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#24
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08-15-2012, 11:03 PM
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| ♚ Legacy Gold Member ♚ Poster Rank:99 Male Join Date: Nov 2009 Posts: 16,468 Mentioned: 6 Post(s) Quoted: 4542 Post(s)
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Re: Dead US Soldiers Pulled Out Of Destroyed Tank - WWII
Probably a single shot from a Tiger or King Tiger. One shot would go through the Sherman's frontal armor with no problem, and frequently didn't stop until it reached the engine compartment. At least it was quick. They probably never knew what hit them. If you can imagine hitting a golf ball as hard as you can in a fully tiled bathroom, and then multiply it by 100, you would have what it was like inside that tank. That's why they have such bad injuries. Debris, shards of metal, etc just ricochet around until they find something to stop their flight, and normally that is a human body, because everything else in the tank is hardened steel. For just a few hundredths of a second, the inside of the tank is just a tornado of hot steel. Eventually, after ricocheting dozens of times, each peice finds a body and stops ricocheting. The human bodies become metal collectors. I imagine they gained 20-30 lbs each in total weight because of all the metal they collected. Tiger tanks had 4" of extremely hard armor, which was virtually impenetrable even to direct hits at short range. There are crew pictures of them that had taken 18-20 hits from Shermans and even small artillery with no penetrations. The Tiger crews carried a small rotary computer (made of cardboard) which they could use to "dial up" whatever tank they faced, and see what the danger ranges were for them. Nearly all allied tanks were killable at up to 3000 feet distance, whereas the same chart usually showed "0" range for risk to the Tiger. (Which means that even at 0 feet, the enemy tank could not fire at the front of a Tiger and do any damage.) Tiger crews very rarely let an opposing tank get that close, however. They normally fired if the enemy tank got within 1000 feet. The good news is that we had so many Shermans that they normally would send 5 of them to attack a Tiger, with one tank engaging the Tiger, and the others trying to work around to the side or rear so they could put a shot into the engine compartment and either set the gas tanks on fire, or kill the engine. (All German tanks were gasoline powered. so if you could get them lit, they burned pretty well.) We also developed the skill of "Time on Target" which meant that 25 or 30 artillery pieces would fire, the shells all arriving at the same instant, the closer the artillery piece was, the later it fired, and loads of shells usually arrived within a 1 second window. Those would usually knock out the Tigers and kill their crews. If you see a lot of world war II photos, you will see a lot of American and British tanks with tow cables on them, and one shell hole in the front, and the tank is just sitting there. Why weren't they towed? Because the whole crew was still inside, dead. Eventually the allied commanders gave orders to tank crews that if they were hit, they were to abandon the tank, removing wounded if they could, and make no further effort to extract the dead members of their crew, because the injuries were so horrific it was demoralizing the tank crews, and all the troops that passed by on their way into battle. The guys in this film are probably graves registration troops, who recovered what they could and cleaned things up. |
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#27
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08-18-2012, 02:02 AM
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 ★ Legacy Member ★ Poster Rank:1245 Join Date: Jul 2012 Posts: 497
Contributions: 3
Mentioned: 0 Post(s) Quoted: 26 Post(s)
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Re: Dead US Soldiers Pulled Out Of Destroyed Tank - WWII
Apocalypse: The Second World War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocaly...cond_World_War French made documentary, very good indeed with amazing footage and a music score that really adds a certain edge to it. I got this clip from one of the two 'The Making of'-episodes. Highly recommended series to watch if you are interested in WWII. |
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#28
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08-18-2012, 03:16 AM
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 My Rank: SERGEANT MAJOR Poster Rank:304 Male Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 4,206 Mentioned: 1 Post(s) Quoted: 419 Post(s)
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Re: Dead US Soldiers Pulled Out Of Destroyed Tank - WWII
The allies went for quantity over quality. The German tiger tanks had more armor and a more powerful gun, that would slice the sherman up easily. The shermans were faster and more reliable, while the tigers were harder to maintain. Its a good thing that Detroit could pump out shermans, faster than the Germans could make make shells.
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