Picture for a moment that you are a worker on an oil rig doing your normal daily routine.
Out in the open ocean there isn’t exactly much to see along the horizon so when you
suddenly notice a floating object it immediately catches your eye.
Expecting something like a civilian vessel or perhaps some sort of floating debris, imagine
your surprise when what you see is a floating tank.
Well believe it or not this actually happened recently in December of 2021 in the South
China sea.
What is this strange floating vehicle and how did it wind up in the middle of the ocean?
Join me for today's episode of fake tank friday as we look at this bizarre story.
Our story begins in the Natuna Sea which resides at the southern portion of the South China
sea near Indonesia and Malaysia.
On December 16th workers on an oil rig spotted this strange floating object which they at
first believed to be some sort of armored vehicle.
This bizarre sighting quickly began to make the rounds on various social media, after
all it's not every day that you see a tank going for a swim.
This quickly caught the attention of the Indonesian Military with them releasing this statement
two days later on the 18th.
"Yes, it is true that there were findings of objects similar to tanks, but they were
not dangerous."
Despite this statement they still seem to have decided to investigate further with the
Indonesian Navy sending some patrol boats to search for the tank.
Poor weather conditions caused some delay in the recovery efforts but on the 27th they
were able to finally reach it.
What they found is almost as bizarre as the initial reports of a floating tank.
What originally was thought to be a vehicle was in reality some sort of mockup bearing
loose resemblance to vehicles like the Abrams or other western MBTs.
Some articles also mention the Chinese Type 15 light tank which I can definitely see the
resemblance to.
Judging by the photos and apparent rust on the object it at first appears to be made
of some sort of metal but according to the Daily Star it was a wooden model.
Looking at the closeup photos though it seems that at least some parts of it were indeed
made of metal like the barrel and fenders.
Though the object being a dummy tank does make a hell of a lot more sense than an actual
tank floating around in the ocean it does create more questions.
One being who made it, and another being what it was made for.
Unfortunately there does not seem to be a definitive answer for this but I have a few
guesses.
To me the most likely explanation is that this was created by the Chinese military as
a stand-in dummy tank for some sort of military exercise.
This is routinely done using visual modification to vehicles or other methods to simulate potential
enemy vehicles.
In fact looking at some photos of reported mockups done by China we find this image which
looks fairly similar to the one found floating.
Although this doesn’t explain how the dummy tank ended up floating in the south china
sea, weirder things have happened.
Perhaps it was lost during transport, washed away in a storm, or was purposefully dumped
into the sea after the training was completed.
If you want a more tin foil hat explanation perhaps this is some sort of strange intimidation
tactic towards the Indonesians who China have been pressuring to stop their oil operations
in the region despite those waters being claimed by Indonesia.
This is almost certainly not the real explanation though and makes no sense.
China can much more easily use a show of force with their naval vessels rather than setting
mockup tanks adrift in the direction of the oil rigs.
I’m not entirely sure how I missed this when it happened last year but I figured it
was a topic well worth covering since we have previously looked at things like the Panzer
of the Lake and the Submarine Killing tank.
This may have been a bit shorter than usual but there wasn’t a ton else to cover on
this topic.
What do you think the story behind this mockup is?
Let me know in the comments down below.
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