A well-preserved World War II German Panzerkampfwagen IV tank was discovered on the grounds of Kluczewo Airfield near Stargard, Poland. According to information obtained by Archeowieści, the recovered vehicle is now in the storage facility of the Polish Arms Museum in Kołobrzeg.

The recovered tank gun. Photo: Andrzej Ossowski. Published courtesy of the Polish Arms Museum in Kołobrzeg.

The story of the discovery began at a nearby scrap yard. A few days ago, local history enthusiast Jarosław Żejmo noticed fragments of a military vehicle there. He asked local scrap collectors where the pieces had been found and then passed the information on to the museum in Kołobrzeg.

With the historic vehicle at risk of being destroyed or plundered, immediate action was taken. The West Pomeranian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments, Ewa Stanecka, issued the necessary permit on an emergency basis.

The recovery operation began on the evening of April 18. “If we had been one day late, the tank would have disappeared into a scrapyard or a private collection,” museum director Paweł Pawłowski told Archeowieści. News of the buried tank at the airfield had spread quickly, attracting people interested in illegally recovering it. Fortunately, history enthusiasts also came forward, and a team was assembled in a very short time to recover the vehicle for the museum’s collection.

“What happened here, this kind of cooperation, is truly exceptional. We have been living and breathing it since yesterday,” Director Pawłowski explained. The tank recovery operation continued until 3 a.m. on the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

The tank hull during excavation. Photo: Piotr Skoczeń. Published courtesy of the Polish Arms Museum in Kołobrzeg.

Representatives of the Pomorze 1945 Portal, the Nurkowanie diving magazine, and the Fort–Rogowo Foundation offered their assistance with the security and recovery work. Dr. Andrzej Ossowski, a forensic medicine specialist from the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, undertook the task of securing the discovery site. Assistance was also provided by Marek Łuczak, head of the Team for Combating Crimes Against Monuments at the Regional Police Headquarters in Szczecin.

Significant contributions to obtaining the equipment needed for the operation were made by Dr. Marcin Majewski, director of the museum in Stargard; the Stargard City Hall; Rotrans Transport Company from Gościno; Szubert Construction Company from Stargard; and GUR-SPED, which supplied lifting equipment and cranes.

Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. J at the museum in Banská Bystrica. Photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Author: Vassia Atanassova.

Preliminary examination revealed that the vehicle was a PzKpfw IV Ausf. J equipped with a 75 mm gun, which had been hit during military operations in 1945.

Thanks to this discovery, the collection of the Polish Arms Museum in Kołobrzeg will gain a unique German World War II medium tank, a type rarely represented in Polish museum collections. The recovered components are currently being unloaded, cleaned of soil, and catalogued. The next stage will be the conservation and restoration of the historic vehicle.

Approximately 80% of the tank’s original material has survived, including the KwK 40 L/48 gun, components of the turret and gun mantlet, the hull tub with seven suspension bogies, the upper hull armor with the MG 34 machine-gun mount, the observation-slit cover and turret ring, the engine, the commander’s cupola, eleven road wheels, the drive sprocket, and numerous other components.

The hull tub retains its red-oxide primer and traces of winter camouflage. Bomb fins were also found inside the hull, suggesting that the tank had been blown up.

The PzKpfw IV served throughout World War II. The first vehicles were built in 1937, and the tank’s combat debut came during the invasion of Poland, in which 211 PzKpfw IV tanks took part.

The Ausf. J, the final version of the vehicle, entered production in June 1944. By that time, the design was already becoming obsolete. A total of 2,392 Ausf. J tanks were built. Estimates for total PzKpfw IV production range from approximately 8,500 to 8,900 vehicles.

The Ausf. J weighed 25 tonnes and had a maximum speed of 38 km/h.