The Wheatcroft Collection has around 200 items, including more than 130 vehicles, of which 88 are tanks. The majority of the collection is of German, American and British origin, with a smaller number of vehicles from, Japan, France, and Russia. The owner of the collection, Kevin Wheatcroft, has been collecting military vehicles for over 40 years.
The collection is perhaps notable for having a number of extremely valuable and rare Second World War-era German military vehicles, including a number of Panther tanks, one of which is close to full restoration. A number of rare Tiger tanks, both I and II as well as StuG assault guns, Panzer III’s, and a Panzer IV tanks.
The collection is always looking for spares and items that will allow it to complete its restoration so please contact them via their Facebook page. Below is an update of what the collection has been up over the year and you can follow their adventures via the Wheatcroft Collection’s Facebook page
Sherman Tanks
TWC are pleased to report progress on the first of the 10 Sherman’s, the pictures depict an M4A1 being disassembled ready for sand blasting and repair. Many NOS parts and a fully rebuilt engine are waiting to go straight back in to the hull.
Some parts which are no longer available generally, are under manufacture and in most cases a series of parts are being produced so that we are able to offer them to other collectors so anybody interested please feel free to message us.
TWC showing our latest progress on the multiple Hetzer restorations by Tey Vehicle Restorations. The first four pictures show the Hetzer’s being disassembled, picture 5 shows hull number 1 having it’s engine mountings replaced in order to fit the correct 6 cylinder Praga.
Picture 6 shows newly manufactured fuel tank protection shields as this will be one of the first items to be welded back into the hull. There is much progress on the disassembly of smaller components and we look forward to bringing you further updates.
In May and after driving 2575 miles we are home and busy unloading. Also see picutres of the M10’s progress, now thrououghly sand blasted and being prepared for paint. We also saw much progress on the suspension units and alot of the interior tin work, so we are really pleased with progress to date.
Thursday and Friday we spent in Normandy, negotiating with the farmer the extraction of more parts from the former German army workshop.
This uncovered two near mint Panzer IV gear boxes which we will arrange to collect in the next few weeks. Today we are pleased to announce ahead of Coys auction results that The Wheatcroft Collection was successful in purchasing the majority of the German vehicles from Italian collection that was put to auction today.
Alex is now busy arranging for transportation back to the midlands base. We will release pictures once we have the vehicles back and under our control. We are also pleased to report that disassembly of the collections 4 Hetzer’s is progressing nicely at Tey Vehicle Restorations, see photos.
Sherman parts and the preparation of the Sherman M4A1, ready to be shipped to Matthieu Dumias of Military Classic Vehicles as part of our 10 Sherman restoration program.
Another one of our Shermans to Matthieu Dumias at Military Classic Vehicles. There will be one more going out this month plus two of our own vehicles full with NOS Sherman parts (tracks and two more turrets), so that we can call in with the empty vehicles on the return trip collecting more German Panzer parts from the former field workshop we discovered last year.
It’s a bit of an unknown what’s in the back of the barns as it’s literally buried under tons of parts that the farmer had collected from the numerous derelict vehicles knocked out and abandoned on his farm.
We have taken delivery of this STuG III unit for one of the collections STuG III’s which are due to start their restoration shortly. This was an amazing find, brought up from the bottom of a fresh water lake and is in remarkable condition.
Tony has already pressure washed it and has started the process of soaking it in a releasing agent in order to ease dismantling. On the other end of the scale, we found this, a NOS G7a German torpedo engine section. This gives us a full complement of G7a torpedo’s for the collections Schnellboot S130. We are off to look at more stuff tomorrow, updates to follow.
TWC’s HGV driver Darren, delivers anther 40 foot load of Sherman spares (NOS) to our restoration partner Matthieu Dumias of Military Classic Vehicles. Another load leaves on Sunday so next week I (Kevin), am joining the team pulling together more parts from stores making up the last of 6 truck loads. We believe this represents the largest cache of Sherman spares anywhere in Europe.
Unloading a van full of Stuka parts from various locations at our Berlin workshop where the Stuka will be built. We were amazed at the quality of some of the parts.
As it was only an hours drive to Rosenow Restorations we called in again as we forgot to photograph current work on our various Mercedes under restoration and we wanted to share the latest images with you. We’ve now have a 400 plus mile dash to the Eifel mountains where we are going to take the weekend off, clean and restack the van ready for our next appointment in Belgium.
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