Trucks, tanks, planes and boats all play a role in warfare — but so too do some other vehicles that don’t come to mind as quickly. Take the Landing Vehicle Tracked, or LVT. It was an amphibious vehicle used for troop deployments, though it was originally conceived as a way to rescue people in the Florida wilderness. (Prepare your LVT/Florida Man crossover fanfic now.) The LVT became a mainstay of Allied operations during World War II, and the vehicles remained in use during peacetime.
That’s how one of them ended up buried 30 feet underground in Lincolnshire, England. At Autoblog, Ronan Glon has the story of a group of car enthusiasts there who got to work on an ambitious project — excavating and then restoring an LVT that was believed lost in a 1947 flood.
Daniel Abbott, a farmer who lives in the area, spent several years researching and planning how best to get the LVT back on the surface. In the end, it required three years of planning, a group of 50 people and a Volvo crane. Once the LVT was back above ground, Abbott and his cohorts looked it over, discovering details such as bullet holes, which they believe came from its time in Germany during World War II.
Though the LVT was in relatively good condition, getting it cleaned up is still going to take plenty of work. Abbott and his group are currently documenting their work on social media — using the technology of today to rebuild the technical advances of a bygone decade.
More Like This
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
