Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Battered, bruised, beat up.

This rusted hulk is a veteran of the greatest tank

fight of all time.

The battle of Kursk.

(gunfire)

meet the ferocious, German-built Elephant.

Later salvaged from the bloody Italian campaign of Anzio,

then almost left behind in history's garbage can.

So rare, no tank collector will ever own one.

No matter how much they spend because there's only

two left in the entire world.

Now, an American crew will bring this German war

machine back to life but it's going to be a tough haul.

- This is the largest vehicle we've had, surely

the most heaviest.

And this tank crew will learn that big machines

cause big headaches.

- [Man] That was my (bleep) fenders.

(upbeat rock music)

- [Narrator] On a cold spring morning, at the U. S.

Army Ordinance Museum in Aberdeen, Maryland, they get

ready to move an Elephant.

An Elephant deep in slumber for the last six decades.

A 2nd world war Panzerjäger or tank hunter.

A machine so big, she had two names.

First known as The Ferdinand and then, The Elephant.

65 metric tons dry,

71 tons when combat loaded with ammo, fuel and oil.

A devastating 88 millimeter gun.

One of the largest weapons put on any tank during

the 2nd world war.

One of Adolf Hitler's super weapons built to win.

- This is the biggest tank that we've done so far.

Everything is twice as heavy as what, you know, what

we normally are working with.

- [Narrator] She's had to wait in line while other

military vehicles get brought back to their former glory.

Finally, she got her turn.

With such a massive beast, only another heavy metal

monster can get it into position.

- Well, when they first called us to go get

the Elephant tank, they needed a group effort.

So, we had to get recovered because we don't have

the vehicles to be able to pull that type of a vehicle.

- [Narrator] The recovery vehicle is an M88 A2.

They're designed specifically to recover disabled tanks

from the battlefield, even under enemy fire.

- Moving them in is always a neat experience.

- [Narrator] The Elephant has spent over 60 years

in no mans land, exposed to the elements.

- Well, for a long time, the Elephant tank has been

sitting up on a railhead because it's been so difficult

to move.

- [Narrator] But she never got turned into scrap.

After the war, she was shipped to the U.S. Army

Ordinance Museum.

For a beat up tank destroy, there is no safer haven.

- The United States Army Ordinance Museum has in collection,

some 240 objects.

- A lot of folks don't understand that ordinance

encompasses not just artillery and the projectiles

that come out of the artillery but tanks, Hummer

personnel carriers, and the fact that ordinance goes

back to the 14th century and even earlier.

- What we've got here is just a portion of our ammo

collection here at the Ordinance Museum.

You can see many examples of shells dating from the 19th

century up to the present day essentially.

- [Narrator] To preserve and share this incredible

history, the Ordinance Museum has pulled together

a first class crew.

These guys never met a tank they couldn't turn

into a shiny museum piece.

- When I retired, I got a job here working with tanks,

which that's about all I know.

- [Narrator] A mechanic in the U.S. Army for over

20 years, Jerry Kendrick is the project manager.

Anthony Beard is a welder and sheet metal mechanic.

Joe Wheeler is the head man in the paint booth.

Joe is backed up by Leroy Sims and Rich Warner.

And this tank crew works in a unique place, right next

door to a U.S. Army testing ground.

Sometimes, just trying to get an interview is a challenge.

- Hey, there's a war going on.

What can I say.

(laughing)

- [Narrator] With the Elephant in place, the crew

has a massive challenge on it's hands.

She is the biggest tank they've ever dealt with.

The plan is to remove the tracks, strip her of decades

of rust, repair, repaint, and return her to a place

of honor in the Ordinance Museum's static collection.

And they have been given just five weeks to do it.

Along the way, the team will discover how this tank

met it's end and fell to allied hands.

- It looked like a terrible mess.

Parts were missing off of the deck.

Sprockets were all tore up.

It received a lot of battle damage.

We weren't sure about anything that was going on with it.

A lot of flaking, rusty paint.

- The fenders themselves were literally just pieces.

Somebody had made some scrap pieces and put on to

simulate a fender.

The road wheels seemed to be in pretty good shape

but the track was extremely rusty.

- [Narrator] Small wonder this Elephant looked

so battle-scarred.

She saw action in two epic battles Anzio, Italy

in 1944 and before that, the greatest tank battle

of all time, the battle of Kursk.

- The battle of Kursk was, without a shadow of doubt,

the largest tank battle ever.

I mean, this is the quintessential tank battle,

the mother of all tank battles.

- [Narrator] 1943, the eastern front, two years

after Germany invaded Russia, the two countries

were locked in a death struggle.

German forces had suffered their first major defeat

at the nightmare of Stalingrad.

Now they were regrouping for revenge.

In western Russia, the city of Kursk lies at the heart

of what is known as a salient or bulge in the Russian

German lines.

The Germans were determined to break through.

- The battle of Kursk is, is literally the last

opportunity the Germans are going to have

to launch offensive.

(gunfire)

- [Narrator) The Germans Assemble A Staggering

fighting force, 900,000 troops, 2700 tanks.

The Russians face them with 1,300,000 troops

and roughly 3,600 tanks.

(explosion)

In the looming battle, Germany introduced a brand

new super weapon.

An absolutely massive tank weighing in at over

65 tons.

The frontal armor, together with add-on plates

was almost 10 inches thick.

She carried a crew of six including two loaders

to feed the thunderous 88 millimeter gun.

- The Elephant was also supposed to be one of these

sort of wonder weapons that would defeat soviet

armor from a distance.

It's KWK 43 main gun which fired this enormous round

at enormous velocity with a penetration of over seven inches

or so, easily defeat any ally tank in world war II

with firing this round.

- Basically the 88 shell would go right through

a Sherman armored plate.

- You could knock out a Russian tank 2,000 meters

with this.

- [Narrator] The teams first assignment in the Elephant

restoration is to remove the set of tracks.

None of it is going to be easy.

- You look at the track, you think aw just move that.

You don't move anything by, you know, just by hand.

(hammering sounds)

- One of the basic challenges of this German Elephant

tank was the weight and size of the vehicle.

Usually when we work on a tank, we're able to move

it in and out of the booth especially when we're putting

on tracks.

This German Elephant, we had to make one move

into the booth and that's where it stayed.

- [Narrator] There's no Elephant manual or guide book

to follow.

They've got to rely on their experience, guess work,

and luck.

- This vehicle here is so large and big that

it's going to be very difficult to take the track off.

One thing, we don't know how it comes off, we don't

know the slack adjustment works, if it even has any at all.

To be able to lift it up in the air, I'm not sure what's

going to happen.

What size jacks I'm going to need.

I'm going to have to crib it up.

- [Narrator] At this early stage, they're going to use

a rivet buster to force the pins out of the track.

- Now it's going to get noisy.

(hydraulic whirring)

- [Narrator] It produces about 30 kilos of force

per hit and can generate 800 hits per minute.

But the Elephant doesn't seem to notice.

Even with the rivet buster's crushing force,

the pin is not coming out.

- [Rich] Spray it.

It moved about an eighth.

- [Leroy] Really?

- [Rich] Starting to try the mushroom.

On the end we don't want to mushroom it out.

Sometimes we've had them to where it's

taken us a couple of hours to do it, sometimes

they come right out.

- [Male Worker] Moving.

- [Leroy] I think that's it, Rich.

It moved a little bit.

I think we'll go back to this side now.

(hydraulic whirring)

You rock it back and forth and lubricate it.

Hopefully the fluids going to go in, get into

the pin, let things start moving freer each time.

- Some of them are really tough.

I mean, we haven't got to the other side yet.

That might be...

- [Narrator] The team is using up valuable time

on the track removal.

They've got five weeks to restore this massive

tank destroyer.

(banging)

- [Narrator] Coming up, Jerry and his guys find out

the hard way what six decades of rust does

to a tank track.

(loud banging)

At the U.S. Army Ordinance Museum in Aberdeen,

Maryland, this crew is restoring an almost extinct

specimen, the German built Elephant.

Only about 90 of them were ever produced.

Now only two are thought to be in existence.

One in Russia and this Elephant right here.

- You don't run across a job like this

very often.

- [Narrator] After a lot of hammering and sweat, Joe

and his team are still trying to knock out the first

track pin.

As sometimes happens, the guys don't have the tool

they need so they make one up.

- You take some of these vehicles that are so old

you never find the parts for them, like the tools

to take off the wheels, so you h\ave to do a lot

of measuring and make the tools, all the special

tools that we have have been made.

You can't buy them.

- We, cone the end of it, put a divot in the end

of it so it'll line on the pin here, keep it

centered as it drives through there.

And that way, you know, it stays centered, it doesn't

go off track when it's driving through the pin.

(hydraulic whirring)

- [Narrator] They're not sure the rod will work,

but they're running out of options that won't wreck

the track.

Remember, this Elephant doesn't come with any spare parts.

(pounding)

Kill that, Leroy.

- We need that inside jack back on.

- [Rich] Yes.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Back her off.

Come on, baby.

- [Narrator] Six decades after she got knocked

out of action, the Elephant takes her first step

back to recovery.

(metal clanging)

- [Rich] Here you go.

- Basically that's the way you want the track

to separate.

It's not so easy all the time though.

Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we have

problems, as you see.

- That's the pin that came out of it.

Been in there for 70 years.

Still got bare metal there.

- [Narrator] The Elephant can take this beating,

after all, she was built to destroy other tanks.

The Elephant came into being by chance and it began

life with a different name.

- It wasn't designed from the onset as a heavy tank

destroyer.

The Germans had tried to discover a new heavy tank,

a Tiger and had two competitive designs.

- [Narrator] One of the designs was produced

by automotive engineer, Ferdinand Porsche.

His design did not win but he had already manufactured

some 90 chassis.

In the middle of a world war, these were two precious

to waste.

- They ended up with several of these hulls

and said, well we can't do anything with them

and Porsche said, well you can stick an 88 millimeter gun

and turn it into a gigantic heavy tank destroyer

and that's where it came from.

- [Narrator] In honor of her designer, the new

tank destroyer was officially called, the Ferdinand.

She must have seemed indestructible.

- So that's what, a good eight inches I should think.

Eight inches of armor, that's proof against most anything.

Armor wise, this really is a beast.

- [Narrator] On paper, she was a work of art.

But the Ferdinand hadn't been tested in battle.

She was riddled with crippling design flaws.

At the battle of Kursk, the Germans would learn

their tank destroyer was almost a sitting duck.

July 1943, the eastern front, the greatest tank

battle of all time.

Two opposing forces were gathering in and around

the city of Kursk.

- At Kursk, the Germans debuted a whole slew of these

new high tech, very powerful tanks.

The Ferdinand, the Tiger, a heavy tank.

The Panther, a medium tank.

(gunfire)

- [Narrator] Russian tanks couldn't match the Germans

highly sophisticated engineering.

Instead, they relied on a simple concept,

overwhelming quantity.

The Germans only produced about 6,000 Panther tanks

and some 1800 of the Tiger I and Tiger II.

As for the Elephant, roughly 90 were made.

The Russians operated on a completely different scale.

- The Russians made somewhere between 65,000 and 85,000

T34's.

They don't know, they lost count.

- The Russian T34 is nowhere near as, technically

as good as the German tanks in terms of fire power

and armor.

But on the other hand, there's thousands of them.

That makes all the difference between victory

and defeat in world war II.

- [Narrator] It rolls on tracks and boasts a mighty

gun, but the Elephant is not technically a tank.

- This does not have a turret.

That's a self-propelled anti-tank gun or assault gun.

Today, the U.S. Army uses its own version

of a self-propelled gun.

This is the M109 Paladin Howitzer.

At 25 metric tons, it weights less than half

as much as the Elephant.

The Elephant and the Paladin are designed

to engage the enemy from as far away as possible.

- If you go back as far as world war I and before,

the aim of field expert was pretty much just

to put a lot of high explosive down range

and pretty much obliterate anything that was down there.

Now, modern battlefields, we've taken into consideration

collateral damage a lot more and our munitions

are incredibly more accurate than they used to be,

even as far as 20 years ago.

- [Narrator] Fort Hood, Texas.

The U.S.Army is training artillery crews

to destroy targets that are completely out of sight.

- (Drowned out by tanks)15 months in the country

of Iraq in a place called Baqubah and this unit

has shot over 6,000 of artillery against any

enemy that is desired the will to die for his country.

And in the words of the regimental motto, can and will,

this battalion can and will take care of its own and kill

the enemy in great numbers.

- [Narrator] It may look like a lumbering giant,

but the M109 can be whipped into action with lethal speed.

- Our Howitzer's now can receive a mission and within

90 seconds they can put rounds down there.

(gunfire)

- [Narrator] Compared to the Elephant's top speed

of 30 kilometers or 19 miles per hour, the Paladin

can hit close to double that.

But the difference in speed, pales to the superiority

of fire power.

The Elephant used an 88mm gun, which had

an effective range of about 2,000 meters.

The M109 can hit targets in another country.

- We can fire the Excalibur round from over 20 kilometers

away and we can hit targets with as much accuracy

as pinpointing a room in a house that we want

to put the round into.

(gunfire)

And one mission I fired over 300 rounds one night

from two different locations at targets that were

within 400 meters of friendly troops.

(gunfire)

That's what we like to call danger close.

- [Narrator] The modern artillery battery is a highly

complex communication rig that relies on muscle,

brains, and razor sharp eyes.

And the artillery is only as good as the observers

locking in on targets.

- For artillery we prefer human eyes on the target.

A lot of things can happen over time and making

those decisions, you need an observer on the ground.

- They're out actually spotting the enemy and they

call us, the Firing Direction Center and they let

us know where they are.

And once we have that information, we take that

information and we compute firing data and send

it to our guns which I refer to as the muscle

of field artillery.

(gunfire)

- The big thing about fire is, you know, we're, we kind

of shake the battlefield and attack in depth.

- Direction four four seven zero zero out.

- In combat if we're using these, we use it against

troops in the open or light skinned vehicles

going across open ground.

You don't have to be right on target because

the kill radius of one five five millimeter shells

about 150 meters and then the main radius goes

out from there.

- These guns shoot with that much accuracy.

Infantry and army guys that are calling in these

rounds, have confidence in us and our equipment

that we could deliver those gun munitions safely.

- [Narrator] Back at the Ordinance Museum, the team

has finally wrenched out the rusted pins.

- It's one of the largest ones we've done.

We done an M1 earlier when I was here but this is one

of the larger ones.

- [Narrator] Built to handle the barbed wire and trenches

of world war I, tracks remain a defining feature

of the modern tank.

At the JSMC plant in Lima, Ohio, these tracks

are being manufactured for the U.S. Army's main

battle tank, the M1 Abram's.

Just over 60 meters long, these tracks weigh roughly

200 metric tons each.

The Abram's tracks need to be able to handle its

top speed of 30 miles per hour in a variety

of conditions.

With the tracks gone, Joe and the boys are surging

ahead on the massive overhaul.

Coming up, they discover the front left sprocket

is jammed, but freeing up the wheel will uncover

the mystery of what took the giant beast down.

At the U.S. Army Ordinance Museum in Maryland,

this Elephant tank destroyer is getting cleaned up.

- Right now we're setting up, getting the game

plan on how to remove all the road wheels so we

can remove all the grease from the bearings and stuff.

- [Narrator] The Elephant has to get prepped

for priming and paint job.

This means using a water gun to remove decades

of grease, rust, and grime.

- With the water, I can blast all that off, it's

going to go on the floor.

I'll wash it off into the trench, tomorrow there

won't be any.

We'll be working with clean metal.

Gonna blast the spray.

- [Narrator] These water hoses are not your usual

garden variety.

They tear off more than just old paint.

- It'll cut basically concrete, it'll chew

anything up including your body.

Unfortunately it got a little too close to me

and I lost part of my foot.

A couple of skin grafts later they were able to put

my heel back together.

(water pressure hissing)

- As Joe says, you dance with it.

Once you get the dancing down, it, you know,

it doesn't all go easy.

- [Narrator] As this Elephant's history of dirt

is washed clean, thousands

of miles away in England, her dreaded enemy

is alive and well.

This is a restored T34.

For many military historians, one of the greatest

tanks of all time.

- The best tank in world war II has got

to be the T34.

- The T34 was the tank of world war II and the reason

is it was a revolutionary step forward in the holy

trinity of tank design.

The holy trinity is armor, fire power, and mobility.

- [Narrator] The T34 weighed 29.2 tons, exactly

half that of the Elephant.

It was comparatively lightly armored but carried

a respectable 76.2 millimeter tank gun.

It's 12 cylinder diesel engine put out 500 horsepower,

giving it a top speed of over 50 kilometers per hour

and a range of almost five times that of the Elephant

across country.

- When the T34 appeared, Germans were shocked.

Just shocked that the Russians had this vehicle.

It was so good.

- You could find tanks with this much armor,

you could find tanks with as much firepower, you

could find tanks that were as mobile, but you

couldn't find any tanks that blended all three

critical values.

- [Narrator] This T34 is in the care of Peter Plume

at the Imperial War Museum, Ducksford, England.

- It took about some five seconds in the back of a T34

to get that dirty, yes.

The T34 wasn't necessarily the easiest tank to work on.

But at the time tanks weren't expected to have

a life expectancy more than a few weeks, so the chances

of an engine blowing up and needing fixing weren't

as high as the tank being knocked out completely.

Just reading an account of what the Germans thought

of it during the war and the terror that it obviously

caused them at the time makes you want to find out

more about the tank and that's basically what got

me interested in the first place.

There's something incredibly sexy about driving

a T34 and thinking about some of the crew that

used to have to drive it in the war.

This is the real thing here.

- [Narrator] It is now week three of the five week

Elephant restoration.

The team tackles the massive wheels on the Elephant.

(hydraulic whirring)

Each side has six road wheels, one idler, and one

drive wheel.

Each road wheel weights about 113 kilos.

And yes, getting them off is as hard as it looks.

- Those road wheels sometimes they have a mind

of their own and you get them on the shop floor

and you turn your back and it'll just start moving

and the next thing you know, it's on the back

of your leg.

And Leroy had an incident where one of them almost

got on him but luckily it fell the other way.

- [Narrator] Stripped of her wheels, the Elephant

is now ready to be drained of her toxic fluids.

This means getting low down and working underneath

tons of rusted steel.

- Once these tanks are put in place to be put

on display, they don't want a whole lost of oil

and grease and all of that leaking out of them

to contaminate the soil.

- [Narrator] And the Elephant might still contain other

leftovers even more toxic than old oil.

- We have to check and see if the gauges in em have

trinium in em, so they do a radioactive check and make

sure there are no chemicals or anything like that

in the paint.

(hydraulic whirring)

- Well, we're in the process of draining fluids

right now and there's two access plates, armor

plates underneath.

We aren't exactly which plates to take off, so

we're in the process now of taking one of the bigger

plates off to see what's above that.

- [Narrator] The entire rusted hulk is being held

up by a few blocks of wood.

- We use 50 ton air jacks to jack these tanks up.

One on the back, one on the front and we have

a variety of oak blocking that we use.

- One thing about wood, it won't compress it,

not more than what it is.

That's why they use it for cribbing.

I've had five million pounds up on wooden blocks.

Besides that, I'm skinny.

Yeah, if you were scared you would get hurt.

That's what happens most of the time.

- [Rich] What's on top of there?

- [Leroy] Years of-

(yells)

- [Male] It was a fake one.

(laughing)

(bleep)

(laughing)

- [Leroy] I owe somebody something.

That's all right, I'll catch a live one and give

it to ya.

- [Narrator] There's no time for fun and games.

The boys are on a deadline.

- [Leroy] That's how he keeps us working, man.

We've got evidence now.

No, we're talking about that right there.

- The cattle prod.

- That's what he walks around and gets us with.

Now we've gotcha.

- If they don't do what they're told, guaranteed

they won't do it again.

- [Man] Hurts like hell too.

- [Leroy] Yeah, look at the marks all over our necks

and stuff, look.

- [Leroy] Okay, I've got movement everywhere.

(dramatic music)

Water come out of this one too.

- [Rich] Got it?

- [Leroy] Yep.

There's ya some oil.

- [Rich] Yeah, it's a picture of long water.

- [Leroy] We don't drain like that for days.

- [Narrator] Drained of her toxic fluids,

the Elephant is ready for another blast

from the high-pressured hose.

(water hissing)

She was built to be a nightmare on tracks,

but on the battlefield in action, all her flaws were

quickly revealed.

Even her strengths turned into deadly weaknesses.

- It's armored up.

I mean this thing is armored up against most

anything, so it protected the troops very well.

It has a great gun on it.

So, it has great firepower.

The problem is mobility.

Because it was so big, this is 70 something tons

combat loaded.

It just couldn't move around the battlefield well at all.

(gunfire)

- [Narrator] And while the Elephant may have had

a super gun to knock out T34's, it had no machine

gun to deal with smaller human targets.

- Courageous, so the troops could run up, throw

on a Molotov cocktail, press a sticky mine, disable

or destroy the Elephant tank.

- [Narrator] Another limitation, the Elephant did

not have a turret.

So the amazing gun could not swivel independently

of the chassis.

- And because the gun sits up there in that big

superstructure, it has very limited traverse.

You have to, in fact, turn the entire vehicle if you

want to track a target.

So, if you have a Russian T34 coming at you,

straight on, not a problem.

But if they're coming around one side, you literally

have to move the vehicle around.

- [Narrator] The Elephant was not built to roam

the battlefield.

This big gun was meant to sit back and fire

from great distances.

- The concept of this vehicle is that

they needed to shoot Russian tanks at long ranges.

- [Narrator] Self-propelled tank destroyers,

like the Elephant, tend to operate what is known

as direct mode.

Direct mode means you have your enemy directly in view.

They hit only what they can see.

- The 88 millimeter gun that's on this vehicle,

in theory, can shoot about four kilometers.

And actually what you're looking at when you

look through the scope of this thing at four

kilometers and you put the cross hair,

the cross hair covers the target at that point.

So it's sort of guessing.

(upbeat rock music)

- [Narrator] Like the Elephant, the Paladin

is meant to engage the enemy from afar.

(gunfire)

But with the Paladin, there was no guesswork.

The observers do the math and the gunners deliver

the payload.

The target doesn't stand a chance.

Unlike the Elephant, the M109 Howitzer fires

in the indirect mode which means, it does not directly

see its target.

To complete the equation, gun crews need to be able

to communicate with each other.

- Distance is four four zero zero out.

- [Narrator] One of the most accurate and lethal

guns in the world, the M109 is built on a connected

web of information.

- They're our eyes.

The eyes in the field artillery.

They're out actually spotting the enemy and they call us,

the Fire Direction Center and let us know where they are.

And once we have that information, we take that

information and compute firing data and send it

to our guns which we like to refer to as the muscle

of field artillery.

(gunfire)

- [Narrator] When the Elephant made it to the U. S.

Ordinance Museum, she came as is.

No backup parts, no spares.

Even a small piece of the 65 ton mammoth

has to be accounted for and replaced.

- I'm in the process of repairing the hinge

that was cut, torched off the tank.

It's about a 3/4 inch crack.

I took three, two or three extra pieces of metal.

Welded them together but in fact I've got

to groove it first so I can weld it between them

so I can get more penetration.

Once I'm done with this piece, it'll look like it's

brand new, right out of the factory.

- [Narrator] Two weeks to go.

The Elephant has been stripped of her tracks, water

blasted, primed for paint.

(hydraulics whirring)

- Hold up, Leroy.

- It locked up.

- That's why it was so hard to move around.

It's like having the brakes on.

- [Narrator] When the boys wrench free the damaged

sprocket, they discover two pieces of shrapnel.

Two pieces that will help reveal the mystery

of what brought this Elephant down.

- Well, as Joe and the rest of the crew are trying

to put the sprocket back on the left side

of the Elephant, that's when they discovered these

two fragments.

- [Narrator] At first, the museum team is puzzled.

Could they belong to the Elephant?

- Looking at this, the first were these fragments,

we're not going to be able to tell much from this.

It's just only two small pieces.

- [Narrator] But Dr. Joe Rainer and his team discover

the small fragments are not just scrap.

They're vital clues.

A direct link to the Elephant's demise.

- This is probably the round that disabled

the Elephant and led to its abandonment

by the Germans.

- [Narrator] The fragments come from a round

of ammunition.

But who delivered the death blow?

Up next, how the tank destroyer was knocked

out of the war and saved for good.

Less than two weeks to go.

The tank crew at the U.S. Army Ordinance Museum

is in the home stretch.

The Elephant hasn't looked this good since 1944.

While Joe, Rich, and Leroy were draining the tank

and blasting it, Anthony was in the next room

building missing pieces.

- He built the running boards, the fenders,

and the side panels on both sides.

So we put those on.

This was cut loose with a torch.

That gun mount, we just put that on there.

HE had to weld it.

And there's two access panels in the front up there,

which is 3/4 inch steel.

- [Narrator] Even after the main overhaul,

the Elephant still has some visible battle scars.

- If you notice on the gun barrel.

One round hit here.

We don't repair that damage.

What we do is after we get it put together,

we highlight it with aluminum paint, a silver paint

so it can be seen from a distance and show exactly

where it's at without having to hunt for it.

- [Narrator] At Kursk, the tank destroyer was

a disaster.

Its complex engineering was a major liability.

- The majority of the losses weren't combat losses.

The majority of the losses were the vehicle

simply broke down, they couldn't be repaired.

They were a heavy, awkward design.

(gunfire)

- [Narrator] Two weeks of savage fighting end

in Russian victory.

But the cost is horrific.

It is estimated that 250,000 Soviet troops

were killed, 600,000 wounded.

100,000 Germans were killed and wounded.

Half the German tanks were knocked out of action.

German forces began a long retreat to ultimate defeat.

The flawed Ferdinand, those that survived were

sent back to the design table.

- This is why all the Ferdinand's was eventually

sent to Nibelungenwerke in Austria to be refitted

with a battle machine gun to have some sort of inherent

firepower against attacking enemy infantry.

(upbeat rock music)

- [Narrator] Protective grills were placed over

the engines.

A commanders cupola was added to the turret.

A non-conductive coating called Zimmerit was applied

to the hull.

This would make it more difficult for magnetic mines

to stick on.

Refitted, reworked, the Ferdinand was not

renamed the Elephant.

And in 1944, it was sent on its final mission.

- The first company, the 653rd Elephant battalion

was rushed from the Nibelungenwerke in Austria

to the Italian front in order to counter the American

and British invasion of the Anzio beachhead.

- [Narrator] January 1943, the Italian campaign,

the allies wanted to breakthrough heavily fortified

German lines and reach Rome.

They launched an amphibious assault landing some

36,000 troops on the coastal town of Anzio about

50 kilometers south of Rome.

German forces were initially surprised but hit

back hard.

The death toll was massive.

- By the time the Italian campaign was over the first

company of the 653rd limped out of Italy with only three

functioning vehicles.

The others were lost to engine fires, P40 attacks,

disabling hits on the treads so they couldn't recover.

- [Narrator] It was at Anzio that the Ordinance Museum's

Elephant was hit in the left front wheel.

But the mystery remains, who or what took this tank out?

- Right in here's where the round hit.

That's what bent everything up.

- [Narrator] Long after the war, the disabling shot

at her front left wheel is still holding up the overhaul.

The sprocket is not going on properly.

The battle damage is blocking a perfect fit.

- Tried to line up the battle damage so when we were

going on and coming off, everything would go back

and forth the way it should, so, it's a little

off, Leroy.

You see it?

- [Leroy] Yeah.

- [Rich] Come forward.

Come forward.

Okay.

Now lock the brake down.

Lock the brake.

No.

The distance between the drum on this side,

you said you bottomed out but you didn't bottom out.

You bottomed out, we locked up on the battle damage.

The battle damage is actually holding us out

about, I'd say half inch.

Where the inner drum is, we're gonna have to cut

that out.

We're definitely going to have to do something about it.

- [Narrator] Time to bring in Anthony.

- So we had to cut pieces of brake drum out,

pieces of the backing plate off.

It just made for a lot harder job than we were

actually anticipating.

- [Narrator] Eventually all the wheels are put

back in place.

The team now has to thread the tracks over the wheels.

- [Rich] Whoa!

Whoa!

The hard part now that we got the crack underneath

the tank, now we've got to pull the other end, pull

the rear sprocket probably out this end.

- [Joe] All you have to do is shove that thing on there.

- What can I do it with, either track jacks or comealongs.

And then put the pin in.

And sometimes that is, that is quite difficult.

Come on baby, don't do it, don't do it.

She's not in the sprocket.

Hold him up, he's not in the sprocket.

- Try the tank out on the track, tighten it up,

pull itself in the groove with pin hitting.

That's how it's done.

Coming up.

A lot more muscle, a boat load of painting, and a serious

fender bender.

- There goes my (bleep) paint job.

Built for war, this tank destroyer has been broken,

rebuilt, and blasted.

Now she's ready for a pint job.

30 gallons later, all she needs now is camo.

- Well, we'd like to make a camouflage pattern

to look like how it was painted when it was in Italy

in service just before it's capture by the U.S. Army

Ordinance Technical Intelligence Team in about late

May of 1944.

(upbeat music)

- Right now I'm just sketching everything in with red,

you're not supposed to be seeing this because

this is cheating but as close as a replica as I

can make of this pattern I'm going to make it and,

hopefully it's what they like.

You don't like doing it twice.

(laughs)

- [Narrator] While she gets her final coat, the museum

team continues hunting for answers.

- Well, we looked through our extensive ammo collection

and found the M61 which is a perfect fit for this.

It fits just right in there and that threading you

can see.

- [Narrator] This lets the team narrow in on

which allied ordinance took the Elephant out.

- So this is essentially the type of round

that took out our Elephant tank or at least disabled it.

There's a whole lot of different vehicles in the catalog

of the American tanks of 1944 that could have fired this.

It might have been a Sherman, it might have been an M10.

- Now was it shot at by other things?

Probably so, but I think most of this damage

on this vehicle was done by Sherman

with a 75 millimeter gun.

- Once the Elephant was captured it was identified

by a technical intelligence team

of the Ordinance Department as something to be exploited

for its technical intelligence.

- [Narrator] The Elephants short-lived combat career

was now over.

Five weeks after this monumental overhaul began,

the Elephant is finally picture perfect.

She's good to go, ready for the big move to her

place of honor at the museum.

But if getting her in was tough, getting her out

is going to be even tougher.

- Move tank one.

- [Narrator] This is a big moment for the whole crew.

They have every reason to be proud.

- The uh, probably about one of the hardest

ones we've ever done, have ever done here.

They're all a hard challenge because they're so old.

- [Narrator] But right when you thing the job is done,

something can go terribly wrong.

(metal clanking)

- That was my (bleep) fenders.

- [Jerry] There goes my (bleep) paint job.

damn it (bleep) you (bleeped) up

- Nobody was communicating.

You seen all the guys with their orange hats on.

When he puts his hands up like that, that means

everything stops cause he's engine control.

- Not a good thing when its only gone 25 or 30 feet,

and all the sudden you've got a scratched paint job.

- Fun sized?

I hope he gets a little bit better than this, quick.

- Firewood, baby.

Give it that firewood.

- Narrator] They've got to control the tanks, so wood

blocks are shoved in to slow it down but the tank

ignores the wood.

- Firewood, baby.

- We're having trouble with the wheels because

the chassis' designed to lift over

obstructions in the track.

- [Narrator] All this effort and they haven't even

got the Elephant onto the trailer.

They still have to haul the 71 ton monster

to the Museum grounds.

- I don't think that's going to go on there, Rich.

- [Narrator] The Elephant weighs much more than the trailer

she's clambering onto.

It's like a tow truck hauling a freight train.

Finally the Elephant stops resisting and is pulled

off solid ground.

She's only one of two left in the world.

She's traveled 4,000 miles across two continents

and survived the greatest tank battle of all time.

- [Jerry] Here she comes, here she comes.

Come on, come on, baby.

Oh.

- [Joe] Bingo.

Home at last.

- [Narrator] Finally, the Elephant can stand proud

with the other treasures at one of the worlds

greatest tank museums.

Thanks to the dedication of this tank crew.

- I can't say enough bout the finished product.

I think it's going to be a very exciting piece

for the museum to have that will bring a lot of folks

in to see it.

- When the day is done and you talked to people

and they're real happy with what you've done, you're

real happy with what you've done.

It's very fulfilling.

- I love to see the finished product once it's done.

My favorite is, knowing what we've done to it

and how it looks when it leaves out of here.

- But it is very rewarding when you see a rusted

piece of equipment come in here and when it leaves

here it looks really, really good because

we did do a good job here.

- It was a ream effort from start to get.

And that's the only way that it comes together.

And it came out really nice.

With some long hours and we were happy to make

sure it got done.

- In the end, I love it.

- [Narrator] For the crew at the U.S.Army Ordinance

Museum, there is no rest.

Their job is never really done and that's just

the way they like it.

- No, look, there's another one over there.

Look Rich, that one's waiting for you.

And then the one next to it, that's another one.

Yeah.