M-47s in World War-2?!
December 16th, 1944. I didn't know the germans were using our [American] tanks before they were even drawn up! But I don't blame them, as [probably] all german tanks were either destroyed, disabled, or museum peices.
shareWell, you're either a tank expert at the get-go and get disgusted by the inaccuracy of using a post-war tank or you never notice in the first place. I suppose if you're the former then you must have a willing suspension of disbelief to get over it and enjoy the movie.
Aside from that, at least the M24 Chaffees the American tankers were using are an actual WWII era tank. They were in production well before December '44 but according to my source, only two actually participated in the Battle of the Bulge...
Oh well.
This is because the film was shot in 1965, meaning that the producers couldn't get their hands on actual Sherman's and Tiger's because almost all of them were destroyed or scrapped at the war's end. So, they were forced to use M24 Chaffees and M-27 Patton tanks for the German Tigers. Inaccurate to some people but to me, it was the best the filmakers could do with what they had.
shareThey could have built fakes or put a Tiger frame on top of the M-27s to make it a little realistic. That was the most annoying thing in the movie, even for a 10 year old becuz that was how old I was when I saw it and even then it annoyed me that they were not even trying.
shareAre you serious? Just like cut some metal and slap it on a frame?
Maybe you should look at tank construction before saying such a think...
"The M24 Chaffee -- arguably the best light tank of World War II -- was a fast light armoured vehicle with the ability to deliver relatively large caliber direct fire with the excellent 75 mm M6 gun. More than 4.000 produced by Cadillac and Massey-Harris during 1943-45. The first reached Europe in late 1944, where they proved very effective and highly reliable."
Are you serious? Just like cut some metal and slap it on a frame?
Maybe you should look at tank construction before saying such a think...
Retired US Army reserve components Armor/Cavalry officer weighing in here!
The US Army OPFOR (Opposing Forces) at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA, use old Vietnam-era Sheridan light tanks with bolted-on fiberglass attachments to make them look like either Russian T-72 tanks or BMP armored personnel carriers. They still don't look quite like the real thing, but it helps. At least you know you're not shooting at your own buddies during MILES (the Army's version of Laser Tag) engagements.
You get mixed results when you do that for movies, depending on how much effort and expense you put into it, and what you have to start with.
Not sure what they did to the T-34s to make them look like Tigers both in Kelly's Heroes and Saving Private Ryan as well as some documentaries on the History Channel. Other than the lack of overlapping road wheels and the turret ring being too far forward, it wasn't too bad; at least you knew it was supposed to be a Tiger!
In Stripes, they took an M-60A3 (the last of the Patton series and the tank I had the most experience with BTW) and put all kinds of panels on it. It didn't look Russian but you had to look twice to make out what it was.
The absolutely dumbest looking thing I saw was in Hell to Eternity which took place during the Battle of Saipan, when they bolted on scaled-up mockups of the turrets of Japanese Type 95 light tanks (which bore a strong resemblance to the French-built Renaults that George Patton's brigade operated in World War I, with a high, very narrow hull and tall, skinny one-man turret) on the turrets of M-48s. On top of these huge, wide-tracked low-silhouette Patton-series chasses, they looked like Lincoln's stovepipe hats! Or like something out of an Ed Wood movie!
I did notice in Battle of the Bulge that when General Kohler was showing Hessler the models of the new German super-weapons, the model of what was supposed to be a King Tiger was actually that of an M-47. Better that than a model of a King Tiger and then still using undisguised M-47s, I suppose.
Lyle F. Padilla
Major, Armor, US Army Reserve (Retired)
AKA "Mad Tom" share
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Obviously the German offensive succeeded in prolonging the war more than we have been told.
is an 'M47' even a PAtton tank anyway? Ive seen variously M36 and M48 tanks referred Patton, I thought M47 must have been one of the lesser-known US tank family like Bulldog or Kennedy tank.
The US cavalryman above refers to the Sheridan 'light' tank..as used in Vietnam
I think a Sheridan is an M60 series, which is hardly a light tank, is it, is the NATO main standard US battle tank for years before the Abrams etc replaced it, would be at least a medium weight tank?
Basically, it was an improved M48 as an M48 was an improved M36?
Wonder which kind Elvis Presley was driving in "GI Blues.".
The M36 Jackson was a Tank Destroyer with the same chassis as the M4 Sherman but thinner-skinned and with a 90mm gun. It appears you have it confused with the M46. The Patton series included the M46, M47, M48 and M60 and their subvariants. The M-46 was essentially an M26 Pershing with an upgraded power pack/drive train, and a bore evacuator added to the main gun. The rest of the Patton series evolved from the M46 with successive improvements in guns, fire control, armor, turret design and engine (switching from gasoline to diesel with later variants of the M48) but retaining the same basic chassis. As I mentioned on another thread, one of my instructors at the Armor School at Fort Knox told my class (which was training on the M60A3)about a time his M60A3 had a track breakdown on a gunnery range where some old M26 hulks were being used as hard targets; the maintenance section took their sweet time getting new parts to them, so his crew just went downrange and cannibalized track parts from one of the M26 hulks, then went on their merry way.
The Sheridan (M551-- don't ask me how it ended up with a 3-digit model number!) is definitely a light tank (20 tons as opposed to 57 tons for the M60A3), was used to replace the M41 Walker Bulldog, saw service with armored cavalry units in Vietnam, and was light enough to be air-transportable and was therefore in service with the 82nd Airborne Division's organic cavalry units into the mid-1990s.
I've never seen GI Blues, but based on the era it was made, I'm guessing Elvis operated an M47 or M48 in that movie, as he was trained on in real-life (although he spent most of his service as a reconnaissance scout rather than a tank crewman). share
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What may have added to your confusion is that the M60A2 was equipped with the same short-barreled combination gun/missile launcher that the Sheridan had. It never went operational in any significant numbers.
Again, the M60 was part of the Patton series, but had certain engineer-adapted variants such as the Combat Engineer Vehicle (CEV, equipped with another short-barreled main gun that fired demolition charges, and a hydraulic lifting boom) and the Armored Vehicle Launched Bridge (AVLB) which was a temporary bridge carried on an M60 chassis.
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I know this is an old thread, but Armored Warfare makes me geek out over the mention of the Starship ~
Trust no one.share
For what it's worth, the tanks in "GI Blues" were M48s.
The tanks in my Guard unit were M48s.
"WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND THEY IS US"
POGO
Ya well, you want to hear something very funny ? I purchased the DVD of Battle of the Bulge and in one of the few extras, you actually have an old interview of the film's producer (I forget his name) that was filmed when the movie came out. In the interview, that guy is actually very proud of boasting that they had to go to great lenghts to find accurate tanks for the production. He actually says: "Oh yeah, the tanks are real Tiger and Sherman tanks." He seems very proud of that ! Is that funny or what ?
Regards,
PHD
Another great innacuracy in the film is that it depicts the bulk of the Tiger tanks being abandoned at the end.This was not so.If we assume that Colonel Hessler was in fact Peiper and the battlegroup in the film was depicting kampfgruppe Peiper then the bulk of the tigers managed to get out of the trap.True,Peiper lost many armoured halftracks and SP guns but his tiger battalion escaped almost unscathed,losing 6 or 7 vehicles out of 45.
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I can let the use of US tanks go, particularly as there were a TON of them and we weren't talking about a $100 million movie with the budget to rebuild scores of Tigers. HOWEVER...
- In the DVD extras they are talking to the writer Milton Sperling and he states categorically that they scoured Europe for the WW2 German tanks and for the American tanks they had to get some from our (Western European) allies who were still in some cases using them. And yes, he said, therefore this is a "very historically AUTHENTIC film." Whaaaa....? Seriously, I watched it yesterday, and I'd be VERY hard pressed to think of a SINGLE tank I saw in that movie that was, in fact, German....ever. Even the HALFTRACKS were old M3's and not the more likely Sdkfz251s (and that would have only taken about 45 minutes with an acetylene torch to convert them 90%).
- the part that absolutely kills me are the horrific tank battles. Repeatedly in this movie, tanks are firing at each other at ranges measured in dozens of FEET.
FWIW in the Ardennes Offensive, there were about 50 King Tigers available, and some of them were assigned to Peiper (the guy they called Hessler in the movie). However, they were too slow for offensive operations, so Peiper left them to trail behind while he pushed forward with PzIVs and Panthers. 10 King Tigers DID eventually catch up with him to join in a fight, were encircled, and ultimately abandoned due to running out of fuel.
Unfortunately, the American tanks may be WWII era, but they are referred to several times as Shermans, which they most certainly are not.
shareIt would`nt have been that difficult to at least have got hold of some Shermans, even if they did have to substitute post-war US equipment for that used by the Germans.
Plenty of other films made both before and after this managed to do so, after all at that time most of the studios owned a few anyway.
About the only reason I can think why this, and a couple of other contemperary movies use Chaffee`s is the there were lots of them lying around surplus at the time so the studios could by them from the US Army at a knock down price.
So its a case of, screw authenticity these things are CHEAPER.
"Any plan that involves loosing your hat is a BAD plan.""
Why didn't they just use CGI German tanks?
Seriously thou, I can't watch this film, the gray painted tanks and M2s are too distracting.
They didn't just rent the tanks, they got actual units of real tankers. Those units used their own equipment - M24 and M47 tanks. Spain, where they made this film, seemed to be quite interested in assisting filmmakers at this time. The Spanish Army also provided extras for Italian Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"
I very much doubt it occurred to the producers of this 1965 film to do something similar. It wasn't the usual style at the time. "Night of the Generals" with its two or three vismod Tigers was made two years later.