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The M4 Sherman Tank Epic Information Thread.. (work in progress)


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On 1/29/2019 at 11:12 PM, Walter_Sobchak said:

 

I don't know.  I will say that the .50 cal looks kinda fake.

You'll see that a lot on vehicles in less than gun friendly locations.

 

"Is that a 2X4, with a chunk of EMT glued to it, masquerading as a M1919?".. Chances are, "Yes, it is".

 

Check out some of the Youtube vids on MGB81, a British "Motor Gun Boat" that was "restored".  The guns are pretty bad.

(Admission, I grew up on the Great Lakes, and was corrupted at a young age by a beautifully restored 82' Elco, that had mostly functional armament. What impressed me was it had the original three 1500HP Packard mills churning the sauce. You NEVER forget that sound.)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've seen turret number 936 before. The tank of Dmitry Fedorovich Loza, Hero of the Soviet Union?

 

Him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Loza

Picture and unit: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/missinglynx/sherman-m4a2-in-hungary-austria-t102439.html

 

I never read his memoirs, though.

 

MORE:

 

Scrolling down this page: https://www.worldwarphotos.info/gallery/usa/tanks/sherman-tank/

 

Quote

M4A2 “936” and “934” of the 46th Guards Tank Brigade, 7th Mechanized Corps, Wien 09 April 1945.

 

The SPG in the background looks like either an SU-85M or an SU-100, but I'm not sure at the angle of photo capture.

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5 hours ago, Jamby said:

I've seen turret number 936 before. The tank of Dmitry Fedorovich Loza, Hero of the Soviet Union?

 

Him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Loza

Picture and unit: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/missinglynx/sherman-m4a2-in-hungary-austria-t102439.html

 

I never read his memoirs, though.

 

MORE:

 

Scrolling down this page: https://www.worldwarphotos.info/gallery/usa/tanks/sherman-tank/

 

 

The SPG in the background looks like either an SU-85M or an SU-100, but I'm not sure at the angle of photo capture.

 

LOL nice, have you read his Iremeber interview?

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3 minutes ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

LOL nice, have you read his Iremeber interview?

 

Only brief excerpts in the past, I think, but I've just read what sounds like it: 

https://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/dmitriy-loza/

 

I do enjoy Red Army accounts of the war; it's a shame they seem relatively rare compared to their contemporaries.

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23 hours ago, Jamby said:

 

Only brief excerpts in the past, I think, but I've just read what sounds like it: 

https://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/dmitriy-loza/

 

I do enjoy Red Army accounts of the war; it's a shame they seem relatively rare compared to their contemporaries.

Translation issues and "not fitting the directed narrative"  likely have a lot to do with it.

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Russian seems like a fun language to learn. It looks relatively simple and down-to-Earth compared to English. What you see (or hear) appears to be what you get.

 

Spoiler

And it comes with the added benefit of improving team comms. 

 

 

It was only pretty recently that I learned Oddball's Sherman was a real one and not just a mock-up. I think it was one of a number of early turrets up-gunned with a '76 and provided to European countries as a stop-gap defense for the Cold War. It's fun to rewatch films like A Bridge Too Far and play 'Guess The Model'. 

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1 hour ago, Jamby said:

Russian seems like a fun language to learn. It looks relatively simple and down-to-Earth compared to English. What you see (or hear) appears to be what you get.

 

Until you get to the three genders, aspects, verbs of motion, etc. I've seen foreigners from English speaking countries who achieved a very high degree of fluency in it though, so 

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7 hours ago, Jamby said:

Russian seems like a fun language to learn. It looks relatively simple and down-to-Earth compared to English. What you see (or hear) appears to be what you get.

 

  Hide contents

And it comes with the added benefit of improving team comms. 

 

 

It was only pretty recently that I learned Oddball's Sherman was a real one and not just a mock-up. I think it was one of a number of early turrets up-gunned with a '76 and provided to European countries as a stop-gap defense for the Cold War. It's fun to rewatch films like A Bridge Too Far and play 'Guess The Model'. 

 

 

Yeah the US Army up-gunned a bunch of M4A3, and M4A1, 75 tanks with 76mm guns post-war, and then gave them out to various countries as defense aid. They had E4 added to the to their designation, IE M4A3E4. It was not an ideal gun install, but it was better than the Firefly, as far as gun handling went. 

http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/m4a3e4/m4a3e4.html

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just found this in my YouTube suggestions today - the changing of the tracks of a Sherman Firefly, by volunteers at the Belgian tank museum in Bastogne. Dunno if it has already been posted (text is in Flemish, by the way), but here you go:

 

 

The uploader also has a fair share of tank/army videos.

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1 hour ago, Renegade334 said:

Just found this in my YouTube suggestions today - the changing of the tracks of a Sherman Firefly, by volunteers at the Belgian tank museum in Bastogne. Dunno if it has already been posted (text is in Flemish, by the way), but here you go:

 

 

The uploader also has a fair share of tank/army videos.

 

 

Yeah , I think that's one of only maybe two or three running M4A4s with the A57 motor. 

2 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

Also @Jeeps_Guns_Tanks you might have seen some nice high quality photos of Soviet Shermans floating around Facebook recently (one of them was the 936 pictured above in @LoooSeR's post, any chance you grabbed them? I can't find them in any group I could have likely seen them in.

 

I missed the ones on Facebook, and you probably have the ones I have. 

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3 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

Is there any way to tell if this is an M4 or an M4A2?

 

D1ro-rWX4AEdbUG.jpg:large

 

 

I going to lean towards and M4, those padded lift points on the front hull look like this one. 

 

3065575.jpg

This is an American locomotive M4. But they also made M4A2s that looked a lot like this.  

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  • 3 weeks later...
38 minutes ago, EnsignExpendable said:

Thanks again. And I have yet another obscure question. Hunnicut says that the M4A4E1 couldn't traverse properly when the tank was at a slope of 30%, however this document says it was 30 degrees. 30% is something like 16 degrees. Which is right?

 

UAeTilo.jpg

1

 

I'd say 30-degree slope is probably right, now this was for that wonky 105mm prototype tank with the funny mantlet? I don't think the regular 75 Shermans had this issue. Note, this says it used the Westinghouse Traverse, this was an all-electric unit, that was notorious for being more sensitive to out of balance turrets, and turret ring gear damage.  The Oilgear unit was supposed to work better all around, it was hydraulic, with its own electric motor driven pump, and the Brits required the Oilgear unit on the Firefly tanks, that may have been because it fit the gun better, but could be the prefered unit because it worked better. 

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Yup, they shoved the M2 howitzer in there with very little modification, so it was hilariously off-balance. The solution was to make the gun mantlet enormous to compensate, which balanced the gun mount, but not the turret. The regular 75s definitely did not have this issue.

 

Then the decision was made to drop the mechanism altogether since the tank would be firing in a forward arc from a standstill most of the time and it wasn't really required.

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