I have found this thread fascinating. You guys really know your stuff. I want to share something about the early Sherman tanks that you may or may not know. I wrote this for a military web site I own, and the subject was the 75 mm pack howitzer. It’s the last sentence that might be of interest.
“Heavily defended by the Japanese, the 1943 battle for the Tarawa Atoll was a major amphibious assault using the tactics that had been developed during the 1930's. One strategy that had to be re-evaluated, though, was the amount of naval gunfire necessary to soften-up the objective. On the first day of the invasion, Japanese machinegun nests were able to stop the Eighth Regiment's advance. On D-day plus one, the First Battalion, Tenth Marines used rubber boats and life rafts to get their pack howitzers on shore. These small mobile 75mm guns were then used to destroy the Japanese concrete blockhouses that naval gunfire hadn't been able to knock out. By the way, there were fourteen additional 75mm American guns on Tarawa. Sporting colorful nicknames like Cobra, China Gal, and Cuddles, these Sherman tanks of "C" Company, First Corps Medium Tank Battalion helped destroy enemy pillboxes. The fighting on Tarawa was so intense that at least half of the M4A2 tanks were disabled on the first day of the assault. The Navajo Marines who served as radiomen during the Second World War were known as Code Talkers. Their unique secret code within a code (Navajo language) referred to tanks as turtles. One last parting shot. George W. Nations, USMC, wrote in his <u>One Man Remembers</u> that he was a Sherman tank crewmember who fought on Iwo Jima. When the ammo for the main gun was exhausted and no more to be had, low velocity 75mm pack howitzer shells were substituted.”
I snapped the photo of my MTH flatcar this morning. I didn’t have the heart to cut of the .30 machine gun.
This is the forum at it's best IMO. To me, trains = history and in the case of WWII, trains were a driving force behind our industrial might. I like to model and run the 40's and 50's era and it's a real treat to have experts like Lee and Forty Rod weigh in on how trains and tanks went together. Better still, how the Shermans were used in not just in Europe but in the Pacific theater as well. Great stuff!
