16 M3A1 Stuart Light Tanks Discovered in Brazil

[voltron63]

love the stuart....

[Limpmania]

what is the name of this song? Nice with those pictures. I like this movie

[jambockSoares]

QUE VERGONHA PARA O BRASIL

[MrBatavia7]

WOW!! Love to see them restored

[luxstar4life]

simply amazing...

[MrJuan741852963]

Uruguay tenia M3a1 y los mandaron a chatarra solo quedan unos cuantos puestos de floreros en la puerta de algunos cuarteles Que tristeza

[knarf1998]

if these tanks could talk



[Samuel19590]

heheh those dont look to expensive to buy id luv to pick one of those up :)

[EquipaPatriot]

@Samuel19590 better snatch it up quickly. It'll be very useful once shit hits the fan at the end of this year.

[RodneyB1963]

Sweet to see these historical tanks restored. 

[HoradePreservar]

Estes tanques deveriam estar no Brasil,em um museu sobre a segunda guerra mundial.

Que pena,uma grade perda para nós!!

[misfitt58]

cool great vid

[icemelongreen]

Mike thanks for saving them ! I heard years ago Central America had P-51s .

[flightdeckreviews]

These old soldiers need a good home WHY NOT ME?? :D

[ProPorchMonkey]

Its sad to see them rust away

[Thijs18588]

whats next restaur them!?!

[oldjaguar]

@Thijs18588 restore*

[petervulpini]

those tanks would be worth alot to museums and private collectors if you repair them

[fuckobama4]

I always wanted one of those since I was a kid, be a hoot to drive around with

[vexviper]

So?



[Tophet1]

They look in amazing condition considering. Lots of spare parts and complete vehicles.

[stryker65]

I wish i were in the UK they allow normal blokes to own tanks not like here or the US.

[bayyagg]

M3 is quite good during the early war.

It is designed for recon and for tropical use! That's why it is very fast!

The predecessor M5 was good w/ sloping armour!

[mbabist01]

Thanks for posting. As a "treadhead," I really dig the detail shots!

[SuperChadiX]

cute tank... :D

[MrTastytae]

they'd need a sea of wd40 just to loosen things up to unloosen the bolts of those things.

[mark24875218]

As an ex member of the Armed forces, i do know where there are 3 m10 TD's and at least 6 shermans, and 1 T34 as we used to go on excersise there. Only the T34 was used as target practice for the LAW. The others are un-touched ! although, 2 m10's have no barrels. Nice find for someone to restore ??

[Smiffew]

@mark24875218 I have heard of people restoring tanks like that. For instance the only remaining Hetzer was a copied one saved from a Swiss firing range, but in that instance it was given for free to the restorer by the Swiss government. The U.S. probably would have a lot more loops to go through if you wanted to save some of those.

[Nickolas847]

Boy think of postage stamps needed to send them all to the uk

[Tokatt]

beautiful. I hope they will all get repaired

[USMCsnipezFI]

What were they doing in brazil?

[Smiffew]

@USMCsnipezFI After WWII the allies were selling as much (theirs and captured stuff)as they could and scrapping the rest or parking it somewhere. Old WWII tanks were the workhorses during all middle east conflicts until the 60's. Or in some cases such as the Israeli Super Shermans, the 80's.

[mbabist01]

@Smiffew I've heard the Russians still have vehicle parks chock full of Panthers, Tigers, PzKfw IV, and so on.

LOVE to get my grubby little hands on one or two!

[cpovey1]

@USMCsnipezFI A Brazilian company produced about 100 M3 variants (heavily modified) for the Brazilian army in the 1970's.

[321boileranimal]

I wonder why no body special produces these old machines with out the guns for going off road now. Since the technology is no big deal, lol just a thought.

[cpovey1]

@321boileranimal They were not good tanks, and part of the reason is the tracks were very narrow, meaning they sunk into snow and mud and became stuck. Thus, they would not be good off-road vehicles. Besides, they would be very heavy for off-road work, and thus expensive.

[rwhendrix]

Thats great. I hope they restore many of them. Hate to see any of them scrapped out.

[ner901]

poor little guys .they should give those tanks to people ! :D

[lordsjaak]

wow so many of them, that is really awsome :)

[2006angel101]

I'm brasilian, and I'm proud to see this video! :)

[356butch]

These are the same kind of tanks that pounded the hell out of the Japanese attacks on Marine positions at Guadalcanal.

[panzersherk12]

I WANT ONE!

[mac163]

The Brazilian army upgrated around 120 Stuart tanks in the 70´s with diesel engines and 90mm main guns among other mods, they useds them well into the 80´s.

[jorno1994]

@mac163 And we added some sloped armor, reworked turret... its called X1A2. an image of it: w w w . areamilitar . net/DIRECTORIO/IM_ter/X1A2_001­.jpg

[mac163]

@jorno1994 thanks for the info. did they ever get to make the Osorio main battle tank in production again? imho it should be manufactured. excellent tank.

[jorno1994]

@mac163 i heard about it, but it isn't something they let be published in the news. But i heard two versions of the story. 1 - The brazilian army is dismounting the parts of the two remaining Osório to make at least one that works. 2 - A french company is thinking about producing the Osório again. The problem is that when Engesa went bankrupt, many schematics of the tank were lost, including the information stored in cumputers, at least is what i heard about it.

[mac163]

@jorno1994 Lets hope so. Same thing happened in Argentina with the Pulqui 2 jet fighter and the iea 37 delta wing fighter project theoretically capable of mach 2 among others. small world isnt it?

[jorno1994]

@mac163 and yes, the thank should be in production since it was designed, but thanks to the United States of America and their "freedom", nobody bought it because of some political pressure about the M1A1 Abrams...

[boyd868b]

scott i agree onthe m- and m-5. on death traps,yes it does blame the equipment but also higher ups in the chain of command,for not up grading.look at how the brits up gun and up armoured during the war.i had 2 old lodge brothers that fought with paton and it was a court mart. offense to take a german tank at less than 3 to 1 odds

[scottduncan44]

The M-3 and its succeser the M-5 were used extensivly in all theaters where the U.S. fought. It served well with the British in the desert campaign were its 37mm gun was close to the British 2 lber (40mm) and unlike the British cruiser tanks it was very reliable and fast. In Western Europe it had no place as a tank but was used instead of heavy armored cars for reconnaisance such as the British and Germans deployed. They were as fast as armored cars and equally armed.

[cpovey1]

My father, who fought in North Africa, would disagree. The M3 was a poor design. Too thin armor, lousy gun (he was a munitions expert, not a tanker), flat sides, and mostly-too tall. It made a nice big target. It was pretty reliable and fast, but early ones used aviation gas, which is very flammable, and nasty stuff if the tank is hit.

[IanHunedoara8]

@cpovey1 The M3 was forced to confront the heavier German marks because of transportation difficulties in North Africa of bring up the Shermans. At Mejdjed El Bab 11/42 a group of Stuarts took on German MK 3's. After losing 1/2 their number to direct fire the others came around the German rear and destroyed 7 and sent the others fleeing. Other Stuarts destroyed a German airfield at Mateur taking out 22 aircraft, killing pilots and ground personnel and destroying munitions, gasoline

[cpovey1]

Story from my dad that may be related. He sailed in a convoy (tracing ammo problem) with a group of tanks to North Africa. Once there, they started unloading tanks. About 2/3 unloaded, they had to stop. Large parts of the port had been destroyed, and the remaining cranes were too weak to lift the Shermans from the as the ships became lighter and rode higher. They eventually had to take a portion of the tanks back to the US because they could not lift them out of the freighters!

[cpovey1]

Pitting Stuarts against aircraft on the ground is not much of a test of a tank-ramming would have been very effective but slow.

[stuka52]

@IanHunedoara8 That's amazing, they were strictly recon vehicles not meant to fight tanks.

[IanHunedoara8]

@stuka52 In the end its the boys and not the toys that decide the day's outcome

[IanHunedoara8]

@cpovey1 The 37 mm turret cannon was fondly called a "squirrel gun"

[IanHunedoara8]

@cpovey1 Correction on my part. The M3 was the Grant/Lee medium tank which deserves its own discussion. The tanks that took part in the November 1942 Tunisian battle (not Mejded el Bab but at Djeideida were all Stuarts and they came up against Mk, 1V Panzers with upgraded 75 mm guns. The info can be found in Rick Atkinson's history.

[redreaper2020]

Fucking brazilians, stealin' my tractors...

[boyd868b]

logan500 a good read for you would be a book called death trapsi think you would like the super pershing in the book

[OPE08]

@boyd868b "Deathtraps" is a terrible book, but there are TONS of decent books on armor.

[boyd868b]

@OPE08 death traps is a good view of the log.side of the war. if you want a REALLY,REALLYBAD BOOK on tanks that left me screaming (the worst i've read in 58 years) se if you can find a copy of TANKS by arch whitehouse. it is bad

[scottduncan44]

@boyd868b Deathtraps is a very one sided veiw. It blames the equipment for the death of the troops. Most deaths in armored vehicles were brutal. No matter what tank you were in. Compared to WW 1 the losses of tank crews of all nations was significantly less than the WW 1 lossesof infantry to machine guns and artillary in single battles.. What was brutal were the losses in the 8th airforce flying B-17's over occupied Europe and Germany. Some 63,000 aircrew dies yet no one blames the B17.

[TiggerKat]

I remember hearing about this find awhile back. They weren't allowed back into the U.S. due to the stupid laws we have. Nice to see that they were all rescued.

[Werner312]

onde estão ? qual cidade?

[killerman19880385]

i hope that they restore all of them back to its condition instead of taking all of the scarp metal out

[thearizona131]

lost and forgotin. so sad. the music goes well with it

[logan500]

Those are American made Stuart Light Tanks that we rarely used in WW2 gift from the U.S. to Brazil. lol. Americans mostly used M4 Shermans or M4A3E8's in WW2, just Medium Tanks. While we actually had pretty neat Hardcore Heavy Tanks just sitting back at home like the T1, M6, T29, T34, T32 and T30.The Artical mentioned that the M3 Stuart light tanks were only found and just brought to the U.K. Americans should go over there and take back control of their stuarts!Whats found in them should be ours

[OPE08]

@logan500 - none of the tanks you mentioned were just "sitting back at home", half them were prototypes that never saw production and the T34 was Soviet.

The M26 Pershing was the Heavy Tank we had in production, but the decision was made to produce thousands of Shermans rather than hundreds of Pershings. Altho' the Pershing was finally released to service in the last months of the war in Europe.

[legoprime2000]

why is one of them green and is in better conditions than the others?

[Doug420ist]

badass

[SarahCandyfication]

Perhaps, the government of Brazil would be best restoring these tanks for use in urban defense against gangs, or because they are so easy to transport & maintain (being so mechanically simple) keep them for fast reaction group defending Brazil's territorial integrity. I wonder if the Argentinians would have done better in the Falklands War with something like these in greater numbers, with better supplies, forward deployed early, and a less order from above dependent chain of command.

[GreyFergy101]

@SarahCandyfication Nah they should be kept all restored and shown to the public constantly!

[TroopSmith]

I will actually correct myself alittle bit here however the M-5 Stuart is what is seen here the info plate on 1 says M-3 but the vehicles I see are the M-5 still a nice find wouldn't mind one added to my collection of fine weapons.

[TroopSmith]

If you don't mind some historical correcting here. The Stuart was actually the M-5 the M-3s weren't named partly due to their short service life and partly because the War Department didn't allow it at the time of their production 1938-1942, the fact you even found any M-3s at all is completely amazing. I just thought you might like the information if not the I apologize.

[mrgoodvibrations]

What a find, too rich for me, but cool. Man they barely fit into the shipping containers, LOL.

[dultra]

isto não é no Brasil

[seoulkidd1]

@TheOringinalTrollface bcuz simple is always better than hi tech lol the abrams is a bad as tank but did u no that the fast tank is still held by a ww2 tank lol

[seoulkidd1]

bcuz simple is always better than hi tech lol the abrams is a bad as tank but did u no that the fast tank is still held by a ww2 tank lol

[DET832]

Bring those babie back to life !! Nice find, good luck !!!!

[555bladerunner]

Beautifull!!!

[seoulkidd1]

i need 1 of those when the zombies apacalysp

[TheOriginalTrollface]

@seoulkidd1 why settle for an old light tank when you can have a brand new top to date M1A1 Abrams Tank instead?

[roaklin]

@TheOriginalTrollface Because you cant park an Abarams for 45 years and put it back togther and this will go places the Abrams won't fit.

[TheOriginalTrollface]

@roaklin problem solved. just crash into it but in this case you are right

[SovereignFreeman]

I would love one of these machines!

[MegaWetwilly]

this guy hit the motherlode finding all those tanks, and all the parts

[Bruno47602]

Legend US,UK,Russia..

[destroyer1ism]

This is great stufff. Imagine all those tanks still in relatively good shape. They will fetch a lot of money.

But they were obsolite before WW2, and were only used by the British and US in the deserr and some other areas. They were better for the Pacific because they were easier to manouver. But they'er piddlly 37mm gums were now match for the 47mm Jap anti-tank guns.

They were in affect stop-gap tanks.

[doom1905]

If they stay in Brazil will be renovated for use in another war.

[enkelsoldat]

@doom1905 If you stay in Brazil will certainly be destroyed because the Brazilian is peaceful ... Ignorant comment from you my friend!

[doom1905]

You do not understand my dear, I am Brazilian and I live in the capital of Brazil, it turns out that the military resources of Brazil are not good, we have vehicles that were used in the second war is still in operation and no date to be retired, most of the weapons used by the soldiers are very old, very few tanks, planes, cars, roads and new weapons. My comment was in the ironic sense, that Brazil uses the "old" in his army.

[spikydipple]

man i wanted one of these when i was a kid... Are thet V8 or aero-engined? What a find!

[1967800]

Sweet video

[zemsi]

Actually, the tanks were from Brazil not Mexico ;-) See at milweb.net/features/m3a1_stuar­t_tank.php

[ritchiewinter]

@zemsi

Thanks, I thought I had fixed that when I uploaded the video but its back again.... hopefully is showing correct now.

[itsmepaul57]

where do you get all this interesting stuff??