The Problems With Fury

[Applause] [Music] hi my name is Johnny and today I want to talk about the biggest topic on world war two message boards in 2014 I want to talk through the tiger ambush scene from the movie fury and point out a few things that didn't quite sit right with me and just a disclaimer before I start this I don't hate the movie I actually really liked it and liked what it was trying to do it just plays to a lot of stereotypes that just plain aren't true or don't make sense so to jump right into it the scene begins with Brad Pitt's tank column moving all by itself which in and of itself is weird just four tanks all by themselves in Germany in 1945 was something you probably wouldn't see they would have either more tanks with them or some kind of accompanying infantry but anyways the ambush begins with the trailing tank being hit by a German 88 millimeter shell from a tiger now although these kind of ambushes did happen this is not how they would go down any German tank commander no matter how green he was would know that the way to stop a column is to shoot the leading vehicle this would be one of the first things he was taught in training school for becoming a tank commander and actually many tiger commanders in the real world used this tactic to stop columns and destroy many many vehicles the most famous one I can think of is Michael Whitman's ambush at V label Kosh on June 13th 1944 Panzer ace Michael Wittmann destroyed about 12 British tanks using this exact tactic he destroyed the leading vehicle then he destroyed the rear vehicle and amidst the chaos of the British trying to figure out what was going on he knocked off a bunch of vehicles in the centre before sneaking away to safety and this tactic as a whole is excellent for defending armies cut them off at the front so they can't move cut them off at the back so they can't retreat and then while they're looking around for you in the midst of the chaos kill as many of them as you can and this is something that a German tank commander in 1945 should have known the second issue with this choice of target is that fury should have stuck out like a sore thumb to this German tank commander if you look at the guns of the four American tanks fury is the only tank with the long-barreled 76 millimeter gun which is a much more powerful gun than the short 75 that the other tanks port and German commanders were very keenly aware that this gun was a whole lot more deadly to them than the other ones often going out of their way to kill tanks like this one and the British Firefly before they killed the other ones knowing that they were more of a risk German tankers tendencies to take out these long barrel tanks first was actually so rampant that Allied crews with these upgraded tanks would often tried to hide the fact that they had this longer better tank gun often by painting the latter half of the barrel or by putting a fake muzzle break halfway down the barrel to make it look shorter Hey now what the Americans do next makes complete sense turn to face the enemy so that the thickest part of your armor is facing him throw smoke in his face so we can't see and try to figure out where he's at what doesn't make sense though is them trying to close the gap and get closer to it as if they need to as I said previously fury has an upgraded 76 millimeter gun a gun that should be more than capable of punching through the Tigers frontal armor within about 400 yards but instead the movie acts like they all have short 75 guns they need to close the gap which that in and of itself isn't inaccurate I have heard of Army Field Manual saying that if tanks are within 300 to 400 yards of a target no they can't kill it but no they can't if they get closer to charge but that she's simply not needed in this scenario it'd be better for these 75 millimeter Sherman's to not do anything and have the 76 take the tiger out now after this we do get a close-up of the enemy tank and it is a real Tiger one it's actually Tiger 131 from the Tank Museum in bobbington and I think it's really awesome that it made it into the movie and we finally have a world war 2 movie with an actual real functioning tiger but then the tiger crew makes a mistake one that doesn't make any sense they charge forward to close the gap two now I'm not one to talk about how German tanks have the advantage all the time and that they were just a hundred percent better in all scenarios I actually disagree with a lot of people that say things like that though I'm not the defending German technical superiority I'm stating the [ __ ] obvious but in this particular scenario the tiger has all the advantage and he has no reason to leave his position even if you say it's the end of the war and this may be an inexperienced tank commander it doesn't take someone with a whole lot of tactical know-how to realize that you're in a good position you're well concealed you don't know if the enemy knows where you are not yet all they've really done is throw smoke in your face and all you have to do is pick them off from afar you have the better gun why would you get rid of all your advantages and basically help them close the gap now as they approach each other nothing particularly wrong happens fury misses its first shot and the shells from the two 75 millimeter Sherman's bounced which is what would have happened at that range the only inaccuracy here is that everyone is firing while they're moving which is something that most tank commanders wouldn't do the Sherman's had a gyroscopic mount for their guns that would kind of help them stay stable and stay on target while they're moving but the tiger tank doesn't whatsoever and so the tiger should be moving stopping and firing too take out the second and third tanks both of the 75 millimeter Sherman's are taken out on the approach that's a lot of damage but this doesn't necessarily have to happen I mean if Fury wasn't in range previously it definitely is now as the tanks are getting closer and closer to each other why they didn't take another shot just kill the tiger and end it I don't understand but even with this in mind fury decides it needs to get around to the back of the tiger to destroy it now this is something that did happen it's not a hundred percent of myth regular 75 millimeter m4 Sherman's did have to get around to the back of a tiger or Panther to take them out because it couldn't take them out frontally but at this point Furies gun could have taken the tiger out a long time ago right now we're just playing to the myth that it took for Sherman's to kill a tiger every time you ran into a tiger in fact both vehicles have been well within range to kill each other pretty much this whole time and I mentioned both vehicles because fury does bounce one of the Tigers shells off its side which wouldn't have happened that should have gone straight through the engine and ended the battle right there anyways the tiger goes back in Reverse to try to outmaneuver fury and I believe the Tigers loader has just suffered a stroke because it's amazing fire rate from before has now been cut in half and before you know it Furies put two shells in the back of the tiger and the battles over now I think the thing that overall hurts the scene the most is the writers subscribing to too many myths about tank combat in world war two the first one being that it took five Sherman's to kill a cat a tiger or a panther although there may have been scenarios where this took place the smallest tank unit you would ever find on the western front in an American unit that is is five tanks that's a tank platoon to quote Nicholas Moran hey Joe we don't need you and your buddy so the fact that you have five tanks there isn't necessarily because that's what you need it's just always what you brought because that's what you're going to be with what you decided you needed usually dependent on the situation you found yourself in and a US Army study after the war found that typically whoever fired first in a tank engagement was the one who was more likely to win and so numbers of Tanks on your side don't really mean anything if that's the big deciding factor the second one is that the Sherman wasn't made to fight tanks and this gets into design and doctrine now by the time you have the tiger the tiger - and the Panther late in the war yeah the Sherman is outclassed it's 75 millimeter gun isn't going to cut it but when it came out in 1942 it was a very capable vehicle with a very capable gun it did very well in North Africa in Italy it's only once you get into France in Germany in these really specific scenarios where its shortcomings begin to show but just as the Germans were upgrading their tanks we were upgrading ours we were putting things like the long 76 millimeter gun into tanks making the easy eight and we were also developing and bringing new tanks like the m26 pershing which was a direct response to the tiger and Panther that we had run into in Europe the idea that we just told American tankers hey here's something that's not that great go have fun and die just to win the war just simply isn't true we were always trying to keep the edge on the Germans a lot of people just think it should have been done differently the final myth is this idea that everything was a tiger I'm not doubting that tiger phobia was real I mean the thing that you're most scared of is the thing you're going to be looking out the most for to run into but to be honest these big cats Tiger 1 Tiger 2 Panther Germany didn't make that many of them especially compared to how many tanks we made the bulk of German armored units were made up of panzer 4 sturmgeschütz 'as things like that to run into a tiger a panther or a tiger 2 didn't happen as often as people lead on or as often as we think that's something that showed up in the collective consciousness after the war once we started studying it and becoming so interested with these German tanks I'm not saying it didn't happen I'm just saying it didn't happen as often as people lead on or as often as people think even for all its flaws though I really did like this movie it's beautifully shot and I love what it's trying to say showing a grayness and the morality towards war that there can be bad guys on either side and that at the end of the day it's kill or be killed and there's not much room for thought outside of it and I really hope there's more movies like this made in the future even if they do have similar problems in Rick atkinson's book and army at dawn he describes through very many first-person accounts the Germans using green tracer bullets fairly often actually but in this movie they seem overused at least in my opinion I understand it helps with telling who's shooting it who and it is based in fact but a lot of times at least to me it takes a nice world war two gritty aesthetic movie and turns it into this big color flashy light show and it doesn't quite make sense to me [Music] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 4,174,427

Rating: 4.7518935 out of 5

Keywords: Fury, Tiger Attack, 2014 movie, Sherman Tank, Tiger Tank, Germany 1945, Potential History, Brad Pitt, Historical analysis, Myths, Death Traps

Id: 31FcGinPl38

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018