Im one of the volunteers here at the Army Heritage and Education Center. This is one of the most prolific tanks of the Second World War. This is the m4a3 tank. Its armed with a 75mm gun. It also has the caliber. 50 machine gun and two m1919. 30 caliber machine guns. One is mounted coaxially with the main gun. The other is mounted here and is manned by the battle gunner. If you look here, he can show you how the ball term turret works. He has his ammunition in the back and to the back to catch the bag to catch the shell casings. Right here, its a prismatic periscope that sticks up through that space. Inside that periscope is a lense that has a radical. He uses that this is another one on this side. This is not the main gun. This one is controlled by the gunner. There is a switch to fire the machine gun. His gutters periscope comes up to the inside his gunners periscope comes up for the inside. Their field of vision is fairly limited. The critical thing for the commander was, he would have to lay the main gun on the taget such that the gunner can see it. Typically, the tank commander will announce the engagement. He will do the preparatory command. He will say gunner. The next thing he will do is announce the type of ammunition. In the case of an enemy tank, it would be armor piercing ammunition. That was called shock. He will give a target description, tank or armored car or whatever it might be. Once it is laid where the gunner can see, he yells that means he is targeting. The gunner is loading the main gun. When he arms it, he will yell up. In that process, the commander will make an estimation of range. He will announce the range to the enemy target. That was particularly important. There was no organic range and capacity. Based on the estimated range, the gunner will use the appropriate rhetical in his sign to put his sight on the target. That sounds complicated, but with a gripood grew, it would happen in about six seconds. A lot of the training was the hone those skills to get the round off that quickly. This is a tank that is 75 years old. These days, its dramatically different. We now have laser range finders. In microseconds, that range is calculated and it all goes into computers. The range at which the enemy target is moving downrange is all factored in. A vast improvement from the tanks of the Second World War. Most of the soldiers on these things were 17 to 20 years old. Guys who were 25 were oldtimers. Real oldtimers like me would not have been on one. They were young men who did this. One of the important things about the Army Heritage center is that this stuff is great for people to see. The real focus of the Army HeritageEducation Center is the soldiers. In the case of wwii, from all over. They were first deployed in north africa and through the italian campaign. Thats the focal point, to convey the sacrifice. Thats the important part. They are an interesting backdrop to the whole story. The sherman tank was one of the two most prolific tanks for the war. The sherman series, there were over 49,000 of these tanks manufactured during the Second World War. The only soviet tanks were the t34 series. One of these tanks was used by every allied nation during the Second World War, including england, the soviet union, and even the nationalist chinese received german tanks. It was a vehicle that had a strategic effect on the war because of the numbers that were out there. This tank was infamously reliable. It had an operational readiness rate of 94 . It was ready 94 of the time, as opposed to some of the german tanks which usually hubs your which usually hovered around 50 60 . This one has the earlier suspension or system. The shock absorbers are mounted vertically. The later Suspension System was the horizontal volume springs Suspension System or the hvss. The difference is the shock absorbers were mounted horizontally. The later system gave the tank a better ride and a better firing platform. As a tank is coming to a stop, you get less roll back and forth. As we move on the tank, you will notice all of the equipment hanging on the outside. The tank has a crew of five. You have the tank commander seated inside the turret. You also have the loader who 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 over here, take a look at the engine. This particular tank is powered by a ford gaa v8 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 caroborators, and it generates 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. During the Second World War. 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. Which is very very quick 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. Happy 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. 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 attributed that to 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 combust. 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. It was designed to go specifically against the german medium tanks. 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 was 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 interviewed after the war, 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 not 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 panthershermans 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. 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 his tank and crew with, for some reason, a bass fiddle strapped to the side of it. As we walk around the tank, youll see that we have, a case of wine bottles in the back. Talking about soldier life, the crews live 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 same 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 sight 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. 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 uniform. 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 rawllings and you can see the logo in there. It was really just a crash helmet. Fiber shell on the outside. 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. That 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. Tehrethere were some other things that were available. There was a winter combat uniform. 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 armed with 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. 45 caliber. It fire the same type of round as our pistols. 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. 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. Its 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. This insignia battalion on the side was actually the mascot during the Second World War and he comes from the walt disney cartoon, the tortoise and the hare. He was modified, they put the tank crew helmet, the goggles, the boxing gloves. He was the battalionsmascot throughout the war. There is ample evidence that shows toby displayed on battalions tanks throughout the war. 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 field phones, 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. 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. 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 retired, ron lamb. Ron is a u. S. Army master gunner. We have john doing the honors as our loader. 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 where 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 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. This is an old production tank. The elevation mechanism is here. Manual elevation. This is the hydraulic system for traversing the turret. Part of the mechanism is missing from this tank. It would have been an upside down 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 gunner switch. I have a foot pedal for the treble firing system. 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 linked 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 number on it. As we go to the loader side, what we see along the floor, along the perimeter, thats the. In action, you would have a variety of shells here. High explosive, white phosphorus, etc. Some combination of the above. 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 a violent thing until you get used to the rhythm. One thing worth pointing out about these turrets, when theyre moving 360 degrees in 15 seconds, you can see there is punny 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. Unless everybody in the tank is situationally aware, it is a potentially very dangerous space. 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 that would be mounted here. Helmets that have some cabling but go to the intercom boxes. What they also wear is a throat mic. It fastened around your throat. 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 boxes. Typically, you see a. 50 caliber can there. This thing would be chock full of ammunition. It was g. I. Proof. Most of these positions are marked with what should have went there. Ammo, fire estate which are, extinguishers, canteens had their place. There is a lot going on here, and at the pace at which it is going on, keeping the fighting department compartment clear is very important. That is a brief look inside a sherman tank. A lot of the guys in our organization, our veteran army tankers are retired. 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 experience of these soldiers who served. Army heritage day is an annual event held in may at the Heritage Education center. Hundreds of living history hobbyists are selected to duct