Two brothers in swimming tank
This story is just one among many others that was written by the people who was involved in WWII and collected by BBC. Contributed by Mr Laurie Burn that was a tank commander in Sherman tank, located in Sword Beach, Normandy, France.
The D-day and voyage
His first impression of the beginnings of D-Day was that there was simply no joy in crossing the Channel in a flat-bottomed boat! He had hung a bucket on the back of their tank, and it was one continuous stagger to the bucket to be sick and then back. In his story he is saying that he even wanted everything to sink, that much weight he had in his guts.
His brother Pete and he were members of the same Sherman tank crew. Co-driver and a gunner. And name of their tank was ‘Icanhopit’, but by the end of the war they were in ‘Icanhopit 4’. You can guess why…
Endurance under the stress situations were done in submarine station in Gosport. Weeks of sitting in an so-called improvised tank turret, in a 20ft-deep concrete bath poured by 2,000 gallons of water in, testing nervous system of Sherman tank crews!
The DD tanks!
You may wonder why but you must know that Sherman tank was known as one of the swimming tanks, because they were duplex drive vehicles. They could float even they had 32-tonne. Collapsible canvas screen fitted raised or lowered by means of compressed air in bottles. Once the screen was raised the tank was driven by two propellers from the main engine and steered by rudder and a very long tiller. That’s how Sherman tanks were very seaworthy.
Under the most terrific bombardment off the French coast they crossed the Channel. Unbelievably big and vast Armada of ships was behind them: battleships blazing off their big guns; rocket projectile ships launching hundreds of rockets; and the RAF bombing the landing area. When they heard „floater“, they knew this was it and they need to go there for what they were prepared to. Seeing photos before that, they knew how coast looks. Photos of the area at Ouistreham, where they were to land, start to be reality.
Becoming a man
After they begun to float Sherman tank were all so low in the sea, he looked more like rowing boats, but that was part of the surprise plan. “It was 6.30 hours. H-hour was 7.25 – we were to land at H 7.5 minutes. The bombardment went on and it was about this time that I stopped being a boy and became a man, because the landing craft carrying the infantry troops and commandos began to overtake us and some of them simply went over the tops of the tanks.”
7 minutes late
Among the dead bodies, Pete and his brother looked up and saw a massacre. They were about seven and a half minutes late arriving on the beach, but as soon as they dropped the floater screen, incoming high tide flooded the engine compartment. Before they evacuate, they fired guns as long as they could!
They troop sergeant, who had safely landed his tank, reversed to them and took them on board, and then, amid all the shooting and mayhem, he calmly dropped them off by the sea wall. 33 out of 40 launched tanks survived and made a real contribution to the battle.
Hope in this one is strong
First night they prevail all mortar attack, waited in an orchard in Hermanville, digging a trench under tanks and convincing them self that they are safe from harm. But from that day they only slept in tanks. Trenches didn’t help a lot.
First day of war for them was over, a day for which they had trained as a crew for 2 years, and they succeeded… to survive. It never crossed their mind that we could lose the war, they were too young to think otherwise.
That’s a story of one of the first Sheman tanks crew, that landed in France, on D-day.
Inspiration text: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/84/a2044784.shtml
Image: http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/duplexdrive/duplexdrive.html