Quote:
Originally Posted by jdmcm
...and to Rob's point, I will retract "national treasure", I mean you're right Rob, it's not a Sherman for gods sake, what was I thinking? Now having grown up reading Farley Mowat, he was a national treasure!
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Two of the items that were scrapped during the cleanup in the 70s were a flak 38 and a flakvierling. There was still a 20mm receiver hanging off the flakvierling, and I found another 20mm receiver which had sunk out of sight under an 1898 RCD limber that I recovered. A sale was arranged about 2 or 3 years ago to an American. He needed to have the receivers cut as per BATF guidelines to import, so I offered to do that. As I was cutting the first one, I noticed a number that I did not notice before. I went to the glovebox of my nearby M38A1CDN3, where I had (and still have) a listing of the Farley Mowatt bringbacks with some serial numbers from a listing from CWM. Turns out that number, along with the number I found on the second receiver, were both listed as being from Farley Mowatt's bring backs, as did the flak30/38 chassis. It kind of pained me to be cutting those receivers up, but it wasn't me that made the decision to send them to a scrapyard. Both guns and one of those wishbone type trailers for them headed off to the US for restoration.
I think I have seen pretty much all of the larger artifacts stowed away in the museum, and it does not look like the missing 3 receivers or the barrels are in the museums collection. Whether they went a different route to scrap, or remain sunk into the clay at my favorite scrapyard™ may forever remain a mystery.