we're going to have a look at absolutely classic American series of vehicles the
Sherman tank family now the Sherman is really an amazing American design
success because they made it so quickly they built factories out in America it
took six months to build a whole new factory in fact that wasn't enough ended up
building two whole new factories to build Sherman tanks in right from
the casting to the assembly and the assembly lines of the automobile
industry now become assembly lines of defense but no one in the United States
had ever turned out giant 31 ton tanks in mass quantities they were not enough
factory space to make enough Sherman's of the same type they were going to have
to have different types of engines and they come up with an m3 a1 as part of
the process of building them they're learning a lot about things such as
track development suspension what type of engines we might be able to use some
of the components on that Stuart tank are actually used in the development of
first the m1 then the m2 tank that they're going to put into production so
they build an interim tank that's the m3 grant Tang where they put a 75
millimeter gun on the hull of the vehicle they really want to build this
tank that's coming on now the m4 Sherman it was gonna have the Continental or 975
radial engine on the m4a1 which was a cast turret and we're seeing a cast
heritage Sherman going around now they'd also use a radial engine but on the m4 a
- they got a twin diesel engine it was a General Motors
671 diesel engine
the m4a3 tank ended up with a Ford petrol engine in it and they ended up
also with the m4a4 which has a Chrysler multi-bank engine
in the back of it and if you look at our variant they're driving round at the
moment the Sherman from the Fury movie that's the Tank Museum Sherman that
one's got the 76 millimeter gun on
the Sherman has got the 75 millimeter gun cool purpose that 75 millimeter gun
why they liked it most British tanks could only fire
armor-piercing or they could only fire high-explosive in the close support role
what they didn't tend to do is be able to fire both types around that 75
millimeter was a cracking gun in both capacities
there's only later with the pressure from penetrating thicker German armor
that they ended up putting that 76 millimeter gun on and that's actually
got a much much greater velocity even though it's only a millimeter bigger but
a greater velocity of the round comes out and of course the British put their
17 pounder gun on the Sherman as well and make it a fire fly that 17 pounder
with discarding sabot mission that had more penetration power than the 88
millimeter on a tiger one this british adaptation has been supplied in large
numbers and has been most successful against the Germans now the Sherman
driving on now actually has a hundred and five millimeter gun it was done as a
close support version and we say close support really it's there to fire high
explosive now that Sherman you can see it's got that longer body on it it's got
the late-war hv SS horizontal volute suspension system on it which was
another improvement on the Sherman's and that longer body is to fit that larger
engine in quite simply with the numbers America could make and the spare parts
that came with them it meant that if the Sherman broke down we had a spare you
could go and literally get another Sherman and be in battle the following
day stand ready to feed these assembly lines of defense as with cannon booming
and guns chattering fully ready for
front-line action nothing hindered its progress
you