COLLECTION.... OF A DIFFERENT KIND....

[horologie_unitas]

just imagine, you are rich.

not like making 50 k monthly - i mean filthy rich.

what do you collect ?

gen watches ? to cheap.....does not cost enough to help spending your money.

guns ? boring....not enough boom !

500 K sport cars ? boring, to many guys do that.


i always wanted to have a TANK !

i mean, thats special ! not one Tank.....one of each ! many Tanks ! but wait....they are used and....
that bothers me.
new Tanks. many Tanks. American, Russian, English, German....i buy any tank i can get.
many, many Tanks !

i will built big hangars and hire many people to work on my tanks.

i want my own Tank museum. - but before...they need to be restored and detailed into every detail.
all engines rebuilt. everything ready in attack condition !

permissions ? no prob ! i am rich. i will drive my tanks on my property......and shoot hundred thousands of rounds,
( to bad folks in Cali are pretty tight minded, so only blanks. ) i need my own little island to shoot the real stuff !

here is a small part - i mean it A SMALL PART ! - of the privately owned collection of a rich guy......30 min away from where i live.

 

[b16a2]

Whoah!! What a collection! That garage is worthy of museum status

 

[conc78]

and that's a private collection?? looked like you wandered into a museum!

 

[Hambone]

Hey now, lets have a parade and blow the sheeeeeit out of downtown! :lol:

That is a collection for the ages.

 

[Dizzy]

he spends MILLIONS of $ on each tank restoring them... just crazy.

 

[piratedzeus]

Does he hire?

 

[boo]

I want one! I used to live in San Diego and I remember an incident where someone had stolen a tank from a military base and went on a demolition rampage through the city streets. I was so jealous (except for the part where he gets shot by police).

 

[horologie_unitas]

yep, 100% privately owned.

he bought old welding equipment ....to be used

because the professional welders produced way to perfect seams......that could not be achived back then

( he is restoring a german King Tiger 2 at the moment ).

by the way, some of his tanks were borrowed to Steven Spielberg for SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

 

[watchbuff]

awesome.
I'll take an MP-40!
I know of a billionaire that owns a russion diesel sub!

 

[jerryss]

Great Photos - ! Those tanks are beautiful - in their own way! Love that blue brown camo

 

[Maxlove]

Tanks a lot!

 

[rogerwine]

Well he is definitely ready for the revolution. I want to part of his neighborhood crime watch.
Rogerwine

 

[robertk]

.........and he wears a timex!

 

[Sturmgeschutz]

Re: COLLECTION.... TANKS!

Ahh, tanks... I've been here recently as well since I live in San Francisco. I'd like to add for those living outside California and didn't hear, Jacques Littlefield - the owner of this vast collection passed away this Monday, January 13th from complications due to his decade-long battle with colon cancer. Jack was only 59 and will be sorely missed. He leaves behind 4 kids, none of whom share his passion for mechanized war machinery in the least. Luckily, he's set up a multi-million dollar trust to take care of all this priceless equipment and keep it all together.

Besides being a self-proclaimed 'tank nerd' he also attended his fair share of vintage car shows and had hosted on his property simulated tank battles using RC controlled 1/16 scale Shermans and T-34's against PkW IV's and Tigers. I think any WIS can understand the amount of passion one can give to a hobby but Jacques certainly took it to another level. A few years ago when he was looking for some spare parts to complete a panzer project and found that the stock bushings and bolts did not match the OEM stuff, he tracked down the company that actually produced these parts for German war effort during WW II, flew the chief guy out to CA, set him up on site and had a bespoke production line started back in Germany to produce these nondescript parts for a one-time rebuild. These vehicles shown in horologie_unitas' pics are beyond museum quality - where some museums will present a superficial semblance of what the original may have looked like, and in many cases their exhibits will be more franken than they care to admit - Jacques had both the passion and the money to do things right, down to the smallest detail. His workshop alone was already at 12,000 sq ft which housed a 15-ton crane the last time I visited. Too many people now with money are either obsessed with accumulating it or too busy showing off what it can buy, but Jacques' anachronistic approach to using it to preserve this slice of history shows what can be done.

One may well ask how this billionaire came across the fortune to amass and support this collection. His father ran Utah International back in the day building things like railroads for SP in the 20's, the SF Bay Bridge and taking the construction lead at Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, Glen Canyon dam, etc and 50 other WPA projects during the 30's, building the Alaska Highway and supplying ore and construction materials for the American war effort in the 40's, building ICBM missile silos in the 50's and 60's, before they sold the whole thing off to GE back in the 1970's. His family basically built the West.

Some other shots to supplement horologie_unitas' pretty pics, these are also from 2008. BTW, he was in the middle of restoring a PkW V - Sd.Kfz 171 Panther, not a Sd.Kfz 182 Tiger II. For those interested in this kind of stuff - like I am - figures with my username, right? there are a few other noted places where you can visit restored armor like at Bovington in England or Musee des Blindes in Saumur, France or Deutsches Panzermuseum in Munster, Germany. But none of these places have the quality of pieces as you'll find here. Even Patton Museum of Calvary and Armor at Fort Knox, KY calls this the world's premier collection.

Love that StuG III Ausf. G ohne Topfblende by the way!

Panther turret with zimmerit applied

Maybach engine before installation into the Panther

OT - the propeller screw to the Lusitania. Don't ask me why...

The rarest of the rare - PzKfw I Ausf A circa mid 1930's. One of only two known to exist. Priceless.

Sd.Kfz. 251 (Sonderkraftfahrzeug)

US Army 'starship' M60A2 Patton variant

Lineup in shed C - Bundeswehr issue Marder APC and Leopard A2 shown

And something us at RWI can relate to: a Soviet rep of a gen BMW krad. Very apropo.

 

[LP640]

woah ! never thought about collecting tanks before ! lol but it looks soooo cool.

 

[alvinado]

WOW!