The Great Manitoba Carrier Recovery

[Michael R.]

Buried all that time, but someone still managed to make off with the rad cap?

[kevin powles]

David, how many carriers were actually recovered ?, I have one recovered one safe here in the uk, now blasted and preserved, only needed minimal work to the floor areas.

[kevin powles]

Carrier preserved, restoration underway.

Kevin.

[super dave]

Cool, I can ad that info when telling people about where my carrier came from

[David Dunlop]

Kevin.

The information I obtained from the surplus dealer who bought them from Crown Assets and sold them to the Lodge, was he sold them a dozen. This was out of a lot of close to 50 he had purchased in Lloydminster. It was a short road trip from his place to the waiting trench as the Lodge. Once in the trench, a number of useful bits were scavenged from the carriers and under the dirt they went.

The length of our magnetic survey suggested 8 vehicles were present in the trench. I believe we visually confirmed the existence of the 7th carrier and were very certain of another immediately behind it, but their location was too close to the boat launch site and we did not want to risk damage to that facility at all. So I recall 6 came out. One more had been used to putter about the lodge for many years but had long before been scrapped. That left the three our front end loader driver told us were buried under the nearby highway. Some of the guys from Prairie Command who attended the entire excavation probably have additional photos of how the work progressed.

David

[rob love]

As far as I recall, we found 5, and of those the lower hulls were left behind on the first two.
The next two went to Derk and I (mine is now with Superdave and Derk has restored his). The last one went to Gordon Falk, and from there went to the UK.

In each case, as we dug up one, the next one was touching the first. After number five we did not hit anything else.

[Jim Burrill]

Rob, I know a number of bins and boxes and stuff came to me when I bought the arrier from Jim Rice. Do you recall if the lower hull was one of the carriers? or Did I just get a handfulll of take off parts? IIRC, Jim said the rotton grenade boxes and top armour came fromt he first carrier uncovered. I still have all the rusty bits. I saved them for patterns to make the ones I used in the restoration. I sold the carrier to Steve Kantnor, who later sold it on, to the UK I believe.

Cheers,
Jim Burrill
15th Recce