July 14, 2016. Neighborhoods of the Ukrainian Builovka village of the Podgorensky district of the Voronezh region. Cloudless sky, +35 degrees and complete calm. Pleasure, say, something else. But there are a dozen or so "small ships" on the water, that is, boats, and the shores are filled with people. Information spread throughout the area that "the same tank" would be raised.
Let's face it: everyone knew that there was a tank at the bottom of the Don in the vicinity of the village. How many screws were bent about it, how many hooks and lures the local fishermen left on it, was not a secret for anyone in the area. Everyone in the surrounding villages of Russkaya and Ukrainskaya Builovki knew about the tank.
And so, after the expedition of the Patriot Park, which is more than 700 miles away, a decision was made to ascend. Moreover, the command was given not by anyone, but by our first geographer and part-time Minister of Defense Shoigu. And, of course, the process has begun. Still not to go, since everything is tied up.
In general, along the rivers and swamps of our country, unfortunately, many more units of military equipment are buried. Why is this particular tank lying at the bottom of the Don, the devil knows where?
An expedition of divers from the underwater diving club of the Central Sports Club of the Armed Forces of Russia, together with specialists from the Vadim Zadorozhny Museum and the Patriot Park, having examined the tank, came to the conclusion that the tank is not simple.
It turned out that the tank is unique. Moreover, the only one of less than 1000 produced at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant for the period 1941 - 1942, which has survived to our times.
It was decided to rise.
The participants were representatives of the Patriot Park, the Zadorozhny Museum, search engines, army divers and employees of the engineering troops of the Western Military District. Without the help of the latter, as well as representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, it is unlikely that anything worthwhile came out.
And, of course, representatives of about 30 media outlets in our country. Naturally, the "Military Review" was not done without. We will not discuss the appearance on the Don banks of the representatives of "NTV", distracted from "Gangster Petersburg", "Cops" and other broken lanterns, let's just say that this is our business, period.
Of course, it was not easy to shoot in the current conditions, the local residents, hearing about the rise, decided to see everything with their own eyes, and, I confess, they interfered with the film crews a lot.
In general, everything resembled some kind of military operation. Boats (including a police boat and a boat from the Ministry of Emergency Situations), copters hanging over the lifting point, a lot of military men … However, you can see for yourself. The photos will, of course, be inferior in dynamism to the video of the second Roman, but …
This is how the water area of the Don looked at the place of the ascent.
The boat of the Ministry of Emergency Situations put things in order, somewhat dispersed those wishing to contemplate the raising of the tank.
The lifting process has begun.
It should be noted here that military divers and engineers did a lot of work before the ascent. The tank was hooked and pulled up to the shore, so we got the most interesting thing - going to land.
The cables rang with tension, which caused some concern. It's no joke, 30 tons of tank weight, plus water, plus silt, which pretty much stuck to the car.
BREM, the workhorse of military engineers.
The cables had to be re-hooked several times.
And finally, half an hour later, the thirty-four came ashore.
Firefighters from Podgorny actively watered the clay bank to facilitate the ascent.
Another re-linking of the cables. Sixth in a row.
At the finish line.
And here is the T-34 on a flat surface.
Firefighters tried to clean up the silt and started pouring the car from the inside.
Cool guy from the local, treated everyone with water from a local spring. It came in very handy, because it was very hot and quickly ran out of supplies. The Russian soul is wide, fortunately thirsty.
First of all, everyone was worried about the question: is there a crew inside the tank. And first of all, experts went inside the hatches opened with the help of a special tool to find out exactly this issue.
The answer was negative, to the delight of all witnesses. There was no crew in the tank.
In general, it was assumed that the crew managed to leave the tank, since the car sank as a result of damage to the pontoon during the bombing of the crossing. Everyone was very pleased to hear the confirmation of this. The people rejoiced from the bottom of their hearts.
The extraction of ammunition began. The car was full of ammunition. The picture shows one of the disks for DT, "Degtyarev-tank".
Who will go for the shells?
Considering how many spectators there were, it was decided to postpone the removal of the shells for the next day. Just in case.
But they began to work with machine-gun disks right there, without leaving the tank. The cartridges were in working order, produced in 1936, mainly, the production of plant number 60.
After unloading the shells, the tank will be loaded onto a platform that was already waiting nearby and sent to the Patriot park in Alabino near Moscow. The park's specialists are confident that the tank will not only be restored, but put on the move. Well, as promised, and it was promised to show it at the "ARMY-2016" exhibition, which we will naturally visit, we will also tell you how our friend is doing.
The help of real specialists is pleasant, the attention of the Ministry of Defense and Shoigu personally is pleasant. As we learned, on July 15, he will personally hear a report on this operation.
And we will tell you in September what place this T-34 will occupy in the Patriot Park exposition. So if we say goodbye to the Stalingrad tank, it will not be for long.
