Екінші дүниежүзілік соғыстағы британдық "Sherman Firefly" танкысы

United Kingdom medium tank of WWII

The Sherman Firefly was a medium tank used by the United Kingdom and some armoured formations of other Allies in the Second World War. It was based on the US M4 Sherman but was fitted with the more powerful British calibre 17 pounder anti tank gun as its main weapon. Conceived as a stopgap until future British tank designs came into service, the Sherman Firefly became the most common vehicle mounting the 17 pounder in the war. The British Army made extensive use of Sherman tanks, but they expected to have their own tank models developed soon, so the idea of mounting the 17 pounder in the Sherman was initially rejected. However, through the efforts of two persistent British officers, government reluctance was eventually overcome, and the Firefly went into production. This proved fortunate, as the Cruiser Mk VIII Challenger and Cruiser Mk VIII Cromwell tank designs experienced difficulties and delays. After the problem of getting such a large gun to fit in the Sherman's turret was solved, the Firefly was put into production in early 1944, in time to equip the 21st Army Group, commanded by General Bernard Montgomery, for the Normandy landings. It soon became highly valued, as its gun could almost always penetrate the armour of the Panther and Tiger tanks it faced in Normandy, something no other British tank could reliably do. Because the Firefly's barrel was visibly longer than that of a normal 75 mm Sherman, crews tried to countershade camouflage it so the tank would look like a regular Sherman from a distance. Between 2,100 and 2,200 were manufactured before production ended in 1945.

The idea of fitting a 17 pounder gun into a Sherman tank was rejected by the Ministry of Supply's Tank Decision Board. Although the British Army had made extensive use of the American built Sherman, it was intended that a new generation of British tanks would replace it. First, there was the Cromwell, which was expected to use the Vickers high velocity 75 mm gun; this gun would have had superior anti tank performance to the US 75 mm and 76 mm guns that were mounted in the Sherman. The second was the A30 Challenger, which was based on the Cromwell but with the even more powerful 17 pounder gun. These two tanks and their successors—the Comet and the Centurion, which were already on the drawing board—were to replace the Sherman in British service and the prospect of diverting resources to mount the 17 pounder on the Sherman seemed undesirable. Several unofficial attempts were made to improve the firepower of the Sherman. The earliest can be credited to Major George Brighty of the Royal Tank Regiment while he was at the Lulworth Armoured Fighting School in early 1943. Despite the A30 Challenger undergoing initial trials at Lulworth, Brighty was convinced that the Sherman was a better mount for the 17 pounder. The turret of the Sherman was too small to allow for the very long recoil of the gun. In a radical adjustment, Brighty removed the recoil system and locked the gun in place, thus making the entire tank absorb the recoil, but this was a far from ideal situation and there was no telling how long the tank would have been able to handle such a set up. While at Lulworth, Witheridge inspected the A30 Challenger and "joined in the chorus of complaints" about the tank. Upon looking up Brighty and learning of his attempts to improve the Sherman, Witheridge lent his assistance.

W. G. K. Kilbourn, a Vickers engineer working for the DTD, transformed their idea into the reality of the prototype of the tank that would serve the British forces from the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The first thing Kilbourn had to fix was the lack of a workable recoil system for the 17 pounder. The 17 pounder traveled back as it absorbed the recoil of the blast. This was too long for the Sherman's turret. Kilbourn solved this problem by redesigning the recoil system completely rather than modifying it. The recoil cylinders were shortened and placed on both sides of the gun to take advantage of the width of the turret. The gun breech itself was also rotated 90 degrees to allow loading from the left rather than from on top. The radio, normally mounted in the back of the turret in British tanks, had to be moved; an armoured box (a "bustle") was attached to the back of the turret to house it, with access through a large hole cut through the turret. The next problem encountered by Kilbourn was that the gun cradle, the metal block on which the gun sat, had to be shortened to allow the gun to fit into the Firefly and thus the gun itself was not very stable. Kilbourn had a new barrel designed for the 17 pounder that had a longer un tapered section at the base, which helped solve the stability problem. A new mantlet was designed to house this gun and the modified cradle. The Firefly had no armour or mobility advantages over the normal Sherman tank beyond the additional 13 mm of protection added to its mantlet. The modifications were extensive enough that 17 pounders intended for the Firefly had to be factory built specifically for it. The final major change was the elimination of the hull gunner in favour of space for more 17 pounder ammunition, which was longer than the original 75 mm. By October and November 1943, enthusiasm began to grow for the project. The 21st Army Group was informed of the new tank in October 1943. Even before final testing had taken place in February 1944, an order for 2,100 Sherman tanks armed with the 17 pounder gun was placed, as the Challenger program was suffering constant delays and it was realized that few would be ready for Normandy. Even worse, it was discovered that the Cromwell did not have a turret ring wide enough to take the new High Velocity 75 mm gun (50 calibres long), so it would have to be armed with the general purpose Ordnance QF 75 mm. This left the Firefly as the only tank available with firepower superior to the QF 75 mm gun in the British arsenal, earning it the "highest priority" from Winston Churchill. It was sometimes used at unit level (brigade/regiment) in war diaries from March 1944, along with "Mayfly". During the war, Shermans with 17 pounder guns were usually known as "1C", "1C Hybrid", or "VC", depending on the basic mark of the vehicle. In British nomenclature, a "C" at the end of the Roman numeral indicated a tank equipped with the 17 pounder. The name "Firefly" in period sources often refers to any vehicle with a 17 pounder gun, often the 17pdr SP Achilles M10C variant of the M10 tank destroyer.

The main armament of the Sherman Firefly was the Ordnance Quick Firing 17 pounder. Designed as the successor to the British QF 6 pounder, the 17 pounder was the most powerful British tank gun of the war, and one of the most powerful of any nationality, being able to penetrate more armour than the 8.8 cm KwK 36 fitted to the German Tiger I. The 17 pounder was theoretically able to penetrate some of armour at and at using standard armour piercing, capped, ballistic capped (APCBC) ammunition. Armour piercing, discarding sabot (APDS) ammunition could penetrate some 256 mm of armor at 500 m and 233 mm at 1,000 m, which on paper could defeat the armour of almost every German armoured fighting vehicle at any likely range. However, war production APDS rounds lacked accuracy, and the 50 mm penetrator was less destructive after it had penetrated enemy tank armour than the 76.2 mm APCBC shell. APDS ammunition was rare until the post war period. While the Sherman Firefly was capable of carrying 77 rounds of ammunition, design features of the tank meant only 23 rounds were easily and readily available when the tank was in action. Though the 17 pounder had superior anti tank capabilities, it lacked an effective HE round and was thus inferior to the standard Sherman 75 mm gun against soft targets, such as infantry, buildings and lightly armoured vehicles. As the war in Europe neared its close, the Allies found themselves encountering these more often than heavy German tanks. Allied tank units therefore typically refused to completely switch to Fireflies. A good HE shell for the gun only became available in late 1944 and even then was not as potent as the standard Sherman 75 mm HE shell.

Three different variants of Sherman Firefly served during the Second World War, each based on a different variant of the M4 Sherman. The Firefly conversion was carried out on Sherman I (M4), Sherman I Hybrid (M4 Composite) and Sherman V (M4A4) tanks. Some sources state that several Sherman IIs (M4A1) were converted and used in action, but photos allegedly showing these conversions are in fact views of the front half of Sherman I Hybrid Fireflies. To complicate matters, a very small number of Canadian license built Sherman IIs (M4A1), the Grizzly, were converted to Fireflies in Canada and used for training, but none saw action. The majority of Shermans converted were the Sherman V/M4A4 model, of which the British received about 7,200. The Sherman VC and IC variants are easily distinguished by their lower hulls; the VC having a lengthened hull, and larger gaps between the suspension units. They employed the three piece bolted transmission housing. The Sherman IC usually had a cast transmission housing. The Hybrid can be distinguished by its upper hull, which is cast and gives it a distinctive curved look in comparison to the more boxy hull of a typical Sherman. Production of the Firefly started in January 1944 and, by 31 May, some 342 Sherman Fireflies had been delivered to the 21st Army Group for the D Day landings. In late 1944, with the creation of an effective high explosive shell for the 17 pounder gun, British units started to receive two Fireflies per troop. Sherman Firefly gives a number of 2,002 conversions made between January 1944 and February 1945

Fireflies were introduced to armoured brigades and divisions in the 21st Army Group in 1944, just in time for the Normandy landings. The timing was fortunate as Allied intelligence had begun to realize in early 1944 through statistical analysis that the Germans were fielding a much larger number of more formidable tanks (such as the Panther) than had been anticipated. This information was slow to reach Allied military planners, who had mistakenly assumed the Panther, like the Tiger, would be a rare heavy tank with a limited production run, so the number of Panthers deployed came as a surprise to Allied formation commanders and tank crews forced to engage them with guns that could not penetrate the frontal armor except at short range. Panthers and Tigers accounted for only about 126 of the 2,300 German tanks deployed in Normandy; the rest being Panzer IVs, Sturmgeschütz III tank destroyers and other armoured vehicles that the 75 mm Shermans could penetrate. The importance of Caen and Montgomery's operations, which pinned German armoured forces in front of the British positions so the American units could break out to the west, meant that British and other Commonwealth units had to face over 70 percent of the German armour deployed during the Battle of Normandy, as well as over half of the elite, well equipped Waffen SS Panzer units. As a result, the Sherman Firefly was perhaps the most valued tank by British and other Commonwealth commanders, as it was the only tank in the British Army able to reliably penetrate the frontal armour of Panthers and Tigers at the standard combat ranges in Normandy.

A similar event occurred on 14 June, during Operation Perch. Sgt. Harris of the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards, along with three standard Shermans, set up defensive positions along with the infantry after capturing the village of Lingèvres, near Tilly sur Seulles, France. Looking through his binoculars, Sgt. Harris spotted two Panthers advancing from the east. He opened fire at a range of , knocking out the lead Panther with his first shot, and the other with his second. Relocating to a well concealed flanking position on the other side of the town, he spotted another three Panthers approaching from the west. He and his gunner, Trooper Mackillop, knocked them out with three rounds. The tanks of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry reached the French village of Saint Aignan de Cramesnil on the morning of 8 August 1944. While B Squadron stayed around the village, A and C Squadrons moved further south into a wood called Delle de la Roque. With the Tigers in range a 12 minute exchange of fire commenced that saw Ekins destroy all three Tigers that No. 3 Troop could see. Due to increase in regional conflicts, the Fireflies were up graded to the "Sherman Repotenciado" standard, which included a new gun (derived from the French CN 105 57) and a new engine (the French diesel Poyaud 520/V8 S2); the first units were incorporated in January 1978.

In 1971, the Argentine Army transferred to the Paraguayan Army three upgraded Fireflies; these were exchanged in 1988 for three "Sherman Repotenciados" recently decommissioned.

In 1949, the Lebanese Army purchased 16 Firefly Mk Vc tanks from Italy as scrap. These tanks first saw action during the 1958 Lebanon crisis, being subsquently retired from frontline service and replaced by M41A3 Walker Bulldog light tanks provided by the United States. The Lebanese Shermans remained in reserve storage until 1976, when two of them were seized by the Al Mourabitoun militia and the remaining 14 taken by the Lebanese Arab Army (LAA), being employed by these two factions in the Lebanese Civil War. All the vehicles were returned to Lebanese Army ownership in 1977 78, when they were finally decommissioned.

Argentine Army purchased over 200 in 1947, in service until the mid 1970s. The Lebanese Army received 16 Firefly tanks sold by Italy as scrap in 1949, in service until the mid 1970s. Two of them were passed on to the Al Mourabitoun militia and 14 to the Lebanese Arab Army in 1976. Received 3 donated by Argentina in 1971.

The Tank Museum at Bovington in the United Kingdom has a Sherman Vc.