Workers near the town of Senno, Belarus uncovered an abandoned Red Army heavy tank in a swamp. The tank may date back as far as 1941.

The tank is a KV-1 , or "Kliment Voroshilov-1". Named after a marshal of the Soviet Union, the KV-1 was the standard heavy tank at the time of the German invasion in 1941. The KV-1 mounted a 75-millimeter gun and its heavy armored plate made it immune to most German anti-tank weapons of the time.

The video shows the efforts of salvage crews to recover the tank. The tank turret was upside down and separated from the chassis, indicating the vehicle was scuttled with explosive charges. This may have occurred after the vehicle became stuck in the spring mud, or the tank unit was surrounded and forced to destroy their vehicles.

The tank chassis is in much worse shape. As the vehicle is pulled out of the muck the road wheels and engine plate are visible. They also appear to be much too close to one another, suggesting a fire may have burned down the chassis into slag. Although the turret is shown in reasonably good shape, the recovered chassis is never shown.

The tank may have been involved in the Battle of Senno, one of the largest tank battles of World War II, with around 2,250 tanks involved in the conflict. Just three weeks after the German invasion, two Soviet mechanized corps counterattacked the advancing Germans at Senno. The attack was largely a failure and resulted in only a brief delay of advancing German forces. An account of the battle mentions several Soviet tanks becoming stuck in the mud.

The KV-1 is one of several Russian and German armored vehicles that have been recovered from former Eastern Front battlefields. A Soviet BT-5 tank was recovered from Russia's Neva River in 2011, and in 2012 a Vickers Valentine tank was recovered from the Warta River in Poland.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io