So I’m watching a YouTube video on a random battle in WWII, and they mention the number of tanks destroyed in a town, or right on the outskirts of a town. It got me thinking, if and when did these destroyed be recycled?
Obviously proximity was a factor because I’m assuming you would need an industrial smelter to melt down a tank tread or shell-riden paneling? If a large smelter is needed then did they actually actively collect parts, load them up in trucks and use valuable fuel transporting them to the smelter? And if they did collect parts, did the get the whole tank? -like the super heavy frame ? (I’m not sure what you would call these part, but you get the point) I’m just wondering if that would need cranes or plows-and if those were available during wartime.
I’ve seen clips on bunkers being striped down for parts, but I always though that was them removing and reinstalling somewhere else, not thinking they were re-melted. And a city would be a preferred spot to find a nice destroyed tank,easy for the picking, but what about in the ardennes forest? We’re there just destroyed tanks that stayed around until after the war ended?
Okay, first of all, just because a tank is listed as destroyed does not mean it is permanently out of action. The Allies, Germans and Soviets all had increasingly sophisticated recovery initiatives throughout the war. If possible, a piece of equipment, fighting vehicles in particular, would be recovered and reapaired after the battle and then returned to service. It makes logistical and economical sense. Repairing a tank and pressing back into service is quicker and cheaper than building a new one. So, the actual number of tanks left on the battlefield would be much lower than the number listed as destroyed. The same holds true for planes, but to a lesser degree. In order for a plane to be recovered it generally has to make a reasonably controlled landing, if it crashes it is a total loss but then, if it does, there isn't much to recover anyway.
That said, what happened to the stuff that couldn't be recovered? Generally it was just pushed aside so as not to hinder logistics and transport. The primary concern for the three major fighters was not resource scarcity, it was logistics. Recovering a tank from a battlefield, transporting it back to a functional scrap yard and then stripping it for materials is costly, time consuming and difficult. It also adds additional strain to the infrastructure already clogged with military vehicles. So generally the answer is, it was just left there until someone dealt with it, usually after the war, sometimes for a long time.
Eventually it was generally removed by the land owners and/or civilian authorities but this was long after the fighting had stopped and often it wasn't so much recovered as it was buried or dumped. A lot of stuff ended up in land fills simply because it was not economically viable to recover it. Again, a tank is a big hunk of metal weighing many tons. To transport it you either need specialized gear or to dismantle it in place. It takes time, resources and manpower, all of which were in short supply both during the war and in the reconstruction period.
To give you some idea of how little scrap was worth, ships with thousands or tens of thousands of tons of steel were used as targets for aircraft or naval gunners or just left to rust at anchor until they sunk, and those are comparatively easy to move. Tanks are much more difficult. Even gear that was fully operational and unused was frequently just left in depot (which in reality meant it was lined up in a field somewhere on an army or airforce base and left to rust until it was eventually scrapped) or left in the theater of operation if it was overseas. There is still dumps in the african deserts that are just not economically viable to do anything about. More gear was just unceremoniously dumped in the sea because no one was interested in it. Check out "Million dollar point" if you're interested. The Seabees just built a pier right out into the ocean and drove their entire vehicle pool into the sea because no one was interested in bringing it home.