Millimeter main gun and if we move to the commanders weapon station here, its also got the caliber 50 machine gun up top where the commander is and it also has two 1930 caliber machine guns. One of those is mounted with a main gun and the other is mounted here up in the front of the tank and this one is manned by the bell gunner. He can move that up and down and show you the way the ball terrific works. Caliber machine gun protruding through this armored ball mount. You get the workings of the gun, ammunition back there to catch the shell casings as they come out. You look at the top of the hatch, right over his right shoulder, there is a periscope that goes in it, and as the name implies, is a prismatic periscope that fits through that space. Is a lens. Periscope he uses the radical to fly the machine gun. This is another machine gun. This is the other m 1919, mounted with the main gun so it elevates the turns. This one is controlled by the gunner. There is a switch to fire the machine gun. He is arranging that through a similar set up that you can see next to the helmet up there. That is how he is looking. One of the things you will notice is because they are looking through a periscope, their field of vision is fairly limited. The critical thing for the commander was when he identified the target, he would have to lay that main gun on the target that the gunner can see it in his field of vision so in a typical willcommand, the commander announce the engagement and what he does is alert the gunner. He will say gunner. The next thing he will do is announce the type of ammunition we will fire and in the case of an enemy tank, we will fire armor piercing ammunition. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] he will give a target description tank or armored car, whatever it might be. While he is doing that, once that gun is laid where the gunner can pick it up in his sight, the gunner will yell identified. Name a pointg his on the enemy target. The loader is taking that shock round or armor piercing round, loading it into the main gun. Up. Ill yell in that process, the commander will make an estimation of range and somewhere in that fire command, as soon as he gets it, he will announce a range to the enemy target. That was important. There was no organic arranging capacity on this tank. Based upon the estimated range of the target, the gunner will use the appropriate radical to put the right side for that range on the enemy target. That sounds complicated. In the case of a good crew would have been between four seconds to six seconds to get a round off so its happening very quickly. A lot of it was to develop and hone those skills sets. This is a tank that is 75 years old. These days, it is dramatically different. We have rangefinders. Backer beam goes down and in microseconds or milliseconds. It all goes into computers. Everything like the range, the enemy target is moving downrange. It was dramatically different for the soldiers that crude these tanks during the Second World War. Interesting thing about these vehicles, most of the soldiers that were on these things were 17 to 20 years old during the Second World War. Were oldtimers. Real oldtimers like me would not have been on one of these thing. They were young men that did this. One of the important things about the Army Heritage center is this stuff is great for people to see and talk about. But the real focus of the Education Center is the soldiers that served on these vehicles. In the case of world war ii, from across europe, they were first deployed in north africa and then moved to the italian campaign. Moved into the south pacific. That is the focal point of this, to try and convey the sacrifice that soldiers had crude these things. Interesting backdrop to the whole story. That story to convey to the visiting public. The sherman tank was one of the two most prolific tanks in the world in terms of numbers manufactured. There were over 49,500 of these tanks manufactured during the Second World War. The only production totals that waseded this tank another series. This series of tank was used by every one of the allied nations during the second world were to soviet england, the union, and even the nationalist chinese were seeing sherman tanks as a result of the Land Lease Program lend lease program. This tank was infamously reliable. It had an operation radius rate of 94 . It was ready 94 of the time. As compared to some of the german tanks, which operational readiness usually hovered around 50 to 6 so the tank was very reliable. This one has the earlier Suspension System. Basically what that means is s didshock absorber not have housings. The later Suspension System was horizontal, and the difference was the shock absorbers were mounted horizontally, hence the difference in their names. The later system gave the tank a better ride. What that points to is a better firing platform because as tampa was coming tank was coming, you get a lot less roll back and forth. As we move around the tank, you will notice the equipment hanging on the outside. The tank has a crew of five. Up in the position here by the caliber 50 machine gun, you have got the tank commander seated down inside the turret. In front of him, you have the gunner who operates and fires the main gun. Also inside the terror attack new have the loader, as the name implies loads the main gun. , in the hull, you have the ball gunner. And to his left, youve got the driver. Youll notice that we have a lot of equipment on the outside of the tank. Those five soldiers lived in this thing. Typically in combat, you will see one of these tanks arrayed with things around the outside. If we move around the rear, we can take a look at the engine. This particular tank is powered by a forda gaa engine. It was designed as an aircraft engine. Aluminum block. There were a number of different engine configurations included, radials and diesels. This was the most common. Dual overhead cam, dual generators, and about 500 horsepower that would move the tank at 40 mileperhour, terraindependent. If we sneak around the back, one of the grill doors is open. That shows one of the two. Its a v8, four cylinders on each side. In this configuration, the engine is in the rear of the tank. There is a driveshaft that goes the length of the vehicle to the front. Thats where the final drives are. The advantage to the set up is if the engine or the transition fails, its easy to replace. A lot of them were mated, you had to pull out the whole thing. With this, you can pull out one of the other. A number of innovations are kind of unique. One of those was the electrohydraulic tour. It does have a power system. Its electrohydraulic and it gives the ability to rotate this turret 360 degrees in 15 seconds. It gives the crew the ability to lay into and engage the targets. It had stabilization in the vertical plane which meant you could engage targets on the move. The gun would track up and down. That was innovative. As we compare that to the m4 sherman. This one could move 360 degrees and 15 seconds, it would take that one a minute to do that. It gives a tremendous advantage. Infamously reliable. Again, one of the earlier versions, youll see these armor plates. Several of them. Two on the on the port side. This side, one on the port side. In the earlier versions, this is where the ammunition was stored. Not a good position. They realized it was they started adding these armored plates as a means to protect that ammunition. Early on, they debuted in north africa in british hands. They developed a reputation of being death traps because of explosions. A lot of people attributive that the gasoline. It was actually the ammunition combusting when the hull was breached. They took the lighter ammunition and put it in the lower hull. Theyre called rec storage tanks. In the later versions, the ammo is stored in a doublewalled box. Between the boxes is a solution of glycerin and water. Should the hull be breached in that area, it lowers the Kinetic Energy of the incoming rounds that the an ammunition would no longer bust. That improved the conditions. They came in the 1930s. As the world started to see the advent of armored warfare on a grand scale it was designed in the late 1930s. As the worlds power started to see the advent of armored warfare on a grand scale, it was late designed in the 1930s. And when it was designed, it was designed to go specifically against the german tanks. The main tanks of the day. It was effective against those. As the war evolved, new technologies came out of it. That challenged it quite a bit. They continued to improve the tank throughout the war. This version has the 75 mm, the light version. The 65mm. It gave them capacity for high velocity ammunition. One of the things i like to point out about these is the Production Volume of 49,500 of these tanks produced, comparatively to the german armor production, of everything that they made at just about 45,000. There were just over 1660 tigers for world war ii. With the panther, just over 6600. If you compare those numbers, in the aggregate of the german production versus 49,500 of just this tank, you have an appreciation that this tank had a strategic impact on the war. A lot of tankers were connected, one of whom was mikey uncle. I asked him about the tigers in the camp and he said, i never saw one. The only ones i saw were blown up on the side of the road. Whether its 88mm gun or even the panther tank, with its high velocity, youre going to have a good day. What that gave the tanks was something called standoff range. They can effectively engage us before we can engage them. That was the advantage. We had numbers on our side. People pointed to the fact that it would take five shermans to take on a panther or a tiger. Thats the way we employed them. With the speed of the tank, what a lot of the tankers did was maneuver to a position of advantage over the opposition. Weapon system. Do you have any stories from your uncle . He had many stories. He served for the battle of the bulge. I had a number of photos that he left me. Some of them were fairly interesting. There is a picture of histhere is a picture of his tank and there is a picture of his , with for some reason, a bass fiddle strapped to the sid eoe of it. To the back of the tank. We tried to convey some of that. We walk around the tank here. , wewill see that weve got have got a case of wine bottles in the back here. Again, talking about soldier life, the crews lived on these. Whenever they had an opportunity to get fresh eggs or a bottle of wine, they were prone to grab that stuff and take it with them. You see the coffee pots there. A lot of it was that cool interaction. It truly became a family. For this to run effectively, all five soldiers had to be on the piece of music. A lot of people dont realize the importance of the driver. When it comes time to engage the target, that driver was sensitive to fire command. Hes bringing the tank to a stop. His ability to do that has a lot to do with our firing platform. If they pull back and brake too quickly, its rocking back and forth. They would be keen to the fire command and would ease into position. The personnel targets, another thing done with this particular gun we talk about ranging. We can use this gun to range. The gunner could use his gun to put out rounds and estimate range. That crew had to develop an affinity to work together. When these things were attacked and successfully engaged, the average loss was about one crewman. Every time that we had a sherman hit, typically we would lose one crewman. In most cases, the other three. Would get would get out. In the aggregate, the survival rate was pretty good. There are cases where there was a catastrophic kill where the tank would combust and everybody would go up, but on average, when the tank was successfully engaged by an enemy vehicle, we would lose one crewman and the other three would get out. If you look at any photograph of u. S. Armored crewman during the Second World War, it would be tough to find any two soldiers wearing the same thing. Im wearing one of the early sets of coveralls. They were very common for crews. This is a type one coverall. We have a gentle man up top wearing a model 41 jacket. He has a pair of trousers on which would have been the basic combat in the form. You will see a lot of variety. Everything from coveralls to the twopiece uniform. This is the armor crew helmets which were unique to armored engagements in the Second World War. If youre familiar with football in the 1930s, they were designed by rawlliings and you can see the logo in there. It was really just a crash helmet. Fiber shell on the outside. Tiit offered no ballistics protection. It offered no ballistics protection. It also included the Communications Gear that the crew would use to communicate inside the tank. That would consist of the headsets you see here. These cables would plug into communications boxes. Would give their crew the capability to talk to one another inside the tank. It would tell the gunner to engage targets. This is a common piece of equipment for all crews. There were some other things that were available. Depending upon there was a winter combat uniform. Instead of a set of woollined overalls and a special tanker jacket. This is a top for the winter combat uniform. They are commonly referred to as tanker jackets. Pockets lining them. They were most common among the armor crews. We have some of the weapons that wouldve been common in the armored vehicles. Inside the armored vehicles, there were submachine guns that the crews were on if they had to get on a tank. This is one of those m3 submachine guns. It was a 45 caliber machine gun. Very easy to massproduce these things. Essentially a series of tubes. 45 caliber. It fire the same type of round as our pistols. Which was the end 19 m19 11a1. Each of the armored crewman would have had one of these. This and the m3a1, or the grease gun, would fire the same ammunition. A lot of the stuff used in the amphitheater was common with crews. We can walk over here and look at the other equipment we have. Youll see an array of tools. Folks dont realize the tank crews spent more times maintaining these than they did fighting on them. By their nature, they require a lot of maintenance. Among the things we would check on a routine basis was track tension. Law track tension does a couple of things. It assists with maneuverability but it keeps the track on the wheels. If your track tension is in right, you run the risk of throwing track. The maintenance piece was a part of it. All the moving parts on this thing gotta be greased routinely. This tank had a fuel capacity of 264 gallons. It had four fuel tanks in it. Two on each side. It would give it a cruising range of 265 miles. In todays vernacular, its common to hear miles per gallon. In the case of these, its gallons per mile. It had a cruising range of 250 miles. As these things were refueled, it was not uncommon to have the entire battalion pullover on the side of the road and a suite of trucks pulled up alongside and they would transfer fuel cans to the tank. A pretty common display. The unit that we represent is the 68 tank battalion during the Second World War. A couple of our members are veteran tankers, including myself. We researched our unit history. We found it would this on the side was actually the battalions mascot during the Second World War and he comes , from a walt disney cartoon, from the 1930s, called the tortoise and the hare. Him disney studios modified. They put a tank crew helmets on him the goggles, the boxing , gloves. He was the battalions mascot throughout the war. There is ample photographic evidence that shows toby prominently displayed on the battalion tanks throughout the war. That would have been on the tanks. What were representing here is a tank in an assembly area, where we would circle the wagons, so to speak, service the weapons, service the tank. It was common to wire the tanks to each other so they could communicate over the field phone, as opposed to the radio. One of the things at the army Education Center is an amazing repository of combat after action reviews, Empirical Data of these tanks. There is a wealth of information that has been published by a host of different authors. Not only the american vehicles but the british vehicles. Law one of the best repositories is right here. They have a great cast of archivists. With the individual soldier, the also offer the capacity for individuals to research their ancestors combat history. All you can come in and find your relative or ancestor and find his or her experience through combat. Were going to take a look inside here. We get an appreciation of what it is like to live inside or fight inside one of these. We have command Sergeant Major lamb, in our gunners seat. We have john doing the honors as our loader. You can see what it is like in here. This tank is deceptively large. The way it was demilled, the breach was cut off of this. You would have the main gun breach back into here. The breach is what we load the main gun round. It contains the explosive force and expels the cartridge out. Thats all been taken out. As cramped as it might look of this tank. Ut as cramped as it might look here, its worse in a fully operational one. Next is the gunners seat. We will let him walk through what he has in terms of controls. And stuff like that. This is an early production tank. 1942, in that area. The elevation mechanism is here. Thats a manual elevation. This is the hydraulic system for traversing the turret. Part of the mechanism is missing from this tank. It would have beena a horseshoe. It would have been a horseshoe. The manual traverse is here. It has a braking system. It turns slowly. Once you have a specific point to aim from, it can give you degrees and it knows where you are with respect to that aiming point. The gunners switch. I have a foot pedal for the troubletreble firing system. Basically it was an electric solenoid that slapped a rod that mechanically fired the gun. The tank, additionally, had stabilization in the vertical but not the horizontal. It was probably one of the first tanks to have stabilization along with the stewart. The gunners sight was a periscope mounted right here and link to the main gun. The early sight had no magnification. What he was looking through was what it looks like outside. They were difficult to operate. Further modifications included a telescope right over here. That would have had a separate sight that was vertical. Each of the crosshairs had a range on it. As we go to the loader side, this is the loader station. What we see along the floor, along the perimeter, thats the ready rack. When you are in action, you would have a variety of shells here. Depending upon the likely targets you are going to encounter. Armor piercing, for example high , explosive, white phosphorus, etc. Or some combination of the above. Pretty easy access. Again when he is loading, in the , firing sequence, the tank commander gives the firing command, and each of the crew men would play a critical part in the firing. Once fired, the breach will drop and the spent shell casing will come out automatically. It will slam out violently. Then the loader will put another shell into the breach should we need to reengage the target. Its louder on the outside of the tank than on the inside. A lot of the concussive force goes out the front. When the breach drops, the round goes up. Its kind of a violent thing until you get used to the rhythm of it. One thing important to point out about these turrets, when theyre moving 360 degrees in 15 seconds, you can see there is punny of opportunity to do this plenty of opportunity to do this with your foot or with a piece of equipment. If you do that when the turret is moving, you will probably have the foot come off. It is a confined space. It is a pretty violent space. Unless everybody in the tank is situationally aware, everybody is situationally aware, it is a dangerous space. It is a very hazardous operating environment. What we have in the back of the tour it while here turret while here, this is an array of radio sets. This is the main unit. These are sc508 radio systems. In the american tanks, everybody in the crew could talk to one another. The tank commander could talk to the driver, the ball gunner, the loader. Everybody could hear the commands of the tank commander. In only two of the tanks in a platoon had the capability to transmit to the other tanks. Everybody else, they can hear but cant transmit. These radios given that capability. In each of the stations, most of them have been removed from the tank but there is an intercom box mounted here. Helmets that have some cabling but go to the intercom boxes. What they also would where is something called a throat mic. It was literally that. It fastened around your throat. An elastic band. There were two microphones on either side of the adams apple. That is how we would pick up your voice and transmit. Youre not using microphones. Theres a lot of storage that isnt evident. These are all storage drops. Typically, you see a. 50 caliber can there. This thing would be chock full of throunds. It was g. I. Proof. G. I. Proof. Most of these positions are marked with what should have went there. Ammo, canteens had their place. There is a lot going on here, and at the pace that it is going on, keeping the fighting compartment clear is very important. Make sure that we dont have equipment caught up or whatever. So thats kind of a brief look inside a sherman tank. A lot of the guys in our organization, our veteran army tankers are retired. I am a retired army tanker. I have a little bit of enlisted time. I enlisted in 1978, commissioned in 1980, and retired in 2009. I started on the m48 tanks, which was not much different in many respects, and i finished on the m1 tanks. For us, its a labor of love to keep these things alive. To tell the public about the experiences of soldiers, to be on them again is special for us. Most importantly, to convey the story of the soldiers who served on these tanks and keep the history of the armored warfare of the u. S. Army alive. You are watching American History tv, covering history cspan style, with event coverage, eyewitness accounts, andival films, lectures, visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend, on cspan3. Cspan is on the campus of unc chapel hill in north carolina, where we are learning about the area history. It is the nations oldest public university. Up next, we learn about its founding. Today, we areth