Saturday, November 8, 2008

WW2


When I was a kid in the 1960's, most of the adults had been through the war.  They all had stories.  Some were great.  The father of one friend had commanded a company of Shermans in Italy.  He had a fantastic story about Tiger hunting in Italian hill towns.  To go after a Tiger tank, the rule of thumb was that you needed five Shermans.  The Sherman's 75mm gun was useless against anything but the Tiger's rear.  Three Shermans would maneuver to get the Tiger backed up against a wall or a house.  The other two Shermans would fire into the structure.  The idea was to have one Sherman loaded and ready to fire at the rear of the Tiger as the other one brought down the last wall.  It was a very high-stakes game of chicken.

This photo of a Canadian Sherman outside Potenza in 1943 is pretty close to both the tank and the hill town in the story.