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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Related topic that I dug into was “how long did destroyed equipment lay around during WW2?”.

There were tank battles (especially in Russia) where hundreds of tanks on both side were effectively destroyed. Now add in trucks, towed and mobile guns, etc.

I was curious. Were they abandoned and scavenged for money after the war? Did they stay there and rust until years as the war? Did militaries take them for spare parts?

Turns out that equipment was very quickly cleaned up when possible. Usually within days/weeks.

Came across this incredibly detailed website with some amazing pictures and in depth information: https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/cleaning-up-a...

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My father as a kid, when playing in the forest where his aunt lived, came upon a huge pile of WWII ammunition just slowly rotting away. Mortar shell, grenades, tons of ammo, even pretty huge aircraft bomb. It wasn't some fenced area far away with massive warnings and guarded, nope just random place in forest. I mean literally small boy sitting on top of some 200kg bomb. Glad he didn't do something stupid wiping me out of existence.

This was around 1960, former Czechoslovakia, eastern tip where heavy fighting occurred during WWII as soviets were rolling over german army. No idea how locals didn't go there, for small boys such things are like magnets.

There's a great description in Naples 44 of a destroyed roadside tank "melting away like ice" as locals gradually break it up with hand tools to sell it for scrap.

The burned out hulks were usually dragged to a nearby tran station and tranported for scrapping over time. Heard from someone a while ago how they played in them as children, before all were eventually gone from the tran station.

There's a bit of family lore that during WWII my grandfather worked on building tow trucks for tanks. He was in the trucking business and knew a bit about towing large vehicles. Never been able to find out much about it, though.

Spent way into the evening reading everything I could find on that link. Thanks for sharing. Woke up wondering how we preserve incredibly niche write-ups like this. Feels very much like Geocities the way it's hosted on a Wordpress subdomain. Obviously can verify it is indexed by the IA and archive.today, but what else can we do to preserve it past the next two decades?

That blog is incredible. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing this blog, it’s awesome

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