The Canadian War Museum has just added a key piece of our country’s military history to its massive collection of artifacts.
The LeBreton Flats museum recently acquired a Sherman Beach Armoured Recovery Vehicle, better known as a BARV. These tanks played a major role in Canada’s contribution to the Second World War, as they were used during the D-Day landings at locations such as Juno Beach — the sandy stretch of shoreline in France’s Normandy region where Allied forces began turning the tide against Nazi Germany in June 1944.
BARVs were able to operate in water up to three metres in depth and were also used to help move broken down and damaged vehicles to clear a path for troops and equipment needed for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. The vehicles were built very quickly, with only about 50 ever constructed, with the idea that they may only be used for one operation — albeit the most important of the 1939-45 global conflict.
The vehicle was found abandoned at a firing range at Salisbury Plain in southern England and eventually found its way into The Tank Museum located in Dorset in southwest England.
“It helps tell a very specific story about the Normandy landings. And it can tell that from a Canadian perspective.”
— Grant Vogl, arms and technology collections specialist, Canadian War Museum
Chris van Schaardenburgh, vehicle collections manager at the Tank Museum, said the British history centre decided to donate the BARV to the Canadian War Museum because the vehicle was not actually used by the U.K.’s Royal Armoured Corps.
“Only a handful of Sherman BARVs are known to survive; two of these are on display in the U.K.,” van Schaardenburgh said in a statement. “It is therefore hugely significant that we share this vehicle, once used on the beaches of Normandy, with Canada.”
This will be the only Sherman BARV on display in North America.`
The process of bringing the vehicle to the War Museum required many steps and involved the help of volunteers and shipping companies.
“It was cleaned and pressure washed, sent to Liverpool. It was on a ship from Liverpool to Halifax, put on a truck to the museum and then it was craned into storage at the museum,” said Grant Vogl, the War Museum’s arms and technology collections specialist.
The shipping weight of the BARV was 27 tonnes.
Historians do not yet know the full extent of this BARV’s participation on D-Day, but research is being conducted to see if more can be found about its history.
“When they were doing cleaning of the vehicle prior to shipping it to the museum, they were able to find some of the old registration markings in the paint underneath the top layers,” Vogl said. “Using those numbers we can hopefully track down more of its service history.”
It will still take some time before the BARV is available for the general public to see.
“It is one of our priority restoration projects for the next few years,” Vogl said. “It is in very rough condition. It certainly is going to require some specialized fabrication of armour elements. We have to source original parts for suspension units and some things are going to be scratch-built.”
The restoration will only be cosmetic, however, as the vehicle won’t be operated.
The BARV will likely be put on display in the main LeBreton gallery for large vehicles and pieces of technology. Vogl said that perhaps in the future it could be integrated into the D-Day exhibitions in the upstairs galleries.
“It helps tell a very specific story about the Normandy landings,” Vogl said. “And it can tell that from a Canadian perspective.”
