Army heritage and Education Center in carlisle. Well talk about the american m4 median tank and its one of the more prolific tanks of the Second World War. This particular example was one of the earlier versions. This is the m4, a3 tank. This one is armed with a 75 millimeter main gun and if we look 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 n1919 machine guns and one of them is mounted with the main gun and the other is mounted here up in the front of the tank, and this one is manned by the bow gunner, and if you take a look at the bow gun. He can move that up and down and he can make sure it works. So that n 19 is from trprotrudi hes got his ammunition there and the catch bag to catch the shell casings as they come out. [ shots fired ] if you look at the top of the hatch right over his right shoulder here, there is a per scope that goes in there, and just as the name implies it fits through that space and sticks up and inside that periscope is a lens that has a reticcal in it and he usees that to fire the machine gun. This one here is another machine gun and this is another m1919. This is not with the main gun. This one is controlled by the gunner and he has some in his cruise station to control the main gun, et cetera and has the switch to fire the machine gun and he has that through a similar setup that you can see right at the top there. His scope, the gunners periscope comes up into that housing and thats how hes looking. One of the things youll notice is that because theyre looking for their periscope, their field of vision is limited. The critical thing is when he identified that target he would have to have the main gun that the gunner could see it in his field of vision. So the tank commander will announce the engagement and what he does is the preparatory command, hell say gunner. The next thing is hell type the ammunition, and what is army piercing am fig and that was called shot back in the day and hell give a target description tank or armored car, or whatever it might be. While hes doing that, the gunner is identified and he now sees a target within his field of vision. Hes refining his aim point on the enemy target. The motor is now taking that piercing round, loading it into the main gun. When he gets that round into the main gun and arms the main gun and takes it up safe and he will yell up, the gunner will make an estimation of range and he will announce a range to enemy target. That was particularly important, these tanks, because there was no organic range and capacity in the tank and it was purely an accident and based on the estimated range of the target, the gunner would use the reticcal to put the rate site on the enemy target. That sounds complicated in the case of a good crew it would happen somewhere between five or six seconds. Its happening very, very quickly and a lot of the drill were developed so they could get their rounds off that quickly. This is a tank thats now 75 years old. These days its dramatically different and we now have laser ray finders that we aim on the enemy target. And microseconds or milliseconds and that range is automatically calculated and it all goes into computers so anything like the range is moving downrange and it factors all of that in and for the soldiers that accrue these tanks during the Second World War. Most of the soldiers that were on these things were 17 to 20 years old that were armored crewmen during the Second World War. In fact, guys that were 24, 25 years old were old timers and real old timers like me wouldnt have been on one of these things. They were young men that did this. One of the important things about the Army Heritage center is this stuff is really great for people to see and its great to talk about, but the real focus of the Army Heritage and education is the soldiers that served on these vehicles and in the case of world war ii, all over from all across europe. They were first deployed in north africa and moved through the Italian Campaign and moved into new york and the South Pacific throughout the war and thats the focal point to this is to try and convey the sacrifice of the soldiers who accrued these things. Thats really the important part and thats the backdrop to the whole story and we use them to convey the story to the visiting public. The sherman tank was one of the two most prolific tanks of the war in terms of numbers manufactured. The sherman series and they were over 49,500 of these tanks manufactured during the Second World War. The only production totals that exceeded this tank were the soviet t34 series. This series of tank was used by every one of the allied nations during the Second World War to include england, the soviet union and even the nationalist chinese received german tanks and it really was a vehicle that had a strategic effect on the war just because of the numbers of those that were out there and a number of the allied nations that used them. This tank was infamously reliable and it had an operational rate of 94 . In other words, it was ready 94 of the time as compared to some of the german tank which is operation alreadiness rates usually hovered around 50 to 60 so the tank was very, very reliable. This one had the Suspension System called the avss suspension and what that means is the shock absorbers are mounted vertically in these housings. The later Suspension System was the horizontal Suspension System or the hbss and the difference was that shock absorbers were mounted horizontally and hence the difference in the name. The later system gave the tank a better ride and more importantly what it equates to is the better firing platform because as they stop to engage the target you get less roll back and forth, but this is the earlier system. As we move around the tank, you will notice all of the equipment thats hanging on the outside. The tank has a crew of five. Up into the position here with the caliber 50 machine gun, you have the tank commander seated down in front of him. You have the gunner that operates and fires the main gun and inside the tourette you have the loader who as the name implies loads the gain gun. In the hull you have two, wow have the bough gunner and seated left of that hole you have the driver. Youll notice we have a lot of equipment on the right side of the tank and the reason is that those five soldiers lived in this thing essentially when they were in combat and it was very important to keep the fighting compartment clear of equipment because it is cramped in there and the more equipment you have the more difficult it is for those soldiers to do their job. Typically in combat you will see these tanks with all sorts of things around the outside. If weigh move arne the rear, we can take a look at the engine. This particular tank is powered by a 4gaa, v8 engine and it was originally designed by an aircraft engine that was an aluminum block that were placed into these earlier in the war to include radials and diesels and this is the most xhn tloit the war and it generates about 500 horsepower which will move that tank around, terrain dependent and the less speed well get up, and if we can sneak around the back and its a very, very reliable engine. In this particular know fig raising, the engine is the rear of the tank and thats where the transmission and trans axle is. Should the engine or transmission fail its easier to replace. In a lot of the power plants they were mated and you had to pull the whole thing out and in this way, you could pull one or the another and it was very easy to work on which contributed to the liability. If we look at the tourette. The tank had a number of innovations that were unique during the Second World War and one of those was the electrohydraulic tourette. Turret does have power and it does have a power system and its electrohydraulic and gives us the capability to rotate this turret 360 degrees in 15 second which is is very, very quick and what that contributes to is the ability of the crew to lay the main gun on target and move to target and target and engage those targets and that was a significant advantage. Another innovation in its day was something called stabilization. It had stabilization in the vertical plane which meant you can engage targets on the move. That was really innovative. As we compare that tank and the german tanks while this one could slew 360 degrees in 15 seconds it could take those german tanks in the case of a tiger a minute to do that. Its a tremendous difference and in terms of being able tone gauge targets. Infamously reliable. This, one of the earlier versions and you will see the appliques, and one on this side and on the port side. In the earlier versions this is where the ammunitions were stored and really not a good position and they realized it was kind of vulnerable and they started adding these armored plates on the tank as a means to help protect that ammunition. Early on when they made their time back, they were in north africa and british hands and they developed somewhat of 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. Later versions, they took the ammunition and moved it from the upper hull and put it down in the lower hull and theyre called wet storage tanks. The ammunition is stored in a double walled metal box. Between the walls theres glycerin and water. It lowers the ambient temperature and the incoming round that the ammunition would no longer combust and that improved the survivability of about 75 . Thats another interesting point about the sherman. It was a continual process improvement throughout the Second World War. It was designed in the late 1930s as the worlds power started to see the advent of armored warfare in a grand scale. It was again, designed in the late 1930s and when it was designed it was designed specifically to go up against the german medium tanks, their main tanks and it was very effective against those, but as the war evolved and some new technologies came out in terms of the german Armored Vehicles and they did challenge it quite a bit and they continued to improve the tank throughout the war. This version has the 75 millimeter and the lighter versions would have the 76 millimeter and although that doesnt sound like much it gave them capacity for highvelocity ammunition which made it a lot more effective. One of the things i like to point out about these is the Production Volume over 25,500 produced, comparatively all of german production during the Second World War, of everything they made was 49,000 and of the tigers and the tanks that folks hear about, they were still over 1660 tigers that were made in world war ii and just over 1600 and in the case of the panther, just over 6600, and so collectively, if you compare those numbers and the production against over 49,500 of this specific tank you start to get an appreciation that this tank had a strategic impact on the war. A lot of the tankers that were interviewed after the war, one of whom was my uncle whom i spoke to. When i asked him about the tigers and panthers, he said i never saw one. The only onis ses i saw were bl up on the side of the road and if youre coming across an open area and youre facing that tiger tank with its 88 millimeter gun or even the panther tank with its high velocity 75 millimeter gun and the frontal armor youre probable not going to have a good day. They gave something called the standoff rate and they could engage us before we could engage them and that was the advantage and we had numbers on our side and a lot of the people would point to the fact that it would take nine shermans to take on a panther or a tiger. What some of those folks overlook is the level of organization in armored warfare was five tanks and that was the tank platoon and that was the way we employed them and another thing with the speed of this tank and the maneuverability and the ease of operation, ideally what a lot of tankers did during the Second World War was maneuver over a position of advantage where it was wacher and to break. Very easy to krauz on and a capable weapons system. Do you have stories from your uncle . He had interesting stories. Some he was reluctant to talk about happen he served through the Normandy Campaign and the battle of the bulge. I have a number of photos that he left me and some of them were fairly interesting. There was a picture of his tank and crew that for some reason a base fiddle strapped to the tank. How they came up to a base fiddle, and we troy convey some of that if we walk around the tank here youll see that weve got a case of wine bottles on the back here. Again, talking about soldier life onboard these things. Essentially the craews lived on these, and whenever they had fresh eggs and fresh bottles of wine they were prone to grab that stuff and take it with them. You see the coffee pots there and a lot of it was just that cool interaction and that was really the essence of being a tank crewman during the Second World War because they became a family and for this thing to be effective, all of them had to be working together to get this done. A lot of people dont realize the importance of the driver in these things, but if were moving across a piece of terrain and it comes time to engage that target that driver has to be sensitive to the fire command and what hes doing is bringing this tank through a stop and his ability to do that has a lot to do with our firing platform and they would develop a knack that if they pulled back and broke this tank too quickly, they would be keen to the fire command, too and ease it into a position so that when were ready to engage hes giving us the most stable platform possible. The bough gunner very critical in terms of personnel targets and another thing that was done with this particular gun, we talked about ranging a little bit and ranging was an important part of getting steel on target. We could also use this gun to range. The bough gunner would estimate range and the primary purpose was antipersonnel, but again, that crew really had to develop the affinity to Work Together when these things were attacked successfully engaged, the average loss was about one crewman. Every time we had a sherman hit, it was one crewman. In most cases the other three would get out, but in the aggregate, the survival rates for the crews was pretty good. A lot has been made to say that the whole crew would be, you know, would go up. There are, of course, cases where we label a catastrophic kill where it would combust and everyone would go up, but on average when the tank was engaged we would lose one crawman in the process and then two or three would get out. What were all wearing here, if you look at any photograph of u. S. Armor crewmen in the Second World War, it woulding tough wearing the same thing. There was a lot of variety. Im wearing one of the early sets of coveralls, which were very common for armored crews. This is one of the early sets. This is a type i coverall. Weve got a gentlemen up top. Hes wearing a model 41 jacket. And then hes got a pair of trousers on, which would have been the basic combat uniforms, but typically youre going to see a lot of variety. Everything from coveralls to the twopiece uniform that was common for war soldiers. One of the things we have, this is the this is the armored crew helmets, which were unique to Armored Vehicle operations during the Second World War. And if youre familiar with football of the 1930s, they actually were designed by rawlings and you can actually see the rawlings logo in there. And it was really just a crash helmet. It was just a fiber shell on the outside, with a leather liner. It offered no ballistic protection. It was only like a crash helmet to protect your head inside the vehicle. Most importantly, it also included the Communications Gear that the crew would use to communicate inside the tank. That would consist of the headsets that you see here in the ear flaps. These cables would go and plug into a communications boxes. There would be five of those, one for each of the crew positions, and that would give the crew the capability to talk to one another inside the tank. So that the tank commander could tell the driver to go left or right, tell the gunner to engage targets, whatever. And again, this would have been a common piece of equipment for all Armored Vehicle crews during the Second World War. There were some other things that were available, depending upon the weather. There was a winter combat uniform that was very common for the armored crews. That would consist of a set of biblined woollined bib overalls and a special tanker jacket. This is what the this is a actually the top for the winter combat uniform. Theyre commonly referred to as tanker jackets. High pockets. Blanket lining in them. A lot of units were issued these, but they were really most common among the armored crews. As we move around the side here, weve got some of the weapons that would have been common in the Armored Vehicles. Inside the Armored Vehicle, there were a couple types of submachine guns that the crews were armed with, if they ever had to get off the tank and go to set up an observation post or a listening post, identify the enemy before they got close, this is one of those. This is the m3 submachine gun, this is actually an m3a1. It was a 45 caliber machine gun. As you can tell by the look of it, very easy to produce. Very easy to mass produce these things. Essentially a series of stamped tubes. 45 caliber, it fires the same type round as our pistols. Which was the m1911a1. Each of the armored crewmen would have had one of these. And again, both this and the m3a1 or the grease gun as it was commonly referred to, would fire the same ammunition. Of course, hand grenades and a lot of the stuff that would have been used by the infantry was also common to the armored crews, with some special applications. If we walk around the side here, we