The Valour and the Horror

General Information:

The basic vulnerability of a tank has not changed in 50 years. It's still a steel box with five men inside, so loaded with fuel and ammunition it's like a bomb waiting to be ignited.

The first tank battles were hopelessly one-sided. The Germans could easily pick off Canadian tanks at a range of three kilometers. With better equipment and better training, the Germans killed l0 Allied tanks for every one they lost.

At first the Panther seemed invulnerable. Canadian tank officer Radley-Walters once watched a lineup of three Canadian tanks killed with one shot from the Panthers 75mm gun. But the best Canadian tank killers soon figured a way to stop it...all it took was what a one in a million shot.

Walters
If you hit it on this big heavy gun mount,... it just bounces off. But now look over at the armour on the driver and on your side, the co-driver, and just see how thin it is in here. Now if you can get around, to come on in, and hit on the lower side of this gun mount, from here right over there, which gives you a target of about four or five feet wide, and from there down to here. The round cannot bounce off, it must bounce down. And when it bounces down, what does it do? It smashes this weak armour here over the driver and the co-driver and in most cases, we found out that they're either badly wounded or they're killed, and the tank is automatically knocked out. ... It is, and you know, the longer the distance and so on... But if you can get your second round, if you can't get your first one, your second round in from here down to the bottom, we found out that you could destroy a tank, with a 75 mm., at up to eight, nine hundred yards, head on...

The Germans called the Allied Sherman tanks 'ronsons', because they lit up and burned so quickly.

Valour and Horror, Second World War, Canadian history, World War II, W.W.II