Today my brain decided it didn’t want to write up a blog post, so instead let’s start easing into the 4th of July weekend with things that go boom. Today, one of the most awesome things that go boom: the legendary M134 Minigun.
On the firing range:
Here’s Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons describing in detail how it works:
And here he is firing it in slow motion:
Not sooner do I start writing about Sherman tanks than suddenly all sorts of Sherman-related information starts popping up.
First, here’s are two really detailed videos from Nicholas Moran, AKA The Chieftain, of the features of a Sherman M4A1:
Second, Dwight sent me this twitter thread, that goes into a great deal of detail about how the Sherman’s later reputation for being Not So Great came almost entirely for the way they were deployed in roles they were not specialized for.
Here’s a Tweet from that thread that talks about the weird (but highly effective) redesign that became the Sherman M4VC Firefly used by the British Army:
The story of the Sherman Vc's development is amazing (and look I've fixed the meme for you)… but they arrive at units with a shitty No. 43 Telescope with 3x magnification.
It's marginally better than the standard offering, but isn't really even remotely suitable. /27 pic.twitter.com/ZrHOtGM0Qr
— Jonathan Ware (@ReassessHistory) April 27, 2020
(The way embedded tweets work is you’ll probably have to click on that to see the full meme.)
The British 17 pounder/76.2mm gun used a much longer (and thus higher velocity) shell, powerful enough to take out a Tiger I from the front (though I don’t fancy its chances against the Tiger II), a gun about on par with the German 88mm L/56 on the Tiger I (but not the 88mm L/71 on the Tiger II).
And speaking of the Firefly, Moran did a tour of the Firefly in these videos:
And here’s Moran and Forgotten Weapons host Ian McCollum joining forces to fire the weapon systems on a Sherman:
Finally, it being the Internet, there’s a site dedicated to Sherman tanks. This myths about Shermans post is particularly interesting.