Hopefully some of you can help. I remember reading about a M3 Stuart or a Greyhound armored car that took out a KT during or around the Battle of the Bulge. The Allied tank blundered out of cover right behind the Tiger and fired point blank. Did they disable, destroy the tank or just scare the crew out of the tank?

Remembering from an old (and I mean OLD) issue of AFV-G2, the M8 pumped several rounds into the arse end of the Tiger & set the engine on fire. Got away scott free, too.

How sure are we that it was a Tiger?

Reagrdless of the type German tank he engaged, I feel we can be sure of two things. One, that was the luckiest tank crew in the entire universe that day. And, second, that after thinking about what they did, they never (never) tried it again.
DJ

I could see this happeneing. With that super long tube on a KT it couldn't turn turret because of trees. Giving the guys in the M8 or Stuart time to pump a few into the tail. Of course this sounds like somethng out of that old comic book about the haunted tank that routinely blew up tigers

There is such an event that did occur. A SGT. Joe Side was the gunner on an M8. The enemy vehicle was one of two Panthers. The Panther got the first shot off disabling the M8. Unable to move and as a parting farewell shot, SGT Side fired the little 37mm which found its mark down the tube of the Panther setting off its ammo and killing he crew. The now burning Panther continued to creep forward and eventually ran over the knocked out M8 and set it afire as well. A bazooka team manuevered on the second Panther and disabled it. Me and two buddies built a diorma and presented it to surviving members of Joe Sides unit, the predecessor to the 3d ACR. We had to take some artistic license with the diorama due to scale distance etc, but as soon as they saw it, they recognized the event and were very moved by it. I can get the particulars from my friend who is the curator for the 3d ACR Museum if youd like and post them here. Dates, units etc.. "Q"

It reminds me of RAF Squadron Leader Robert Stanford Tuck, who managed to destroy a 20mm FLAK 38 gun with a single 20mm cannon shot down the enemy barrel. Unfortunately, at the same time one of the German shells struck the nose of his Spitfire and he had to crash land, spending the rest of the war as a POW.

Matt that would be great if you felt so inclined... I love a good yarn, especially David Vs. Goliath

Sorry, but I am calling shenanigans. The odds of a 37mm round going straight down the gun tube of a Panther would have to be astronomical, to say the least. Was the Panther's breach open, allowing the miracle 37mm round to enter the crew compartment or did it cook off a 75mm round in in the tube? Call me cynical but that has to be like hitting a needle with a needle. I know all about the "infinite number of monkeys" and the "golden BB" and all of that but I ain't buying it. Perhaps the Panther had some other catastophic failure in the crew compartment that cooked off the ammo and everyone assumed a round went down the tube because they couldn't find any other external evidence of damage?

Shaun

/Yeah, I am at work and have had too much coffee

At this time of year ever Heard of Miracle on 34th street.

Well this is miracle of 37 MM

Yep to much crown last night and now to much coffee and not at work Thank God

Kentucky windage maybe.

>> The odds of a 37mm round going straight down the gun tube of a Panther would
>> have to be astronomical

Would they really?

Seventy-five minus thirty-seven is thirty-eight. So the smaller shell will fit into the larger barrel provided that it falls into a circle of width thirty-eight millimeters.

The area of that circle is about one-thousandth of a square meter.

The statistical distribution of shots when an Allied gunner fires at a Panther is unknown to me. But let's be conservative and say the hits are evenly distributed in an area of 10 square meters.

Then, the odds of going in to the barrel are one in ten thousand.

Now, we need to ask how often the Panther is aiming directly at the Allied gunner. Let's say one in 20.

So, the 'astronomical' event is expected to occur if Allied gunners fired 37mm shells at Panthers 200,000 times.

David

//Way off topic content follows

Jeff,
Actually rooting for the Sooners today. Don't tell my mom 'cause she is from Nebraska. If the Sooners win there is a chance Ohio State win play in the championship game. I went to Purdue but you have to root for the Big Ten, right?

Shaun

Dave,
Essentially all you are saying is the a 37mm round could hit a 38mm circle once every 20k tries.
Keep in mind that (I am discounting the Panther's muzzle brake here) that the orientations of the two gun tubes would have to match exactly including the elevations. The Panther's degree of depression would have to match the Greyhound's degree of elevation.

The 37mm round is 49% as big as the 75mm gun tube.
A .22 caliber bullet is 49% as big as the bore on a .45 caliber pistol. How many times do you think a guy shooting a .22 at a guy shooting a .45 is going to put one down the barrel of the .45?

Not 1 in 20k tries.

Shaun

/Not being argumentative, just sayin'

truth is stranger than fiction......

Chris

While I worked for the museum I saw and read a lor of "Wierder than life" accounts of things that happened. Read all of general Pattons memoirs from when he commanded the regiment. Lots of really cool stuff to say the least. I read the account myself, and have seen the pics so I'll get the documentation from Scott....to include pics. "Q"

ps. When we built this diorama, we had photos to go from for reference. They showed the gun tube of the Panther splayed open and its muzzle break missing. If that doesn't say "I got hit in the mouth" then I don't know what does. I got the email sent to my friend at the museum. Should have a response next week some time.

>> Keep in mind that that the orientations of the two gun tubes would have to match exactly

Not true; the shells would follow a slightly curved path due to gravity. The two guns would have to be aimed at each other with the correct elevation for the range. But if both gunners had sighted each other and lined up a shot, this is exactly what you would get.

So, we need the odds that, when you were firing at a Panther, the Panther was about to fire at you. Maybe my "1 in 20" was too high? What would you put here?



>> A .22 caliber bullet is 49% as big as the bore on a .45 caliber pistol. How many times
>> do you think a guy shooting a .22 at a guy shooting a .45 is going to put one down the
>> barrel of the .45?

It doesn't matter what I think. You get the answer by doing the math.

David

Shaun: I've read two accounts of rounds going through tank gun barrels. One was Belton Cooper's account of a KOd Sherman that was brought in. There was no penetration anywhere on the hull or turret. The only apparent damage was a bulge (obviously from some internal explosion) halfway down the 75mm gun tube. The turret crew was killed when a "one in a million" shot came down through the length of the tube just at the time when the breech was open (loader about to load another shell). The German round exploded killing the three, the two drivers abandoned the tank. Cooper's unit gutted the turret and replaced the gun salvaged from another KOd tank.

Dmitry Loza recounts how a tanker was hit by shrapnel during an air attack. Everyone had buttoned up but one unlucky Russian was hit in his side and bled to death. No one could figure out how the injury was sustained until they discovered fragments from a 20mm shell that had gone down the Sherman gun barrel too.

And one doesn't have to go too far to see tanks disabled when their gun tube or muzzle was hit by enemy fire -- these much more common than shots through the tube for sure -- but the did happen apparently.

I give.

Shaun

/Going to buy some lottery tickets
//While waiting to get struck by lightning

Having heard a Pz VIIB at Samaur even above the noise of the Ford V6 of their Greyhound there is no way they'd just blunder upto one, the noise and the clatter without the fumes alone would be a give away.

The engine in the M8 series is an inline 6, and is very quite. I was given a driving lesson in a M20, and we could talk with out yelling even when the engine was revved up to shift. In the story I read years ago the M8 was hiding out and the Tiger crossed in front of them. They were able to drive behind it and fired point blank into the rear. It could very well have been a PZIV given that there were very few Tiger I's in the Bulge.

In the 2nd AD history there is an account where a light tank company was ordered to charge a defensive position build around a Tiger. They charged and the survivors crashed into the defenses and destroyed the tank with point blank rear shots. I would have to guess that every gun the 2nd AD had was shooting them in.

A bit off topic here, but when I was 17 years old, I once went to the driving range with my father. We were hitting golf balls side-by-side for a brief time and then all of a sudden, a ball from each of us hit in mid-air about 100 yards out. My father laughed and said, "You'll never see that again!

As I was not an avid golfer, I sure didn't. Truth is, I never really went to the range that much either. But I didn't have to go there several thousand times before a fluke such as that could occur. I suppose that one could say that it's natural that two balls would collide in mid-air eventually, but from a father and son in adjacent tee-off stations? Perhaps that's astronomical, don't know.

American Civil War bullets smashed nose-to-nose to each other have been occasionally retrieved as well.

I don't have anything to add WRT the validity of either story, but I feel my first armor dio come on

>> I didn't have to go there several thousand times before a fluke such as that could occur.

And why would you expect to go several thousand times? Because the odds of golf balls colliding are several thousand to one against?

They probably are. But we didn't decide IN ADVANCE to look for colliding golf balls.

If you had collided two darts, or two bullets, or anything else in that vein, I'm sure you would be telling us about it now. So perhaps we should ask, what are the odds that you ever saw two small things colliding? Those are surely better odds.

And why should it be you? We didn't pick you in advance. So perhaps we should ask, what are the odds that anybody reading this thread ever saw two small things colliding. Those are even better odds!

You can't figure the odds of something unless you know what it is beforehand.

Well, maybe, but the odds of a 20mm shell going down a 20mm barrel are even more astronomical (at least a 37mm projectile has a small diameter than 75mm) but it did happen, as Robert Stanford Tuck and his German captors recounted countless times...

I also remember reading an account of an M8 destroying a Panther during the Battle of the Bulge. Spent hours going thru my references and of course no luck so far. Seem to remember a point blank shot deflecting off the mantlet down into crew compartment tho, not thru barrel. Is that possible, I wonder?