Posted on 04/18/2019 6:38:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Some will notice his non-rhotic accent, probably an echo of his Virginia born father.
The narrator has a familiar voice as well.
Read the book in which they took an incident from to make the movie Fury.
The author Belton Y. Cooper: Chief Ordnance Office for the WWII 3rd Armored Division its his WWII battlefield memoirs. He puts the blame squarely on Patton. He had to repair the shot up Shermans clean the bodies out & get them back into combat. Read his book!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Traps
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Cooper argues against the ultimate decision by the US Army, largely influenced by General George S. Patton, to favor the smaller M4 Sherman medium tank over the heavier M26 Pershing, which Cooper describes as being “in every way far superior
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The 3rd Armored Division entered combat in Normandy with 232 M4 Sherman tanks. During the European Campaign, the Division had some 648 Shermans completely destroyed in combat and we had another 700 knocked out, repaired, and put back into operation. This was a loss rate of 580 percent.
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Cooper argues that, when compared to the Sherman, the Pershing would have been better armed, better armored, more reliable, and more mobile. He blames the Army’s preference for the Sherman, on the notion that building tanks such as the more expensive Pershing was unnecessary, because “tanks were not meant to fight other tanks, as was dictated by the Armored Force Doctrine of the time, and because Patton believed the lighter and more fuel efficient M4 would be more agile in bypassing enemy lines and attacking in the rear.
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Patton apparently thought he still had horses!
Patton was an Army commander, a battlefield general, and he didn’t really have any say over what equipment was ordered. He could ask, but he didn’t have control over it.
The commander of Army Ground Forces was an administrative position. That was McNair’s job, and part of that entailed deciding what equipment got built.
Proponents of the Pershing wanted it because it could kill German tanks while on the offense. McNair didn’t care about that, he was content to give the Army towed anti-tank guns and lightly armored tank killers built on the Sherman chassis, but with a heavier gun. Part of his reasoning was that utilizing the Sherman chassis simplified the supply chain making repair and maintenance easier.
Well Cooper was there and had to deal with the carnage cause by that decision.
Read his book!
Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech was a few years away yet. The Korean War five years in the future. The Soviets hadn’t yet removed all doubt about their intentions to those who were insisting that they were trustworthy.
At the time the main concern was getting the Russians to share the bloodbath if an invasion of Japan’s home islands was required. The result would have to take care of itself.
No one is disputing that the Pershing would have been superior.
They are just pointing out that the decision about whether or not to build and deploy it lay with Gen. McNair, the commander of Army Ground Forces.
Patton was a tactical, battlefield general. He had to use whatever equipment that he was supplied with. He didn’t get to decide what it would be, and he bears no responsibility for the delay of the Pershing tank.
I don’t know if he did or not. I saw it in a matinee showing in Nashville when it came out and there were lots of vets and their wives in the theater and when it ended all I heard were sobs across the theater, very moving as I saw wives comforting their husbands with tears rolling down their cheeks, more move than the movie.
I saw the same reactions at the theater.
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