This is a companion to this post, where a tank, in excellent condition, was found in an Estonian lake.
Well, it turns out there are a LOT of tanks in lakes and rivers in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Many were destroyed while on the ice and then sank during the spring thaw, others were purposefully ditched to keep the enemy from getting them.
Oh, and I found out whey they are called ‘tanks’. Winston Churchill, in WWI, was responsible for this new form of vehicle; it was his idea. He was the father of the tank.
England needed to transport them to Europe to fight the Germans, but Churchill didn’t want the Germans to know about them; so he wanted a code name to use when referring to them in communications.
The first idea was to call them ‘water carriers’, but Churchill thought that would lead to jokes about the WC (bathroom). So, he decided that the code name would be ‘water tanks’. That was shortened to ‘tanks’.
RUSSIA WWII TANK
A floating crane raises from the Neva River a BT-5 light tank which was found underwater near Kirovsk, 50 km (31 miles) east of St.Petersburg, Russia, June 18, 2007. The light tank which was produced in the Soviet Union in 1933-1935 apparently fell into the river in November 1941 when the Red Army fought there against Nazi Germany's troops besieging Leningrad. The city's name was changed back from Leningrad to St. Petersburg after the 1991 Soviet collapse. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
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