Atlas Obscura: Sherman tank retrieved from Sea

The website Atlas Obscura has made a post about a Sherman tank that was retrieved from the Atlantic ocean sea floor by a team of Russian sailors in July of 2014.  This story was originally reported by the Daily Mail and other news sources two years ago, so this is old news.  However, we thought it was interesting enough that it was worth posting, particularly since this site was not in existence when this story was fresh.

This particular Sherman tank came from the SS Thomas Donaldson, a Liberty ship sunk by German U-boat in March of 1945 off the short of Kildin Island.  The U-boat attack disabled the ships engines and the captain ordered most of the crew off the ship while a skeleton crew remained in the hopes that the ship could be towed to shore.  However, the ship sank just a half mile from Kilden island, under 55 meters of water.  The tank was retrieved by the Russian Northern Fleet as part of a naval exercise.  The tank, as well as other items retrieved from the sunken transport were said to be delivered to Severomorsk, the main administrative base of the Russian Northern Fleet.  While it is somewhat hard to tell exactly what type of Sherman tank was retrieved from the wreck, it clearly has the 76mm gun turret and welded hull.  This narrows it down to either M4A2 or M4A3, and since this was being sent as aid to the Red Army, we will guess it’s a M4A2 since that was the model the Soviets  preferred due to it having diesel engines.

The Atlas Obscura post links to a photo gallery at The Sherman Tank Site.  The Sherman Tank Site was temporarily hosted as a page here at Tank and AFV News.com before moving to its own URL, where it has grown substantially.   The Sherman Tank site can be viewed here.