--- Geoff Winnington-Ball <gwball@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> In the pic below, you can plainly see literally tons
> of Churchill and
> unidentified German track welded to the all sides of
> this Sherman IC Hybrid Firefly (Holland, April
> 1945).
> Just how effective was this? Or was it more for
> piece of mind? If good, good
> only against Panzerfausts, or also good
> for solid shot?
Such ad-hoc "armor" offered up minimal protection, if
any. Sandbags were the most common method followed by
extra track links. Wood was also used. Interestingly,
it seems that sandbags and tracks were used in the
European theater while tracks and wood were the most
common method in the Pacific theater.
The addition of all these things ment more to the
mental well-being of the crew more than actually doing
anything to offer up adequate protection. One
photograph in Steven Zaloga's "US Marine Tanks in
World War Two" shows penetrations by Japanese AT guns
through the wood planking on the hull side and into
the hull itself. A novel idea in some Marine service
M4s was to space the wood planks away from the hull by
three inches and then fill in the gap with concrete.
Another idea adopted by some Marine tankers was to
mount oaken wood planks over the suspension to foil
attempts by Japanese anti-tank teams from easily
placing satchel charges and/or magnetic mines.
In Steven Zaloga's "The Sherman At War: The European
Theatre 1942-1945", he states that in Patton's 3rd.
Army, Patton forbid the use of such additional "armor"
stating that it lead to premature mechanical failure
due to the added weight and that such protection was
dubious at best. For the most part, this order was
ignored...but Zaloga has a photograph of Patton after
cussing out a tank crew whose Sherman was coated in
sandbags.
Spaced armor such as that used by the Germans or
stand-off armor provided any sort of measure of
defense against things like the Panzerfaust or bazooka
in terms of add-on armor protection.
Best,
Ed
http://members.aol.com/sturmpnzr
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