A shattered Sherman tank of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers. It was hit by alternating armour-piercing (AP) and high-explosive (HE) shells. The turret of the tank was blown straight up and off the body. Its Canadian crew never knew what hit them.
Hey Gren Schell… "how ya do-in eh?..lol"
I spoke with an old boy that was a customer of mine about 10 years ago, he had served with the British Columbia Dragoons which was a tank regiment from the Kelowna/Vernon area of British Columbia. He had served with them in Italy. He said he had been blown up three times, the first two times he and his entire crew survived, the third time he was the only one to survive. He described how desperate they were for tank parts, they would go out at night and haul back blown up and damaged Shermans and use the parts they could salvage. He also described having to remove burnt Canadian tankers from burnt out tanks, he said they pulled apart just like roast chickens.
Not beauty for the crew methinks. Let’s hope it was very quick and they did not suffer… eh?
Not that anybody really knows - but I doubt if anybody inside a tank that suffered an internal explosion of this sort felt much. On instant there, the next … well, we don’t know much about that, either … Best regards, JR.