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A World War II-era Panther tank has been unearthed at a Kazan university
A German-built Panzerkampfwagen V Panther tank was found underground as an old storage building was dismantled at Kazan National Research Technological University. The university said the tank was used as an armor pit for experiments involving gunpowder, explosives and pyrotechnic materials in the postwar period.
Kazan National Research Technological University, in the city of Kazan in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, announced that a German-built Panzerkampfwagen V Panther tank dating from the World War II era had been unearthed during construction work.
The discovery was made as an old storage building near the university's Building B was being dismantled. The tank was found just beneath the soil in a specially built pit with brick walls and steps leading down to the tank turret.
The Panther was used in laboratory research
Denis Sakharnykh, director of the History Museum at Kazan National Research Technological University, said the tank was used as an armor pit at the university in the postwar years.
Sakharnykh said laboratories and researchers at the special faculty studied the chemistry and technology of gunpowder, explosives and pyrotechnic compositions. The underground structure had not been used for more than 60 years.
Yevgeny Grigoryev, a museum volunteer and local historian from Kazan, said the Kazan Tank School, established before the war, studied Soviet vehicles as well as armored vehicles received through the Lend-Lease program and captured during the war.
Grigoryev said it was not known for certain in which conflict the Panther tank had been captured. He said it might have been one of the vehicles captured during the Battle of Kursk, presenting that connection as a possibility concerning the tank's history.
Experiments were conducted remotely
Alexander Korobkov, a former student of the university, said the tank had once stood in the inner courtyard opposite the building that housed the special faculty. According to Korobkov, students climbed inside through the turret hatch, placed samples in a device known as a Trauzl bomb and then returned to the building before detonating them remotely.
Korobkov said the tank's armor was up to 7 centimeters thick, making it suitable for the experiments. He also said students wore protective headgear when exiting through the narrow hatch to avoid hitting their heads on the metal sections.
Ruslan Gilmanov, a professor in the Department of Organic Nitrogen Compounds Chemistry and Technology at Kazan National Research Technological University, said research was conducted in the tank during the postwar period under the direction of scientists well known in Tatarstan's scientific community.
At the beginning of the 1950s, the university established a new test station equipped with a professional armored cabin. After the station was built, scientists and students stopped using the Panther tank; the section leading down to the armor pit was filled in, and a structure for storing chemical reagents was built over the tank.
The tank left underground gradually became one of the university's legends.
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