History Main / VehicularTurnabout

* The climax of ''Film/RamboIII'' infamously have Rambo hopping into the hatch of a badly-damaged Soviet tank and using it to kick ass on the warzone.

* This is {{discussed}} in ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'', when a soldier fancifully suggests doing this with the Martian tripods.

* Happened during WWII to a great extent. The Germans used a great many captured tanks -- French ones were used as training, guard, and anti-partisan units, and Czech ones formed standard combat forces. In the Desert campaign, it was not unknown for both the Axis and Allied sides to scrounge and use each other's captured vehicles so long as the ammo and spares lasted, with Germans operating examples of practically every British tank, whilst so many Italian tanks were captured intact in early 1941 that they were used to equip entire ''armoured regiments''. In 1944, the Guards Armoured Division recycled captured Panthers as "Cuckoo" tanks. The Luftwaffe had a squadron of captured aircraft it used for spy missions, and the Kriegsmarine operated several captured submarines (for example UB-1, the former HMS ''Seal''). The Japanese used captured M3 Stuart tanks. A number of battles were initiated specifically to prevent the enemy from taking advantage of captured vehicles, most significantly the British bombardment of Mers-el-Kebir which sank three French battleships and killed over a thousand French sailors, despite Germans having no means or intention to seize those ships after the 1940 Armistice, and the French Navy taking it as a point of pride that they'd scuttle their ships before allowing anybody to seize them (which they did indeed do when Germany later tried to seize the remaining fleet at Toulon after all).

* Happened frequently in ''Series/StargateSG1'' with the team capturing Goa'uld fighters, or other ships and using them back against the villain of the week. In early seasons the vehicles were [[StatusQuoIsGod often destroyed in the ensuing battle]] however by later seasons, they were reliably keeping their prizes long enough to start reverse engineering them. On at least one occasion this shoots them in the foot when a clever Goa'uld booby traps his fighters. The team attempts to use parts from it in an Earth-built fighter, only to (almost) wind up drifting through space for a long, long time.

* During the UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}n invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} in 2022, Ukrainian Ground Forces actually increased the number of tanks they operate compared to pre-war times because so many Russian tanks were captured or abandoned during the (poorly planned) early phase of the invasion, especially the failed attempt to seize the capital city, Kyiv.
** Russia's subsequent failure to capture and hold the Kharkiv Oblast in September 2022 resulted in an equally poorly organized pull-back; reports from the ground show ''an entire division'' of armored vehicles (nominally between 150 to 200 units, depending on type) were abandoned in a more-or-less functional state. Ukraine military sources indicate an intent to redistribute the vehicles to bolster various Ukrainian ground forces.

* The BonusBoss of ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' is [[spoiler:Bowser Jr, complete with his mini-Koopa Clown Car. After a few turns, he'll get out of it, at which point you can jump into it and chase him down while throwing various objects at him.]]

This trope is ubiquitous in works of naval fiction that are set in the age of WoodenShipsAndIronMen. This is because sailors were awarded prize money for capturing enemy ships. Captured enemy ships would often be incorporated into the captor's own navy (often under their original names, as it was considered bad luck to change the name. HMS ''Guerriere'' is a good example). See Website/TheOtherWiki [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_money for more information.]] Because SpaceIsAnOcean, science fiction works will sometimes use the same concept with spaceships.

* Happened during WWII to a great extent. The Germans used a great many captured tanks -- French ones were used as training, guard, and anti-partisan units, and Czech ones formed standard combat forces. In the Desert campaign, it was not unknown for both the Axis and Allied sides to scrounge and use each other's captured vehicles so long as the ammo and spares lasted, with Germans operating examples of practically every British tank, whilst so many Italian tanks were captured intact in early 1941 that they were used to equip entire ''armoured regiments''. In 1944, the Guards Armoured Division recycled captured Panthers as "Cuckoo" tanks. The Luftwaffe had a squadron of captured aircraft it used for spy missions, and the Kriegsmarine operated several captured submarines (for example UB-1, the former HMS ''Seal''). The Japanese used captured M3 Stuart tanks. A number of battles were initiated specifically to prevent the enemy from taking advantage of captured vehicles, most significantly the British bombardment of Mers-el-Kebir which sank three French battleships and killed over a thousand French sailors, despite Germans having no means or intention to seize those ships after the 1940 Armistice.

* Regarding the statement above, the renaming of enemy ships was common practice, just not amongst the British and American fleets. And the British took this rule to the extreme. During the Revolutionary War, the British took a ship called ''Ville de Paris'' (the City of Paris). This ship sank in a storm soon after it was captured, but a second ''Ville de Paris'' was commissioned twelve years later. The only problem was the time period: the second ''Ville de Paris'' was launched during the Napoleonic Wars, where she served admirably.

* HMS Morse was a German U-Boat captured intact near Iceland. The ''Morse'' was used to patrol the approach routes to the German U-Boat bases in France: the reasoning being that a German crew so near home would relax and take her for a friendly vessel. Until...

An extremely common plot in fiction is commandeering enemy equipment and turning it against its former owner as soon as possible, often with the thief in command of the hardware. The commandeered materiel will often then remain in continuous service rather than being reverse engineered and mass produced.

** In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'', the pacifist Sanc Kingdom obtains several of OZ's Taurus, paints them white, and uses them for their self-defense forces. Not long after, the space rebels White Fang capture an OZ factory, taking not only Tauruses (which they paint brick red), but the new model Virgo II.

** The protagonists in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans'' does this on an almost regular basis. [[PrivateMilitaryContractors Tekkadan]] is a struggling mercenary force of ChildSoldiers short on cash, so they try to salvage as much as possible from their battles. Notable examples include Gjallarhorn Lieutenant Crank's generic Graze-model Mobile Suit, and the [[SpacePirates Brewer's]] Gundam Gusion and even their flagship. And that's not even getting into how much random materiel they recover: most of the weapons and armor for Tekkadan's Gundam Barbatos are jury-rigged from battlefield scraps.

** Later in the series, the Manticorans are [[CurbStompBattle capturing hundreds of enemy ships while suffering negligible losses]] (for comparison, their fleet at this point numbers only about 500 capital ships), but they have trouble applying this trope, since the LensmanArmsRace has rendered those captured ships hopelessly obsolete. They wind up offering a few to their allies for study purposes and scrapping the rest, since using them as raw materials is the most effective way to bring the ships up to current standards.
* ''KG 200'' by J.D. Gilman and John Clive is about a Luftwaffe unit that specializes in flying captured Allied aircraft (the unit actually existed, but used them for long-range reconnaissance and dropping enemy agents). In the novel however the intention is to use American aircraft to bomb London, to sow discord between the US and British forces.

* Seen a fair bit in ''Literature/PerryRhodan'', with the earliest iconic example probably being the STARDUST II -- an Arkonid battleship that shot down the protagonists' much smaller craft after its first proper interstellar jump to the Vega system, turned out to have been ''already'' stolen by the rather non-Arkonid aliens who had invaded there at the time, was "liberated" by Rhodan & Co. in turn, and eventually became the first flagship of the still-embryonic Terran space fleet for quite a while. (That very shot-down craft is possibly an edge case since, while Rhodan had nothing to do with it and was in fact allied with them at the time, the attack that nuked its stranded mothership on the Moon and left Thora and Crest as its sole surving crew members simply because they were planetside at the time still came from other parties ''on Earth''.)

* ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'': Charis is afraid this will happen in ''Hell's Foundations Quiver'', after one of their armored ships is captured mostly intact by the Dohlaran Navy. Unfortunately for Dohlar, by the time they seized the ship [[ItWorksBetterWithBullets she'd run out of ammunition for her main guns]], and Dohlar couldn't produce more in time to put the ship into their service.

* Quite common in ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'', in which the Rebel Alliance (and later New Republic) ends up with a good number of Imperial starships, gained through capture, defecting crews, or third-party arms dealers. The Nebulon-B Frigate mentioned in the page quote is used as much by the Rebels as the Imperials who originally built them, after [[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi the Battle of Endor]] the Rebels begin fielding captured Star Destroyers, and [[DecliningPromotion after he finally accepts the rank of general]], [[MauveShirt Wedge Antilles]] ultimately gets a Super Star Destroyer as his flagship. The New Republic is even willing to use the Empire's iconic [[MookMobile TIE Fighter]] and variants, though the Rebels at least are smart enough to install DeflectorShields on as many as possible. So as the war against the Empire progresses, veteran pilots have to deal with lingering nervousness when approaching a friendly Star Destroyer, and in some battles squadron leaders have to remind their pilots to [[FriendOrFoe check their IFF sensors]] before taking a snap-shot at a TIE Fighter.

* Happened frequently in ''Series/StargateSG1'' with the team capturing Goa'uld fighters, or other ships and using them back against the villain of the week. In early seasons the vehicles were [[StatusQuoIsGod often destroyed in the ensuing battle]] however by later seasons they'd were reliably keeping their prizes long enough to start reverse engineering them. On at least one occasion this shoots them in the foot when a clever Goa'uld booby traps his fighters. The team attempts to use parts from it in an Earth-built fighter, only to (almost) wind up drifting through space for a long, long time.

** In a more in-game example, the Mechanicum army list for the Horus Heresy expansion builds almost every vehicle used by the Imperium of Man, and almost every Magos and Archmagos has a plethora of custom vehicle designs. To represent this on the tabletop, the Mechanicum can take every single Imperial superheavy tank and any superheavy flyers or Flying Gargantuan Creatures from ANYWHERE in the rulebooks published by Forge World (which is an extremely extensive collection) as a Lord of War choice as long as it's appropriately modeled as a Mechanicum vehicle. Hobbyists being who they are, this soon lead to Mechanicum variants of not only regular heavy tanks, but also [[GiantFlyer Tyranid Harridans]] or the [[AirborneAircraftCarrier Tau Manta]], each of which is an army on its own and can carry another two, even without the Mechanicum's fairly powerful vehicle buffs.

* One mission in ''Videogame/MechCommander'' has you escorting an APC carrying an elite pilot to a powered-down Masakari assault mech, so the elite pilot can commandeer it and use it against the Smoke Jaguars.
* ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'': Raynor's Raiders pull a GrandTheftPrototype on the [[HumongousMecha Odin]], preventing its use by the Dominion. However, this is actually all part of a plan to get the Odin into the heart of the Dominion with a Raider pilot inside. Also, the chief engineer actually reverse-engineers the Odin in order to produce the Thor, a slightly smaller, less powerful, but mass-produceable version.
** Also applies whenever MindControl abilites are used on a vehicle unit.
* One mission in ''VideoGame/{{Freespace}}'' required the player to capture a [[StarfishAlien Shivan]] fighter, and in the next mission use it for reconnaissance in an enemy held system.

** Some time between ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' and ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', [[TheHero Commander Shepard]] surrenders themself to the Systems Alliance and turns over the ''[[CoolStarship Normandy SR2]]'', which had been placed under their command while they [[EnemyMine were working with Cerberus]]. By the time the third game begins, the ''Normandy'' has nearly completed her refit process to bring her in line with Alliance standards (and to repaint her [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience in Alliance Navy colors]].) A sidequest in ''[=ME3=]'' also results in the capture of a squadron of Cerberus fighters, which are pressed into Alliance service.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' treats PowerArmor as something you climb into rather than a piece of armor you don out of your inventory. This means that if you sneak up to someone wearing a suit and yank its fusion core out, then kill them when they're forced to disembark, taking the armor for yourself is as simple as putting the core back in. Alternatively, you can ''shoot'' the fusion core (difficult without the Penetrator perk, which lets you shoot through obstacles) and cause it to go critical and explode, and replace it with a new one when you finish off the armor's former user. But in either case, the power armor will be considered stolen rather than looted, so you'll lose approval points with "nice" companions if you use it in their presence.
** On the subject of Power Armor, a few of the Commonwealth's [[AlwaysChaoticEvil raiders]] have managed to refurbish some old suits using whatever scrap metal they have at hand. The results aren't as tough as a proper model of armor, but can come as a nasty surprise to adventurers without heavy weaponry.

* From the ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'' series of games, since the fourth game onwards, features enemie vehicles that can be occasionally hijacked by the player characters. Including the LV Armour, M-15A Bradley and T-2B Melty Honey. Of course, since the first game, the reason that you have friendly vehicles scattered around the stages for you to use in the first place is because the Rebel Army stole them. You're merely taking them back.

* ''VideoGame/TreasurePlanetBattleAtProcyon'' has this as a game mechanic, where successfully [[{{Boarding Party}} boarding]] an enemy ship will transfer the target ship to your fleet. If enemy ships are captured in the campaign, they will stay in the players fleet for the remainder of the campaign, unless they are sunk.

* In ''VideoGame/MercenariesPlaygroundOfDestruction'', often the only way to take on enemy tanks that are too close to order airstrikes on is to kill the machine gunner, then [[InsertGrenadeHere the rest of the crew]], and finally take it over and engage the rest of the enemies. Also, if an enemy helicopter is flying close to the ground, it can be high jacked via grappling hook, and used on the enemy.

* Happened during WWII to a great extent. The Germans used a great many captured tanks -- French ones were used as training, guard and anti-partisan units, Czech ones formed standard combat forces. In the Desert campaign, it was not unknown for both the Axis and Allied sides to scrounge and use each other's captured vehicles so long as the ammo and spares lasted, with Germans operating examples of practically every British tank, whilst so many Italian tanks were captured intact in early 1941 that they were used to equip entire ''armoured regiments''. In 1944, the Guards Armoured Division recycled captured Panthers as "Cuckoo" tanks. The Luftwaffe had a squadron of captured aircraft it used for spy missions, and the Kriegsmarine operated several captured submarines (for example UB-1, the former HMS ''Seal''). The Japanese used captured M3 Stuart tanks. A number of battles were initiated specifically to prevent the enemy from taking advantage of captured vehicles, most significantly the British bombardment of Mers-el-Kebir which sank three French battleships and killed over a thousand French sailors, despite Germans having no means or intention to seize those ships after the 1940 Armistice.

* The Republic of Texas operated a small navy during the brief period of time where Texas was independent of Mexico and had not yet joined the United States. One of the Texan ships, a schooner named ''Independence'', was captured by the Mexicans on the Brazos River, near the town of Velasco. She would be pressed into service with the Mexican navy as ''La Independencia''.

SuperTrope to GrandTheftPrototype, which is the SuperPrototype or otherwise "super weapon-y" version of this trope. See also HoistByHisOwnPetard, EnemyExchangeProgram, and DeathByIrony. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Is not a case]] from the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' series.

* From the ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'' series of games, since the fourth game onwards, features enemie vehicles that can be occasionally hijacked by the player characters. Including the LV Armour, M-15A Bradley and T-2B Melty Honey. Of course, since the first game, the reason that you have friendly vehicles scattered around the stages for you to use in the first place is because the Rebel Army stole them. You’re merely taking them back.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'':
** The GLA can do this with the optional Hijacker unit, or by having HeroUnit Jarman Kell [[SnipingTheCockpit Snipe the Cockpit]], then ordering any unit to get in the vehicle.
** In ''Zero Hour'', the Chinese can kill the crew of vehicles with a Nuke Cannon loaded with [[NeutronBomb neutron shells]].
* In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'', the Soviet commando Natasha can pull a similar trick with her own snipe rifle.
* In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars'', each of the three factions has commandos that can plant charges on the supports of any other faction's HumongousMecha. Then, any engineer can climb inside, instantly repair the damage, and pilot the vehicle.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'': The GLA can do this with the optional Hijacker unit, or by having Jarman Kell [[SnipingTheCockpit Snipe the Cockpit]], then ordering any unit to get in the vehicle.

This trope is ubiquitous in works of naval fiction that are set in the age of WoodenShipsAndIronMen. This is because sailors were awarded prize money for capturing enemy ships. Captured enemy ships would often be incorporated into the captor's own navy (often under their original names, as it was considered bad luck to change the name. HMS ''Guerriere'' is a good example). See Wiki/TheOtherWiki [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_money for more information.]] Because SpaceIsAnOcean, science fiction works will sometimes use the same concept with spaceships.

* Happens many times in the ''Literature/{{Destroyermen}}'' books. Taken UpToEleven in the final book, when [[spoiler:TheAlliance captures a number of [[PuttingOnTheReich League]] warships, including several battleships, severely weakening the League while boosting their own strength]].

* Technically invoked by you, the PlayerCharacter (i.e. Venom Snake) in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'', where you can explicitly run through the entire game stealing supplies, weaponry, vehicles ''[[UpToEleven and even personnel]]'', using them to build your base of power and army.

* During the UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}n invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} 2022, Ukrainian Ground Forces actually increased the number of tanks they operate compared to pre-war times because so many Russian tanks were captured or abandoned during the (poorly planned) early phase of the invasion, especially the failed attempt to seize the capital city, Kyiv.

* News reports coming out of Ukraine in 2022 have said that the Ukrainian Ground Forces actually increased the number of tanks they operate because so many Russian tanks were captured or abandoned during the invasion.