well we're gonna look now at the Sherman m4a4 which is actually in this case a
Sherman Firefly just to give you another view of what the Sherman's look like now
the first thing you need to know that the Firefly is the least at least the
m4a4 version is that the hull is longer than it was on the m4a1 therefore you'll
find a bigger gap between the different bogeys notice how they're spaced out and
the reason for that is that they put a huge Chrysler multi-bank engine in the
back of this tank which made it longer now the Chrysler multi-bank is actually
worth looking at in its own right it consists of six cylinder Chrysler car
engines five of them all clustered around a central plank case so you've
got a thirty plug engine that it sounds dreadful but it works very well apparently
the engine was so reliable that the British rather like the m4a4 and took
most of them as far as use was concerned so from that point of view it's it's
very interesting tank another thing to look at is the nature of the suspension
itself being a developed version of the Sherman it's now got the returned roller
on a separate bracket the back of each suspension unit and the sort of spring
arrangement on the top to hold the track up when it's going over each suspension
unit so that's a characteristic of all the mid production Sherman's only the
early ones had that funny arrangement of the returned roller on top of the thing
now the m4a4 SI was the standard version of the Sherman used by the British it's
got a welded hull as you can see quite distinct from the castell of the m4a1
and they found that at the front the welding tended to be one vulnerable
point where the actual plates are joined together that's the weak spot and it
meant that if the tank was hit it tended to be hit and on a weld and it didn't do
it any good but the real characteristic of
Firefly is the gap the original 75 millimeter has been taken out and it's
been replaced by a 17 pounder anti-tank gun it was quite a difficult business
they said that it wouldn't fit but they managed to shoehorn the gun in
in fact it's put in lying on its side soda
who's got the difficult business of handling big rounds of ammunition only
has to turn rather than lift the ammunition up and force it in the back
so that's one characteristic for Firefly is this huge gap they still had three
men in the turret although it was a difficult Terra to move around him and
the loader who would be on the left of the gun was provided with his own hatch
because they found that otherwise the load that could only get out by going
under the gun which in an emergency wasn't really possible so the commander
and the gamma are sitting on the right of the gun on this side of the turret in
other words which is typical American practice the British had always put the
crews in the territory was the opposite way round we that's how they did this
other characteristics of a Firefly are the fact that the crew member they did
away with was the hull machine gunner who sat down here and you'll see that
his machine gun position has been blanked off and the gun itself of the
area where the gun stuck out they put a welded patch over to protect it and
that's another characteristic of a Firefly because they decided they need
the space here for ammunition they took 15 rounds of ammunition and to give you
some idea of how awkward it was you couldn't just pass the ammunition back
to the gamma in the turret you actually had to lift it out through the hatch
above the machine gunners head here if he was in there and then passed it in
down to the top of the turret so you only did it out of action to restore the
ammunition you just used the ready use ammunition in the first place when the
tank was firing the other characteristic of the Firefly is that they found the
recoil of the gun which they had to modify quite a bit again
to fit still went all the way to the back of the turret so what they did was
cut a hole in the back of the turret and weld a metal box on which you can
sometimes see and that box contains the radio so loader who's also the radio
operator and a British tank has access to it through the back of the turret to
the hole which they've cut funnily enough a hole it's set off cutting the
back of the turret is rather crudely done and they always looked rather rough
and ready but you know not supposed to see that's all going on inside then that
box on the back of the turret is where the 19 set would go or in theory a 508
set if it was an American Hughes tank that's the Firefly it's a very effective
tank they found actually that this tank with the longer gun could actually take
on tigers and Panthers and knock them out mind you didn't have that very thick
Armour that you'd like as well it had to get the first shot in and destroy the
enemy tank before the enemy tank fired of it just to make it a bit more
exciting for them but that gun and the something the Germans noticed at once
was the tank with the longer gun and you can see how the gun sticks out ahead of
the tank they didn't really like having the gun stick out in front of the tank
the theory was that every time you went over a hill or something like that you
ran the chance and stick in the gun into the ground it's not everyone light so up
until this time most guns have been within the front of the hull of the tank
quite short that the fire flights stuck out at the front rather obviously now
the Germans noticed this and it meant that they made the fire fly their first
victim if they were attacking a column of Tanks because these are the tanks
that are a danger to them these are the tanks that could take out virtually
anything the Germans had in their armory if it got the first shot in so the trick
was to put it out of action first if you could and they were rationed for two
reasons one is that the tank although it fired a
high-explosive round fired in such a range is to be useless so that they like
to mix the fireflies with ordinary Sherman's because the 75-millimeter gang
in ordinary Sherman files a high-explosive round which was actually
very useful so they tried to do that so the Germans cause realized that the tank
the longer gun was the danger and we tended to camouflage the front end of
the barrel to disguise it at least for the glance if you look closely you could
see it was there but it gave them a bit of an edge and the gun is still too
actually mounted with a machine gun they managed to get it in so the actual
turret is very cramped inside it's got three men in it as a say but there's not
a lot of room to move the gun takes up an inordinate amount of space within the
turret and that doesn't really help but the Firefly was the outstanding tank of
the Second World War as far as Britain and probably United States up to a point
was concerned because it could take out the heavier German tanks which none of
our other tanks could so from that point of view it's well worth studying and
it's quite distinctive
you