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DeathHand

Let It All Bleed Out
Thousands of military servicemen on all sides of World War Two lost their lives when the enemy took out their armored vehicles (tanks, half tracks, troop carriers, self propelled guns, etc). This thread will be mostly about tanks but will include other types of mobile armored vehicle.

In the case of a tank being knocked by enemy fire, the crew may or may not have survived the initial impact of the explosive projectile that took out their tank. If an enemy shell hit the turret, the commander might have been killed along with his gunner. If a shell hit the front of the tank then the driver and/or the front machine gunner were likely to be killed.

If a tank's payload of ammunition didn't explode and incinerate the crew on the spot, then any survivors would scramble to get out of the tank. Some exited their tank with their hair, uniforms, boots, etc. on fire and often burned to death on the ground as the tank beside them burned. Others, who were wounded or unscathed, would escape the tank only to be shot dead by small arms fire from enemy infantry or machine gun fire from the enemy tank/s.

WW2 Tanks|Armor KO'ed

Set 1.


1.
1-British Matilda hit by 88-mm anti-aircraft gun December 1941 Tobruk.jpg


2.
American M-4 tank and German Sturmgeschütz IV.jpg


3.
American M4A3  Sherman captured and pressed into service by the German army.jpg


4.
American tank M4 Sherman Iwo Jima.jpg


5.
American tank M4A3 Sherman Knocked out Neumarkt, Germany April 21, 1945.jpg
 
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DeathHand

Let It All Bleed Out
Some tank crewmen referred to tanks as 'rolling steel coffins' or just 'steel coffins'. Others called them a 'coffin for five' or a 'coffin for six', etc.

Tanks had to deal with mines, bazookas, panzerfausts, accidents, enemy aircraft, artillery/mortar fire and breakdowns - sometimes in addition to being shot at by an enemy tank/s.

WW2 Tanks|Armor KO'ed

Set 2.


1.
Amers-Hetzers.jpg


2.
APC SdKfz 251.jpg


3.
B1 bis tank 46th BCC named Cambronne.jpg


4.
B1 bis tank France 1940.jpg


5.
Befehlspanzer III - Africa Corps.jpg
 

DeathHand

Let It All Bleed Out
Michael Wittman was a German Waffen-SS tank commander during WW2 who soon rose to the rank of SS-Captain. He fought with the SS Panzer Regiment 1, commanding a Panzer III tank, before becoming a tank platoon leader of four Tiger I tanks.

He is credited with 138 tank kills and 132 anti-tank gun kills and he was among several popular "Panzer Aces" but seems to have become the most widely known.

The circumstances behind Wittmann’s death have been the subject of debate over the years. It was accepted that Trooper Joe Ekins, a British gunner in a Sherman Firefly tank of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, fired the round that destroyed his tank, killing Wittmann and his crew.

In 2005, the historian Brian Reid suggested that members of the Canadian Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment may have been responsible instead.

WW2 Tanks|Armor KO'ed

Set 5.


1. The remains of Wittmann's Tiger 1 tank.
tiger-destroyed-michael-wittmann-crew-normandy-1944.jpg


2.
knocked-out-Sherman-tank.jpg


3.
M4 Sherman Oberkirchen Germany 1945.jpg


4.
M4 Shermans 4th Armoured Regiment Scorpion Monte Cassino.jpg


5.
M4A3_76_Sherman_Tank_1st_Armored_Division_February_1945.jpg
 

McM

ARSELING
The days before fin-stabilized SABOTS, shaped charges in rockets and depleted uranium ammunition. They mostly needed much more shots to kill a tank back then. Germans had a good grenade for tank guns against other armored vehicles, but it was made from a wolfram (tungsten)-alloy and this stuff became very rare in Germany during the war.
Some interesting photos!

Found only this on my HD (I deleted almost everything some time ago)
Russian K1 at Stalingrad

Stalingrad,_Panzer_KW-1.jpg
 

DeathHand

Let It All Bleed Out
The days before fin-stabilized SABOTS, shaped charges in rockets and depleted uranium ammunition. They mostly needed much more shots to kill a tank back then. Germans had a good grenade for tank guns against other armored vehicles, but it was made from a wolfram (tungsten)-alloy and this stuff became very rare in Germany during the war.
Some interesting photos!

Found only this on my HD (I deleted almost everything some time ago)
Russian K1 at Stalingrad

View attachment 277084
A tanks firepower was nothing like it is today. Sometimes it'd be a PAK-50, or a Panzerkraust, or whatever that would take a tank out.

That was a good pic that you added. The Germans either took a dozen shots at it or it was a target practice tank. Several hits penetrated the turret and hull while other just melted into the steel like ricochets.
 

McM

ARSELING
...to play endless hours with a dead tank as a kid

Of course there were no wrecked tanks anymore, when I was a kid end of the '60s, would have loved it too. We had a huge, partly destroyed flak fortress in the woods for playground until they buried the whole thing under a mountain of rubble in the '70s. The place was looted thousand times before at this time, but we managed to find a skull though.
 

McM

ARSELING
Pic. 2
saukopf.JPG


Stug 3, equipped with a 'sow-head cover' on the cannon. The (later replaced) 'sow-head' had better protection against projectiles than the normal, right-angled one. More production costs though.
 
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