Authors of military books often make the claim of using rare unpublished photographs in publications but frequently I have been disappointed by their photographic content. They often use either blurred images, photographs digitally enhanced, or originals cropped or reversed from older books. In endeavouring to compile THE SHERMAN TANK I have returned to primary source negatives held under Crown Copyright regulation by the Imperial War Museum. To undertake a project such as this, one has to bare certain concessions in mind from the outset. There are sequences of photographs in circulation which anyone who has taken a passing interest in the Sherman Tank will instantly recognise - These are reprinted consistently. Sometimes they are incorrectly dated, identified and even located. I have seen photos taken in Italy described as originating in Burma! I have elected to reject these shots for this publication as they are overused and thus have become instantly recognisable and a little tired. Great photographs in their own right no question, but a little tired. You, like me, want something new and this book offers that. Over eighty per cent of these photographs have never appeared in previous publications before, and those that have, are included to give an accurate date, caption, or reference number.
There also exists the notion that every battle and every constituent part of these battles was captured on film as we have become accustomed to viewing WW2 in black and white and that therefore a new book on the Sherman Tank will have fully comprehensive detailed photography of every single design change made to this tank in war years. This is simply not the case in this book and for solid reasons. The cameramen responsible for the photographs in this book were working under orders and to an agenda in extremely difficult circumstances, (See Chapter 1 - The AFPU). Thus one cannot expect perfect 360 degree cataloguing shots of how each variant and model differed. During many actions along the frontline the cameramen were not present in that sector, perhaps having been given a more mundane assignment on that particular day. In many actions the nature of the fighting was so ferocious that the combat conditions made the taking of photographs impossible. In some cases the angle from which the tank has been photographed defies a definitive identification as interchangeable parts were used. The aim for this publication is to provide a genuine panoramic illustration of the Sherman Tank in its many guises as demonstrated by the official photography of the period. It is not a technical manual, appraisal of the machinery or guide to making scale models of the tank although will be helpful in all of those applications. The photographs in this book will certainly inspire some new scale model dioramas for sure, but those publications already exist, and now even original US Ordnance Manuals have been reprinted and are available to those restoring and rebuilding the real thing.
I would argue that the Sherman is the most recognisable tank of all time, and certainly of armour types that saw action in the 1939-45 war. ’Sherman M4 Tank’ is of course an amalgamation of official nomenclature, and nickname that adhered when the tank was pressed into service. Recent debate has even asked if wartime crew referred to their tanks as Shermans, for surely they were Medium M4’s as the covers of original tech manuals refer to them? Initially for the American producers of the tank, and US Army intended users, it was only known as ‘Tank, M4, Medium’. The British referred to this new armour type as the ‘General Sherman’ and then ‘Sherman Tank’ in compliance with their policy of naming American armour in British Service after US Civil War Generals such as Jeb ‘Stuart’, ‘Grant’ and ‘Lee.’ Within a short period all troops knew the tank as the Sherman, and Sherman M4 in official parlance, and only rarely described themselves as belonging to a ‘Medium Tank’ unit.
It was manufactured in huge numbers with production figures exceeding the totals of all German types of armour combined in wartime production. They saw service on almost every battlefront in every campaign and were used by Russian, British, American, French, Polish, Indian, New Zealand, Canadian and Chinese armoured forces on the Allied team. Only a handful were sent to Australia for testing and one or two of these examples survived into museum captivity down under. Even the Germans ‘re-badged’ a captured few (German Shermans) over the last months of the war. So many were produced during 1941-45 that they can still be discovered in locations around the world from gate guardians, to privately owned vintage vehicle showstoppers, on firing ranges and in museum displays. Sherman Tanks have frequently been used as contemporary monuments on the wartime battlefields too. Perhaps you are familiar with some that you have viewed while taking a holiday? Examples can be viewed at Montormel in Normandy, the town square in Bastogne, in fact all over the Ardennes and at Slapton Sands in Devon to name a handful of locations. The late Ken Small orchestrated recovery of the Devon Sherman in the UK from out at sea to where it now stands in memoriam on the promenade. It had been lost in the US pre-invasion training exercise called TIGER during Spring, 1944 and is now visited by thousands of holiday-makers each year.
As recently as January, 2004 a story appeared via the Internet about a wartime Sherman M4A3 105mm (HVSS) Tank being captured and restored during the Iraq War (2003) by the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th US Infantry Division at Camp Raider within Iraq. I spoke with the command team from 4th US Infantry Division who relayed the story in preparation of this book. The vehicle was found at an abandoned Iraqi armoured vehicle school along a main highway. By the order of Colonel James Hickey, CO 1st BCT, 4th Infantry Division the Sherman was loaded onto a heavy equipment transport trailer and taken to Forward Operating Base ‘Raider’. Colonel Hickey also commanded the unit which eventually came to surround and capture Saddam Hussein in the now famous ‘hideaway hole.’ At Camp Raider it was restored by mechanics and specialists from the 4th Forward Support Battalion, although it had been in relatively good condition when discovered. It is armed with a 105mm Howitzer as main armament, with .30 calibre machine-gun and a .50 anti-aircraft heavy machine gun on the turret. It is likely that this example of the Sherman will find it’s way to the museum at Fort Hood, Texas. Probably captured from Iran during Iraq’s war in the 1970s, the Sherman will remain a preserved exhibit for the rest of its days.
The Sherman used as a monument, which stands in McAuliffe Square, Bastogne as memorial to the seige of December 1944 during the Battle of The Bulge. The paint is worn away from the hands of the inquisitive around an impact point created by a shell that knocked it out down the right side of the hull. This tank had six victories by the time it reached the hamlet of Renaument during December, 1944. There it became stuck in boggy ground and thus an easy target. Today it creates a focal point in the square. (March, 2003.)
So if Sherman tanks are easily recognisable, and so abundant in museum collections and at private displays then why is another book required covering this theme? There are many reasons: Not least because photo reference books go out of print, and those published in the late 60’s and 70’s are increasingly expensive and difficult to find on the subject. Quality has much improved in the process of transferring photo to page and those early books demonstrate a range of photo reproduction standards. The photographic illustrations in this book are largely unpublished and have remained in the archives, thumbed through only a few times since the end of the Second World War. For that reason alone it is bringing new primary source evidence to the table for contemporary generations. The photographs are artistically composed strong images and were taken by professional cameramen as opposed to the often blurred imagery of the enlisted amateur photographer. Some are what I would term reaction snaps, taken either in combat or with instinctive notions that the lense was about to capture a shot that could be used to illustrate an important story. They provide honest and detailed testament to how these tanks were used, appeared, and indeed faired in combat. Often museum examples such as the Sherman M4A4 exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London are only representative of the bare bones of the vehicle. While the IWM example is fairly complete, much has gone missing from it’s original wartime appearance over the sixty odd years since it was in service. I have been involved with the repaint of this particular vehicle and refitting of some external original fittings during 2004. However, the tank’s engine bay is barren. The A57 Chrysler Multibank engine resides in an impressive rebuilt state exhibited seperately at the IWM’s Duxford site at the entrance to The Land Warfare Hall. Observe the original photography featured in this book and you will see that the Sherman in service came to life with stored equipment, crew adaptations, vehicle naming, and camouflage paint schemes plus a range of unit identification markings. Every one is different despite the significant mass production figures.
Finally, I still consider the quality of these prints to be second to none even though I have now been studying them for some time. Sixty odd years on from when first taken, they have all been hand printed from original negative, and for the first time the military veteran, enthusiast, vehicle restorer, and modeller will gain a selection of crystal clear images that take one back in an instant to the moment the shutter operated within the camera. I feel this book offers invaluable primary source material, and thus it was imperative to endeavour to bring this remarkable selection of images together for the attention of a wider audience. All photographs are referenced with an IWM catalogue number in this publication making the process of ordering your own prints easier than ever from the IWM archive.