The Cat That Came Back from the Dead

A flashback Friday style post today, with a look at a blog I wrote some years ago with information that was kindly sent to me by our old friend Roy Vinden who worked for Cat for many year’s. Roy sent us some cracking photos of an old Caterpillar D4 with a very interesting and hidden past.

In 1938 a young Estonian farmer bought himself a new Caterpillar D4 to assist him with his work on his ever-expanding farm. Only a year later World War 2 broke out and with the Nazi’s rampaging ever closer towards the farmers land, he decided to take action to prevent his pride and joy from falling into the hands of the enemy. His chosen and rather drastic course of action was to bury the tractor underground in one of his fields.

When the war was over Estonia was occupied by the Russians and the farmers land became part of a large “collective”. Fast forward many years to 1991 and by this time Estonia had regained its independence. The farmer who was by this time a very old man was given back his land and immediately started to wonder if his D4 was still lying in the field where he had buried it?

Incredibly after a bit of searching and digging test holes the old tractor was discovered, all wrapped up just exactly as he left it many years ago, even after all that time in the ground the machine was in amazing condition and once extracted from its grave, new fluids were put into it, a new battery added and the machine fired up first time!

As the old farmer had retired, he decided to offer the D4 to the local Caterpillar dealer for the area “Wihuri” who were more than delighted to give it a home at the entrance to their new premises. I think you will all agree that it’s an incredible story and all credit to the Caterpillar products longevity.