Posted on 11/03/2014 9:53:07 AM PST by w1n1
Fury: The Mother of all Tank Movies starring Brad Pitt, no I'm not a fan of his, but did enjoyed the movie. The authenticity of the tanks was the real thing, Sherman's and the German Tiger I.
Pitt's character is a bit reminiscent of the role he played as a soldier in Inglorious Basterds, which also took place during WWII. He takes his five-man crew behind enemy lines, where they are outnumbered and outgunned.
FURY is the first war film to feature a real life German Tiger I tank which actually came out of a museum collection. Tigers were the most feared German tanks in World War II. The 75mm and 76mm guns on American Sherman tanks could only penetrate the Tiger's frontal armor at point-blank range.
If you were an American tanker in World War II, the Tiger was terror on tracks. When our tank crews defeated them in battle, it was usually by attacking with superior numbers and outmaneuvering them to get a shot at the Tiger's thinner armor on the sides and rear of the vehicle.
In order for an American tank to get around the side or rear, other tanks had to keep the Tiger's attention. The attention of an 88mm gun is not the kind you want. In short, somebody was very likely to get killed.
It was fortunate for the Allies that the Germans never had many Tigers, because American tank crews faced enough dangers fighting their more common adversaries. Because the Sherman sacrificed armor for speed, it was more vulnerable to penetrating hits.
Though the Sherman was respected by the Germans, it got nick-named "Ronson" by its crews because of its tendency to burn when hit. This problem was largely corrected with the later models by stowing the ammunition in lockers surrounded by liquid. By 1945, most of the old Sherman's had been replaced by improved models, of which FURY, Brad Pitt's tank, is one.
Fury also features the world’s only operable German Tiger I. A thickly armored, heavy tank mounted with an 88mm cannon, Tigers were superior to Shermans, but their low numbers and high production cost made them no match in the end to Allied armor on the march.
This is an excerpt from the original article posted here and written by Frank Jardim.
SPOILER ALERT, DON'T READ FURTHER.
I'll try to not spoil the movie for those determined to see it. so please don't read further but the movie made me mad.
I thought the movie sucked. The Army was like the Huns, the final battle scene was a joke (one entire mechanized infantry unit couldn't figure out that just maybe you don't have to advance to the front of a tank but might just surround it.)
Getting out and shooting it out from an open position with hundreds of advancing germans , uh OK..
.and the "nice" Waffen SS after watching his company decimated was such a stretch. Not to mention 3 shots with a Mauser including a chest shot and being able to talk as opposed to drowning in your blood like a normal human.
The love scenes....the whole thing was a joke. My daughter dragged me to this cause she wanted to see Clint Eastwood's son. When we left she shrugged and said, 'might been better to see Gone Girl, huh?"
Do yourselves a favor, wait till it comes on cable or netflix. The tank battles scenes were good, but the rest was just lame.
thank you... that’s my opinion.
All of the performances, I thought, were excellent. The action scenes were very good too, although one in particular was certainly a stretch. A crippled Sherman vs an SS battalion, even at that point in the war... Who do you think will win? ;-) Much, much better than Red Tails, for sure.
I remember that movie, hilarious.
Adam Goldberg tore my heart out in Saving Private Ryan...............to this day I cannot watch the scene where his character is killed.
My grandfather was a Sherman tank gunner in the 12th armored and they feared the German 88mm anti-tank guns that were highly mobile and concealable. His entire tank company was wiped out by them in France.
That never happens in World of Tanks.... LOL
I thought they got a lot of the “buddy banter” OK. I was surprised at the religion—and that it wasn’t mocked.
The story was a little corny. But it was fun.
Some folks argue that there should not have been any Tigers at all, and Germany would have been better off mass-producing the Panther tank.
I spent two years in the early 90s as an Abrams platoon leader and company XO in the First ID. In my 16 man platoon, I had personalities that were pretty much like the characters in the movie.
I agree Jan, that village scene(After the battle) looked more like what the Red Army would have been doing. Hollywood hates America and especially the American fighting man.
Yep. Many consider the Panther to be the finest medium tank produced by any country in the entire war. High velocity 75 mm cannon, sloped glacis armor and wide tracks made it an excellent, all-purpose tank. The Germans frittered away a lot of time and material on dead-end wunderweapons like the King Tiger and Elephant, when they would have been far better served maximizing Panther production - and jet fighter development.
He was also Dr. Schultz in Django Unchained.
Actually, Sherman’s were powered by a radial aircraft engine that required aviation grade fuel. That is why they blew up when hit.
I thought the movie was excellent despite agreeing with your assessment of the plausibility of the final battle. However, I was able to suspend disbelief and go with it.
IMHO it was not as bad as most action movies, like Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise leaps off a speeding train and violently collides with a helicopter without any apparent injury. Or any Jason Bourne film where the protagonist can effortlessly take out a legion of armed, trained combatants with his bare hands.
I think Fury is as close to an old school WWII film where our side are the good guys as has been made since the Longest Day.
Hadn’t seen that movie. Yet.
Technical point.
Previous movies featuring Tiger tanks (Kelly’s Heroes, Saving Private Ryan) actually used T-34s converted to look like Tigers. The conversions were pretty good but, in addition to the boxing in necessary to make the bow glacis plate and turret look like a Tiger, an easy observed telling point is the location of the track drive sprocket. In the Tiger, the drive sprocket is forward of the road wheels as shown in this video feature about the “Fury” Tiger:
The T-34 Tiger 1 conversions still have a T-34 drive train which places the idler wheel in the front and the drive sprocket in the rear as shown here (Kelly’s Heroes):
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_31790-Uralvagonzavod-T-34-85-1944.html
and here (Saving Private Ryan):
http://www.cix.co.uk/~mollusca/tank/9807bov13.jpg
Also notice, based on the humans in the pictures, how significantly smaller a T-34-based Tiger conversion in size is when compared to the real Tiger:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8374/6rqi.jpg
This is hardly surprising since the T-34 was a small medium class tank while the 88mm Tiger was, at the time, the first tank in the heavy class of tanks developed during WWII. (Soon matched by the Soviet 122mm-armed IS series tanks.)
Today, of course, there are no medium and heavy class tanks, just main battle tanks, all very fast, weighing in at between 45 and 70 tons, and all armed with 115 to 125mm main guns.
Actually, the tank gasoline fire problem was common to all nations tanks during WWII with the exception of the Japanese. The Japanese had diesel powered tanks due to a pre-WWII fire in an imported tank that killed tank crewmen. This led the Japanese to focus on developing suitable diesel-powered tanks. Of course, fuel safety did nothing for the under-armed and under-armored character of Japanese tanks when matched against US tanks and, very late in the war, Soviet tanks.
Another problem with the radial aircraft engine in the Sherman was that the height of the hull had to be increased to accommodate the diameter of the engine. This raised its silhouette, making it more observable and therefore, more vulnerable, on the battlefield.
http://www.homeofheroes.com/moh/citations_1940_wwii/day_james.html
For those looking for hard core tank enthusiast evaluations of the Movie FURY with historical backgrounds, check out the following links from the World of Tanks electronic game web site —
Chieftain’s Hatch - Fury: Battling German Die-Hards
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/hatch-fury-battling-german-die-hards/
The Chieftain’s Hatch: Fury’s Tiger Standoff
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/TCH_Fury_Sherman_Tiger/
The Chieftain’s Hatch: Creating “Fury”
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Fury/
And for a further background on German Panther tanks versus M4 Sherman’s, see:
The Chieftain’s Hatch: French Panthers
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/pc-browser/21/chieftains-hatch-french-panthers/
The Tiger was a great defensive tank, but that didn't make it a good weapon choice. It was too large and too heavy for the infrastructure of the day, making it hard to move across a simple creek.
The Panther was likely far more effective for the money.
Had the United States produced the M26 Pershing tank two years earlier, the tank battles would have been very different. The Pershing was the equal of the Panther and gunned like a Tiger.
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