Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: hogenbor on March 28, 2006, 10:39:32 AM
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Hi all,
If you look at the pics you see that it has what looks to me like bullet holes in its side. They are about an inch deep and half an inch wide. I was wondering if anyone has a clue about what kind of weapon can cause this kind of damage to the side of a Sherman? Museum info only states it was knocked out by the Germans, nothing more
(http://members.chello.nl/~r.hogenboom/temp/crab.jpg)
(http://members.chello.nl/~r.hogenboom/temp/crab_crop.jpg)
Some background:
Last weekend I visited the Dutch war and resistance museum in Overloon. To me it is a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and a quiet place to think about the things we do to each other. I'm glad I visited it as a 12 year old boy as part of our WWII history class.
On a lighter note:
They have opened a new hall, the Marshall museum. Loads and loads of military hardware, mostly ex US forces. I was frankly amazed, I haven't done any research on history and funding of this part of the museum, but they must have quadrupled their collection overnight. Go see it, it's really worth it. Well displayed, well lit, lots of info on everything and you can see verything up close if you want.
When I was there I bumped into a Sherman 'Crab'. It had been rusting outside for ages but was now placed inside and has been given a new paint job. It is one of the many items in the museum that has been used in the fighting between allied and axis forces in that part of my country. See question above.
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If you look at the pics you see that it has what looks to me like bullet holes in its side. They are about an inch deep and half an inch wide. I was wondering if anyone has a clue about what kind of weapon can cause this kind of damage to the side of a Sherman?
A machinegun.
The area of the bullet holes is not part of the sherman but the arm of the flail. It was not armored.
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my best guess would be some crazy german was still equipped with an anti tank rifle.
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That is not the arm of the flail but rather a metal skirt that appears to be running around the area just above the tracks. It could be machine gun bullet penetration but who knows.
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Sherman skirts were basically just sheet metal, not the same grade of steel as used in the body/turret armor.
A lucky hit could have still disabled the tracks though, just very unlikely.
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Hi Hogenbor,
>Last weekend I visited the Dutch war and resistance museum in Overloon. To me it is a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and a quiet place to think about the things we do to each other. I'm glad I visited it as a 12 year old boy as part of our WWII history class.
Do they still have the Mosquito there? I was there, too, when I was 12 years old (or may a bit younger), and I distinctly remember being very impressed by the size of the Mosquito, which was parked in the open in a circle of hedgerows with a walkway around it. Probably not the way you'd keep a wooden Mosquito today ...
Back then, it struck me as odd that so long after the war there were still broken tanks standing around. Somehow I must have got the idea they still stood where they broke down or were hit :-)
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
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My guess would be a machine-gun too, there are too many bullets for a single-firing weapon (I mean, who'd shoot at a tank for over 10 times else?)
The thing I find strange is that there ARE holes, I'd think machine-gun bullets would simple richochet of the armour, instead of penetrating it.
Maybe they were AP rounds?
They may even be fired from an aircraft?
Was there any information about the location it's from?
I've heard 'Crabs' were used during the D-Day landings in Normandy, to clear mines
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lez google
(http://www.lonesentry.com/german_antitank/pics/xgerman_antitank15_rifle_grenade.jpg)
antitank rifle 1944 german
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Could be sharpnel holes from something the crab turned up, but that seems like a strange place for them.
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It could also be some kind of light flak pressed into service against ground targets, or the main armament of light armoured vehicle of some kind (spahwagen etc.).
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Both the cover on the drive of the flail (probably light metal) and the sponsoons above the right track(definalty armoured) where hit.
Looks like a machine gun to me. Since they didnt have 50s I imagine it was a 7.92
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Originally posted by HoHun
Hi Hogenbor,
Do they still have the Mosquito there? I was there, too, when I was 12 years old (or may a bit younger), and I distinctly remember being very impressed by the size of the Mosquito, which was parked in the open in a circle of hedgerows with a walkway around it. Probably not the way you'd keep a wooden Mosquito today ...
Back then, it struck me as odd that so long after the war there were still broken tanks standing around. Somehow I must have got the idea they still stood where they broke down or were hit :-)
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
Hi Hohun,
To the best of my knowledge they never had a Mosquito... but I could be wrong. I was 12 in 1983. The set-up you described was indeed there then, but it was not a Mosquito but a B-25 Mitchell. I have pictures of it from 1983... somewhere buried in my mum's attic...
I remember that it was painted a completly inaccurate shade of green. Now it's inside the museum and looks a lot better. I have pics of it from last weekend, will post them tonight.
The older part of the collection does give the impression that they were left where they were hit don't they? But it's a bit hard to explain how a Russian JS2 ended up there :D What I never realised is that in most of the older vehicles there, people died when they were hit. A chilling thought.
Especially the tanks now inside, with their shiny new paint jobs don't give that impression. But you can look at the insides of most of them and see that they are just empty hulls with the bottom blown out and twisted metal inside.
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Hi Hogenbor,
>To the best of my knowledge they never had a Mosquito... but I could be wrong. I was 12 in 1983. The set-up you described was indeed there then, but it was not a Mosquito but a B-25 Mitchell.
Hm, I guess I confused the types :-) Probably some Mosquito photograph from a book overwrote the B-25 in my mind!
> Now it's inside the museum and looks a lot better. I have pics of it from last weekend, will post them tonight.
Great, I'm looking forward to it! :-)
> What I never realised is that in most of the older vehicles there, people died when they were hit. A chilling thought.
Indeed! What I found totally incomprehensible as a kid was why they had fought a war at all.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
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Originally posted by BUG_EAF322
lez google
(http://www.lonesentry.com/german_antitank/pics/xgerman_antitank15_rifle_grenade.jpg)
antitank rifle 1944 german
Thanks. Found plenty info on German anti-tank wepaons on that site. It appears to have been some sort of anti tank rifle. The rounds did not penetrate though, but made some nasty deep holes nonetheless.
Placed alongside the 'Crab' are a British Churchill with the bottom blown out by a mine and another Sherman with the turret blown clear of its mounting (it lies skewed on top of the hull now). Only the commander of the Churchill survived, minus his legs...
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Hohun, here is your 'Mosquito' :D
(http://members.chello.nl/~r.hogenboom/temp/DSC_6649.jpg)
(http://members.chello.nl/~r.hogenboom/temp/DSC_6652.jpg)
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Hi Hogenbor,
>Hohun, here is your 'Mosquito' :D
LOL! Thanks a lot, superb shots! :-) Excellent restoration and exposition, too, a long way from the dark and gloomy atmosphere I remember.
Interesting detail: The little bulldozer in the background. I believe bulldozers were sort of a new invention then and made their first appearance in the Normandy.
Weird detail: Is that a MILSTD Vespa in the foreground? 8-O
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
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The Bulldozer is cute.
They had such on Iwo Jima but they looked a wee bigger. Still very small compared to today's bulldozers.
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Originally posted by HoHun
Hi Hogenbor,
>Hohun, here is your 'Mosquito' :D
LOL! Thanks a lot, superb shots! :-) Excellent restoration and exposition, too, a long way from the dark and gloomy atmosphere I remember.
Interesting detail: The little bulldozer in the background. I believe bulldozers were sort of a new invention then and made their first appearance in the Normandy.
Weird detail: Is that a MILSTD Vespa in the foreground? 8-O
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
Don't know much about bulldozers, but there are more of them in the museum. I vaguely remember that they were considered one of the war winning weapons (but by whom? General Eisenhower maybe). Especially in the Pacific they could have been very useful to quickly create landing strips and such.
The little scooter is not a Vespa but a parascooter. Could be dropped by parachute and was intended to give paratroopers more mobility. Cute isn't it?
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Hi Hogenbor,
>The little scooter is not a Vespa but a parascooter. Could be dropped by parachute and was intended to give paratroopers more mobility. Cute isn't it?
Definitely! :-) And it actually makes good sense if the drop zone is some way from the objective (Market Garden).
The scooter-like look seems to indicate that the commonly accepted history of the scooter being invented in post-WW2 Italy is a bit incomplete :-) I'm sure the Italian scooter designers (who were former aviation engineers) were enthusiastic that suddenly, good-looking but underpowered designs sold well, but I'd say the Americans had the idea first :-)
(Of course, there's the Megola ... but no one would consider a heavy motor bike with a rotary engine in the front wheel a scooter just because of a scooterish seating arrangement :-)
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
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I wish i had a scanner , i have a pic of my grandfather using a dozer to pull a 155mm howitser off of an Lst onto the beaches at guadalcanal . The pic says Dec. 1942. Bulldozers had been around since the earily 1900's , i believe it was 1904-5 .
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Hi 38ruk,
>I wish i had a scanner , i have a pic of my grandfather using a dozer to pull a 155mm howitser off of an Lst onto the beaches at guadalcanal . The pic says Dec. 1942.
Wow, I'd love to see that picture! :-)
>Bulldozers had been around since the earily 1900's , i believe it was 1904-5 .
Hm, reading the Wikipedia article (which appears a bit confused), I'd say that bulldozer blades had been used with various vehicles early on, but the dedicated, tracked bulldozer apparently emerged around 1940. I'm not quite sure what the critical addition was, maybe the hydraulic actuation of the blade.
Tracked tractors have been around much longer, of course!
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
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Henning, cables were used to adjust the blade height.
(http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/Hansell/img/p196b.jpg)
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38ruk:
" i have a pic of my grandfather using a dozer to pull a 155mm howitser off of an Lst onto the beaches at guadalcanal "
I was involved with pulling a 75 mm howitzer with a willis '43/44 jeep in soft black sand. The 155 will definately benefit from a dozer, for the willi's already had troubles on it's own in the black, soft sand ;)
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Originally posted by Angus
38ruk:
" i have a pic of my grandfather using a dozer to pull a 155mm howitser off of an Lst onto the beaches at guadalcanal "
I was involved with pulling a 75 mm howitzer with a willis '43/44 jeep in soft black sand. The 155 will definately benefit from a dozer, for the willi's already had troubles on it's own in the black, soft sand ;)
So how close is the movie do being done? ;)
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It will be launched in August.
It is mostly done, and the second one (black sand - red sun) is quite far I belive. I think they will be launched at the same time.
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I'm going to try a get a shot of that picture with my digital camera and see if i can get it to turn out .
My grandfather passed last year , i miss the stories (even thou ive heard them for the last 25 years) they never got old , He was one of those guys that crammed about 150 years worth of living into 81. He was a proud marine till the day he died . He was 10 feet tall to me . 38
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Hogenbor,
The sides of that Sherman where yopu pointed out the the "bullet holes" are probably indeed just that. I have a friend that has a Sherman, amongst other thing, and they shot the side of the darned thing (about 20 yrs ago) with a .50 with just standard api (which was the type used by most .50's by the end of the war). Anyways, the holes look curiously the same!
Why they did it? Don't know, they used to party like wildmen back in the day, so I suspect they did just that at one of the partys. Who knows. Definitely not one of those acceptable things to do to history today, but then again, he did save it from the scrapper too...
Nice pics btw.
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Could be Bodhi, but the tank has more damage than just those holes, there are also areas with shell damage. So I blame the Germans ;)
Btw, I have put the best pics on my website, all 77 of them... quite different to my normal photographic adventures, concerts and a bit of portrait.
(http://www.lookupinwonder.nl)
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Originally posted by hogenbor
Could be Bodhi, but the tank has more damage than just those holes, there are also areas with shell damage. So I blame the Germans ;)
Btw, I have put the best pics on my website, all 77 of them... quite different to my normal photographic adventures, concerts and a bit of portrait.
(http://www.lookupinwonder.nl)
I am quite sure it probably is German shell fire and mg's that did it. Just used my friends Sherman as an example is all.
Nice job on the pics btw! Thanks.
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IIRC, there is a British AP test in PRO docs which claims that a 20mm AP (Hisso) can penetrate Pz4(?) side but cannot really damage the external parts, tracks etc.
So a dedicated AP round prolly can make such shallow holes on armour and penetrates anything that is not thick enough.
-C+
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Those are 20mm holes! I visited the same museum when I lived in Europe.