When the Navy turned the Ford V12 down – because they decided to use radial engines – Ford lopped off four cylinders and converted it into a tank engine. The comparatively rare Ford-built Shermans were equipped with Ford’s 450-horsepower, 18-liter GAA V8 engine – originally a V12 knock-off of Rolls-Royce Merlin and Allison aviation engines that were supposed to be used in American planes. In all, about 50,000 were built for the war – and the vast majority of Shermans were built by General Motors and Chrysler. Ford Motor Company didn’t design the Sherman, but it did build them – but only 1,690 M4A3s from June 1942 to September 1943. (Ergo, it was not a fair fight!) Yeah, okay, kinda sorta. Production notes mention that Fury was designed and built by Henry Ford, and the German tanks were masterminded by Ferdinand Porsche. And they were not completely at the mercy of German tanks. The Easy Eight featured a bigger gun and a better suspension. In real life, the Easy Eight, equipped with its 76 mm gun, was a relatively late addition to the war effort – only in production since late 1944. (In fact, only one Sherman tank – a Canadian one – is known to have survived as long as from June 1944’s D-Day all the way to May 1945’s V-E Day.) But with a 50 percent casualty rate in most mid-WWII tank battles, an earlier M2 or M4 model that survived 3+ years of combat would have been unheard of. If that was so, Fury would have probably been a much earlier model M4 Sherman, like an M2 or M4A3, each of which went into production in 1942. Supposedly, they’ve all been fighting together – in Fury – since the North Africa campaign in 1942. In the film, since a point is made in the movie that Collier loves his tank, and he and the crew have named it “Fury” – the name they’ve painted on its 76 mm gun barrel. And he wouldn’t have been fighting a German Tiger TI – but we digress. If the movie was based on a real character – and supposedly it is not – Collier would not have been driving an Easy Eight. In the movie, it was a Sherman M4A3E8, more commonly known as an “Easy Eight”.
Trivia question: What kind of tank is Pitt commanding? Don “Wardaddy” Collier ( Brad Pitt) commands a tank with a five-man crew in the storied 66th Armored Regiment in the 2nd Armored Division, as it is invading the heart of Germany in April 1945 – just days before the Nazi surrender.
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