T-54 "liberated" from Museum

[pierre the shy]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/10243720/Pro-Russian-rebels-barricade-Donetsk

According to the original Stuff title the T-54 is a WW 2 tank!!......can I have a few for our late war Ostfront game on Saturday  

As well as "easing" the turret and replacing the engine I hope they remember to check the barrel is still functional if they want
to use it in anger - if I'm not mistaken under the CFE treaty most such cold war museum exhibits in western countries at least were required to be "made safe"
so the armament could not be made operational.

[Wulf]

Somewhere on YouTube is a video, in Russian, of an ISU152 being 'rescued' from a grassy open area in a town. Despite being embedded 6 inches into the ground through sheer mass and time, and looking like it hadn't run since the 1940s (the video looked quite modern), they got it running & onto the back of a transporter. It was like watching a self-propelled mountain...

But one side of the barrell had been cut into by a welding torch or similar, to render it inoperable.

[toxicpixie]

Stuff enough MGs onto it and you've a viable assault vehicle even if the main gun's permanently bolloxed. Although given the amount of kit floating round the ex-Soviet Union I wouldn't be surprised to find there's a warehouse in Donetsk full of main guns for T-54/55 kept in storage "just in case"

Mind, in the day and age of the ubiquitous RPG I'm not sure I'd want to crew a pre-Chobham era tank...

[FierceKitty]

An Italian friend once proudly told me about an American tank crew who came much refreshed out of a Sicilian tavern to find they no longer had a Sherman. The story goes that it turned up much later doing service as a tractor (presumable with the armour stripped of?).

Can't answer for the truth.

[Alan]

I saw a tank in Bosnia that had the bottom half of a T55 and the top half of an American M18. It wasn't a one off either. Apparently, there was a few of them. I don't know how it went together or how it worked, but it did. The green basecoat didn't match and the cammo paint was in brown, a weird duck egg blue-ish green (I saw it on some radiators and pipework in the odd govt building as well), and this manky yellow... It really made it stand out. 

That would mess with an opponents head if you put that on the board.

[FierceKitty]

Sorry about the typo in my previous.

[Ace of Spades]

From what I've read and seen the T-55/M-18 conversion was originally used in the Yugoslav army for training purposes, hence the use of the open turret.
Even so; for the average armoured vehicle deployed in that conflict (including T-34's) the 76mm gun was still a force to be reckoned with...

Cheers,
Rob