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.