The Great Manitoba Carrier Recovery

[David Dunlop]

Many of you on this forum are probably already familiar with the huge excavation that took place in Manitoba a few years back which resulted in the recovery and restoration of several Mk I* Carriers which had been buried underground for over 50 years. There were lots of video and photos of the recovery operation in various media, but what none of you saw was the preliminary work Gord Falk and I undertook a year earlier to confirm all the rumours we have heard for a quarter of a century about these machines. I thought you might enjoy a look at that ground breaking moment (yes, pun fully intended). I will do this, hopefully in four consecutive posts.

These first two photos show the beach property where the carriers had been placed to stabilize the shoreline in front of what had been at the time in the mid-1950's, a private duck hunting lodge, frequented by the likes of Clark Gable and many of his friends each Fall.

The first photo is looking East. The lake is immediately along the tree line at the left, the Lodge complex to the right, just beside the small dark shrub. A friend of Gord's had just finished sweeping the area with a metal detector and we had placed stakes along the run of most interest, which totals some 140 feet in length.

The second photo is looking East. The lake shore is to the right now and one of the smaller out buildings can be seen downslope, close to a boat launch.

Gord had spent many years combing Manitoba and surrounding areas for carriers and related parts, so hunting carriers for him is like a well trained hog hunting truffles! I let him pace about a bit and pick his starting point. Here he is just peeling away the sod prior to putting foot, to shovel, to ground.

[David Dunlop]

With the second strike of the spade, Gord hit something solid, but interestingly soft at the same time. A quick scrape and we found he had hit the rubber bumper guard on the top of the forward bulkhead. A little careful dusting away of the mud, and there it was, visible for the first time in 50 years: the rad cap access cover. The handle turned easily and up it opened. We were ecstatic to say the least!

We traced to the vehicle right of that point and opened up the rad intake just behind the drivers seat and could see engine and rad parts hiding deeper below.

[David Dunlop]

Once we knew we had found the driver's compartment, we worked to the forward armour in front of his position to see if we could locate the instrument panel. This we did, along with exposing some of the right side track sponson. The instrument panel had been torn loose when the carriers were backfilled into their trench back in the 50's with tons of rubble. There trip here had been a short drive down the road from a local surplus dealer. The carrier's had all come from Lloydminster a few years prior to that.

[David Dunlop]

Once we had confirmed the legend of the buried carriers to be true, the last task of this recce trip was to carefully rebury what we had uncovered and put the sod back in place.

We thanked the property manager for the time and assistance given to us and then the negotiations started regarding when and how best to attempt recovery of these great machines. That story is now well known and a number of 'new' Mk I* carriers are happily running around various parts of Canada today.

The number we uncovered was a little lower than our information over the years had led us to believe, however. As it turned out, the gentleman we had hired with a front end loader to recover the carriers turned out to be the son of the gentleman who had been hired in the 1950's to dig the stabilizing trench and bury the carriers. As a small boy he had come out to watch it all happening and he told us one carrier had been kept as a runabout at the lodge and the remaining ones had been used as fill under the access road to the lodge. Sadly, that road today is a Provincial Highway and those last few carriers will be going nowhere anytime soon.

Hope you found this moment of discovery interesting!

Cheers for now,


David

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Hope you found this moment of discovery interesting!

David,

Very interesting indeed! It was more than a few years ago when I first read about this dis- & recovery (I think the internet still had to be invented )

It proves that "tanks" were buried more often than not, indeed an easy way to get rid of them. But what surprises me is that back in those days "scrap" carriers were apparently cheaper than concrete or other aggregate suitable for landfilling

Glad to hear most were saved, though

Hanno

[colin jones]

David, that was great. Is there a thread to the actual recovery and resto of the carriers. Well done.
Colin.

[Michael R.]

Buried all that time, but someone still managed to make off with the rad cap?

[kevin powles]

David, how many carriers were actually recovered ?, I have one recovered one safe here in the uk, now blasted and preserved, only needed minimal work to the floor areas.

[kevin powles]

Carrier preserved, restoration underway.

Kevin.

[super dave]

Cool, I can ad that info when telling people about where my carrier came from

[David Dunlop]

Kevin.

The information I obtained from the surplus dealer who bought them from Crown Assets and sold them to the Lodge, was he sold them a dozen. This was out of a lot of close to 50 he had purchased in Lloydminster. It was a short road trip from his place to the waiting trench as the Lodge. Once in the trench, a number of useful bits were scavenged from the carriers and under the dirt they went.

The length of our magnetic survey suggested 8 vehicles were present in the trench. I believe we visually confirmed the existence of the 7th carrier and were very certain of another immediately behind it, but their location was too close to the boat launch site and we did not want to risk damage to that facility at all. So I recall 6 came out. One more had been used to putter about the lodge for many years but had long before been scrapped. That left the three our front end loader driver told us were buried under the nearby highway. Some of the guys from Prairie Command who attended the entire excavation probably have additional photos of how the work progressed.

David

[rob love]

As far as I recall, we found 5, and of those the lower hulls were left behind on the first two.
The next two went to Derk and I (mine is now with Superdave and Derk has restored his). The last one went to Gordon Falk, and from there went to the UK.

In each case, as we dug up one, the next one was touching the first. After number five we did not hit anything else.

[Jim Burrill]

Rob, I know a number of bins and boxes and stuff came to me when I bought the arrier from Jim Rice. Do you recall if the lower hull was one of the carriers? or Did I just get a handfulll of take off parts? IIRC, Jim said the rotton grenade boxes and top armour came fromt he first carrier uncovered. I still have all the rusty bits. I saved them for patterns to make the ones I used in the restoration. I sold the carrier to Steve Kantnor, who later sold it on, to the UK I believe.

Cheers,
Jim Burrill
15th Recce

[Jordan Baker]

I believe the radiator cover and armoured air vents used on my carrier came from one of these buried ones.

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Jim Burrill

Rob, I know a number of bins and boxes and stuff came to me when I bought the arrier from Jim Rice. Do you recall if the lower hull was one of the carriers? or Did I just get a handfulll of take off parts? IIRC, Jim said the rotton grenade boxes and top armour came fromt he first carrier uncovered. I still have all the rusty bits. I saved them for patterns to make the ones I used in the restoration. I sold the carrier to Steve Kantnor, who later sold it on, to the UK I believe.

Cheers,
Jim Burrill
15th Recce

Yes, your stuff was from one of the two hulls that remained behind. Gordon Falk could confirm this I believe.

[David Dunlop]

Thanks for the corrected count on the recovered carriers.

I think Derk Derin posted some great shots on the carrier forum back on 25-01-10. The title was:

Buried Mk 1 Bren carrier restoration


David

[rob love]

We were camping last weekend about 4 miles away from where the carriers were recovered. Having been in the military for 25 years, I hate camping. So I took a drive to as far as I could drive, then walked the last km to the carrier site. Since I was last there, there are obvious signs of more flooding on the two remaining hulls. Large logs are on top of the hulls, along with other debris. But the whole area remains abandoned. Here are some photos of how they exist today. About 60 feet away I found the tray for the portable cooker laying in the sand, along with a piece of conduit that may be from the carriers.