Hi guys,

Last weekend I've spent some time with my wife on a fieldtrip in the Belgian Ardennes.
We visited several places, so we ran into a very nice museum in the little village of Poteau.
In this museum I found this Sherman turret, and I was shocked by the looks of it....

See for yourself,


Looks scary, don't you think?

Greetz, John.

What the heck did that to it?

Must be a hell of machinegun fire.

Even a .50 wouldn't do that........ shrapnel of some kind?

Dude, that turret's messed up but proper. The holes on the barrel might be from the de-mil'ing, but I can't begin to imagine what would make all those pepper-holes.

Randy

Imagine what happened if somebody was inside the turret. I got a glimpse (in person) of an APC hit by a single RPG round. Aint a pretty sight. A guy I talked to who saw it upclose just after the ambush. The way he described it seemed to me like a strawberry jam in a can. It was in a highway leading to Cotabato, Mindanao back in Nov. '99.

I wonder how many APC's, Trucks and Humvee's we lost in that highway? Hey Shonen Red, you want to see a busted trucks or APC's go there, Narciso Ramos Highway. If you're lucky, army engineers would've just pushed them to the side. Just try not to get sniped by those mujaheideens'.

It was probably used as target practise for armor piercing rounds...

Like this Pershing in Germany...



Bjoern

target practice sounds ;ike a good explanation to me,

i cant think of a WW2 german weapon that would do that. it looks like hundreds of sabot hits, so i would suggest post war use as a target.

ive seen several pictures of tanks and ships used as targets, and they all look like this, the only thing that can do that to a tank in one go is an A10!

cheers

joe

maybe somekind of huge steel eater termites? This was a hell of a round that this turret took !!!!!!!! nice picture John

What a pity! The hero of WWII has become a target practice?

Considering the number of bullets hitting the turret I'd say that the most likely option. as already mentioned, is that it has been used as a target. For what concerns the holes on the gun barrel I agree with the de-militarization of the vehicle.

Shonen: I agree with you about the "pity" but it's quite unlikely that thousands and thousands of AFVs can be preserved in museums or in private collections...

Ciao

is it a firefly turret? look at the hatch on the right looks very similar to firefly turrets I not sure but wernt all others oval? might have been recovered from a range as it looks like training round hits on it not sure what caused the damage next to the cheek armour though

good call mike,

it is a firefly turret, the rectangular loaders hatch and the taper of the barrel just as it enters the mantlet/rotor shield is obviously a firefly.

it could be a battle relic left over from the war, but i doubt it, as british involvement in the ardennes was located more in the meuse area.

cheers

joe

Didn't spot that hatch!. It is a firefly turret, which means it's rare enough that even in that condition surely it shouldn't be left like that!

The target practice is a logical explanation. Think they used a flak or something bigger

i agree, maybe we should all take a tube of milliput, our airbrushes and a bottle of bronze green, and go fix it up!

cheers

joe

It looks like it was hit by an anti-tank rifle type of weapon.

Looks like it was pecked to death by a big bird with an AP bill.

Used for target by a 20mm GAU perhaps.

the only other thing that could have done that kind of damage in ww2 on the german sides would have to be a Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber. this was almost certainly the most accurate dive bomber of ww2 and i'm pretty sure that it had armour piercing rounds. this is just a thought though so i don't know if it would be true.

it may have been a metal-eating termite! or may be not :-)

Uh, guys, are those holes penetrations? They look to me like they hit, but didn't penetrate. I don't see any daylight through any of them. Wouldn't shrapnel, as has been suggested, or even heavy machine gun fire pock mark the turret like this, without penetrating?

@ Halfyank: Well too be honoust, it most definately are penetrations, I know it doesn't show very well on the pic, but if you look on the left-bottom, you see daylight peeking through!!

Cheers, John.

good theory but i doubt it, if this was knocked out in the ardennes then i very much doubt any stukas were about, the allied fighters would have wiped them from the skies as they were far too slow.

also the stukas used 37mm cannons mounted under the wings, i doubt 37mm would fully penetrate like that, i recall that they had to fire on the engine decks, as the 37mm wasn able to penetrate thicker armour

cheers

joe

I would say that someone took a cutting torch to this turret.

These holes look exactly like... what it looks like when you try to start a hole in Thick steel with a tip that is too small for the job.

When you pre-heat the area you want to cut... then hit the oxegen trigger... steel will boil out till it goes through the other side.

Leaving you with a rolled over edge around top of the hole.

I think that when they burnt the holes in the barrel to de-mill it... they thought it would look cool to burn a bunch more holes.... for the effect of it being shot.

Just my 2¢

This is obviously a severe case of a very rare disease.......turret pox. Very distant cousin to the varicilla virus that causes chicken pox. It is contageous for 21 days and can resurface years later as shingles. It truly is a serious condition. Not even calamine lotion helps the itching. :-)

Patrick