I've never seen so many real in-camera tanks before, very impressive. You probably couldn't make a film like that today without involving a lot of computer-generated tanks. Consider the cost of running the real tanks as well.
That sequence with the tank vs. train at the tunnel was just amazing (probably used models, eh?). Did tanks actually do that in the war, or was that made up for the Cinerama show off only?
I doubt that a tank would oppose a train in a tunnel. See the James Bond film "Goldeneye" for the reason why. :-)
shareI never saw Goldeneye, but as a retired Armor/Cavalry officer, I'd never put a tank, not even King Tiger, on a railroad and try to block a train with it. A military train can carry a battalion's worth of tanks on flatcars. You do the physics and math!
The dumbest thing the train engineer did was try to put the locomotive in reverse. He was probably gonna die anyway, he may as well have gone full throttle and taken the moth erfu ckers in the tank with him! Come to think of it, with the momentum and weight of that train, even if the engineer had put the locomotive in reverse and if the King Tiger had scored a direct hit with that 88 as depicted, the train still would have kept rolling and put some serious hurt on the King Tiger!
Good point. That tank would have been smashed no matter what the outcome of its fire. All that mass in the train would have kept it rolling well beyond the tunnel, even if it had been hit and had no live human at the controls or had derailed somewhat. All that mass would have pushed it on to some degree anyway.
share...I must have spent a good 10'' trying to identify what "erfu" and "ckers" was (probably "moth" got me in the wrong track in the 1st place).
Then, it simply came to me hahah :PPPPP