The recovery tasks of a Spanish Leopardo 2E main battle tank in Latvia

Tanks are undoubtedly the most powerful and impressive vehicles in an army, but they also have their bad days.

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These bad days are often caused by failures in the engine and also by one of the vehicle's most fragile elements: its tracks, which can be broken by the explosion of a landmine or an improvised explosive device (IED), or by a forced maneuver on rough terrain.

The Spanish Defence Staff (EMAD) has released today an interesting series of photos in which we see the recovery tasks of a Leopard 2E tank of the Spanish Army in Latvia, specifically in the training ground next to the Ādaži military base, where the NATO Multinational Brigade is located in that country, in which a Spanish contingent of the "Extremadura" XI Brigade participates. You can see the four photos of that series here (click on them to see them enlarged).

The photos show the Spanish tank with its left track sunk in a ditch. The track is out of place. In front of it we see a Leopard 2ER Buffalo recovery vehicle. Judging by the colour, also from the Spanish Army. This vehicle has its crane extended to lift the track from the crashed Leopard 2E.

In this image we see the crashed tank, the 131. We see two crew members of the vehicle together with two soldiers of the Canadian Army, digging the area of ​​the left drive wheel of the Spanish tank to clear the area of ​​mud. According to Tank Archives, Leopard 2s have D570F tracks, which weigh 5,400 kg each. Of this weight, 748 kg are the pads and 4,652 kg are the track itself, which consists of 82 links.

In the last photo we see a Canadian Army Heavy Equipment Transporter (HET) gondola trailer, with the Spanish tank on the trailer. Part of the Leopard 2E's left side skirts are up. I don't know if this was a real accident or an exercise. In the first case, I hope the damage is easy to repair. Obviously, no armoured force is safe from these situations: the important thing is to have the means and the preparation to recover the vehicle and put it back into service. For this purpose, recovery vehicles such as the Búfalo, the Spanish version of the German Bergepanzer Büffel, were invented.