moved..............plus more of scrap merchant yards after the war.....makes me want to cry....

http://www.pablum.webspace.virginmedia.com/gaz/vt.html


at

5 comments:

  1. Michael Awdry8 June 2014 at 19:57

    Goodness me, now there's something you don't see everyday!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous19 August 2017 at 14:14

    You must of reversed the slide when you copied and made the pic... How can I tell?... The drivers periscope slit window and the hull machine gun are reversed from where they should be...

    ReplyDelete
  3. David Wood20 August 2017 at 08:12

    Thanks. The slides at my mother's were so disorganised I didn't even think to check!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Carel Thomson4 December 2019 at 19:11

    And I know, because Me, my brother and sister had te same experience! I will try to post a pic

    ReplyDelete
  5. David Wood6 December 2019 at 10:07

    Hi Carel, it would be great to add another pic! If you can could you email it to me at the (updated) email on the bottom of the post please.

    ReplyDelete