A co-worker buried a 200 Komatsu while digging a pond. he reached down a 12 foot slope to smooth out a bump that would have been 10 feet under water when it was filled. Machine slipped down the slope and there he sat. Anything you tried to do with the boom was fruitless, it just sank in. We had all of our dozers out there ( 4 of them) and couldn't pull it up that slope, it just dug in, until finally, there was too much suction and it wouldn't move.
We couldn't get another larger excavator out there until the next day, so the guy who got it stuck was put on pump watch over night to keep water down. He fell asleep. Pumps had run out of gas several hours ago. Woke up to water over the turntable, and up to the seat height on the operator's seat.. Machine was running, so we turned the turbo up but that was to no avail. We shut the machine down and let it drown.
We still had the cables hooked to it. We had a 330 Cat to dig the front end out and we dragged the now dead hoe to dry ground.
Ironically, the company had a salesman out that very day to figure out the value of that 200 on a trade-in. In the end, the owner got more for it from his insurance company than he would have gotten on trade when it was in good shape!
This was the second machine that same operator had buried! And last! lol
Ted