Dead US Soldiers Pulled Out Of Destroyed Tank - WWII

[hicky999]

A time when you respected the dead

[William May]

I have seen interviews with Tiger tank crew-members, and they talked about how they destroyed as many as 40 Sherman tanks in one hour. That is one U.S. tank destroyed about every 90 seconds.
Their problem was every time they shot a Sherman, another one took it's place. They complained the U.S. never seemed to run out of tanks.
The poor performance of U.S. tanks would have resulted in congressional hearings in 1946 if the war had lasted any longer. Already in 1944 there were a LOT of irate parents who felt their sons had been killed in terrible equipment. News was censored, but there were enough letters and stories that got home that the word was passed around. My father was friends with a vet who landed in North Africa with a General Lee tank. (See the film "Sahara" with Humphrey Bogart) These were REALLY lame, and were replaced almost immediately with Shermans as fast as they could get them shipped over. Then they gave him a Sherman, and he said that was not much better.
There are interviews on Youtube with American vets who repaired tanks, and they talk about how a single Tiger tank shell would punch right through the frontal armor on a Sherman, cut through the transmission, cut through the drive axles, (which were 5" diameter solid steel) blast through the crew compartment, and wind up either coming out the back of the tank, or stopping in the engine compartment. The guy they were interviewing got emotional about it, calling it a complete massacre, and describing how they would weld up the holes in the tanks if they could, and repaint the damage and send them out with new crews. But the crews that took them out knew that the previous crew had been killed in that machine. It's a pretty harrowing interview. The interview was 50 years after WWII, and the guy was still really affected by what he had witnessed. It probably stuck with him to the day he died.

[tankcommander007]

Not a US tank

[DanteAntonelli]

Those Shermans were rolling caskets, poor bastards weren't told the truth in the beginning and had to find that out in the field.

[jollymon]

Originally Posted by William May

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.

The German shell that hit the tank passed clean through that one guys body before exploding in the turret or engine. He was probably the driver or forward machine gunner. Clean shot just below the turret probably also took that other dudes head with it before exploding.

[Rogan]

you should not put dead US servicemen up on this site

[William May]

Originally Posted by Rogan

you should not put dead US servicemen up on this site

YOU SURE SHOULD!
You think there are NO CONSEQUENCES to the actions of our politicians?!?!

There SURE ARE!! Good for citizens to look at them and see what bold political statements mean in real life.

[William May]

Originally Posted by jollymon

The German shell that hit the tank passed clean through that one guys body before exploding in the turret or engine. He was probably the driver or forward machine gunner. Clean shot just below the turret probably also took that other dudes head with it before exploding.

Yes, I saw one picture, I think from LIFE magazine from during the war, and it showed a tank hatch opened up, and the driver was dead in his seat, still wearing his communication headphones. They identified him as some private from West Virginia. They did not publish any shots showing the injuries, just the opened hatch with the dead guy sitting in his seat. You could only see the top 5" of him, and he looked like he went to sleep. But it was photos like this that came back and stirred a lot of controversy over poor U.S. tanks. They mentioned the rest of the crew was all dead, and it had suffered a single shot from a German gun. They probably got in front of a Tiger or similar.

[The Krokodil]

They got hit really hard. Good find