On the BBC last year, there was a drama-documentary about the Normandy landings, as seen from the viewpoint of several survivors on both sides. Their experiences were re-enacted using (from what I could tell) original vehicles and equipment.

They even got hold of a genuine Panzer for some of the German sequences (courtesy of RAC Tank Museum, Bovington), and as you have mentioned, CGId it to produce a platoon of them. OK, in reality, it should have been a Panzer IV and not a III (with dummy muzzle brake on the gun) but the fact that they had a pukka Panzer driving around made up for the slight detail inaccuracy - besides I don't know of a running PIV in the UK

Out of curiosity, I did an overlay of a Tiger and a T-34 drawn at the same scale. Not a bad fit, but the T-34 is smaller and the turret is much closer to the front...

ok how about we pick on "Full Metal Jacket" which tried to pass M-41 Bulldogs for M-48's

Anyone ever seen 'Battle of the Bulge?' The Germans are equipped entirely with M3 halftracks and M48 Pattons.

Having seen 1/1 mock-ups of a Tiger (on T34 chassis), Stug (on FV432) & Jagdpanther (also on FV432), I have to say that although they wouldn't fool an expert for a second, in a film shot disguised by debris & smoke & at a distance they would look pretty good (as indeed the did in Band of Brothers). One also needs to remember that even the Patton tanks used in BOTB are collectable now, so it's unlikely we'll be seeing films using large numbers of real tanks again. A Bridge Too Far may well be one of thelast of it's type. Having watched Troy & the Lord of the Rings films, it's amazing how convincing CGI can look now, so there is no need any more to mess about with temperamental old vehicles any more.

Aren't they the good old M48s again? They've probably seen more "action" doubling as German panzers than they ever did for real! :-)

BTW most of the action footage for "Raid on Rommel" was ripped straight off from "TobruK". If you look closely, you can see some of the characters from the previous film (including parts played by George Peppard & Nigel Green, who don't even appear in "Raid on Rommel")!!!

And France surrendered 20 minutes later.

No they were M-47 Pattons. 48's have round turrets. Funny thing the size ratio btwn the 47's and the Chaffes is close to the size difference btwn a KT and a Sherman. This flic was done in mid 60's so you really have to admire the attempt. Bsides where else do you get to see so any real tanks manuvering all over a field. My contention for the film is the historical accuracy which is incredibly bad.

And in The Big Red One, the IDF shermans played Tigers and panzers...

btw, I think there's a possibility that the fake Tiger used in Kelly's Heroes is the one in Saving Pvt Ryan- Kelly was filmed in what was then Yugoslavia, and after kelly was filmed, the tank was unaccounted for (now, whether it was broken up or moved to the states, I don't know)

cheers,
Tvrtko

If you really want a movie with tanks, you should watch the old ones done by the Soviet film corporation. I think they were named after particular battles ('Stalingrad', 'Kursk', etc) and have literally hundreds of tanks swarming around and blasting away.

I never even paid attention. Next time I watch Kelley's Heroes, I will look closely. I love the movies that try and pass off American Tanks for German ones.

Later,

JOHN

Better question. What unit were the Tigers representing. The key on the turret rear looks sorta llke the LAH emblem. The tankers all had the SS collar badges.

But in the scene where they are sneaking into town and the BAR gunner kills the sentry with a knife the plates on the truck say WH.

I'd like to know as I'd like to have a go at the Sherman and Tiger in the alley scene. 1/35 seems big so I might try it in 1/48, got a Skybow Late set aside and am waiting for enough Shermans and AM to do Oddball's.

FWIW the camo on the Tigers is wrong, too. Olive grun over grey, but it does have Zimmerit. IMO the Tigers work from most angles, it's when peope are standing next to it that you lose the sense of massiveness you expect, the T-34 were short little buggers.

Frank

What about the tiger in Saving Private Ryan - it to is a T-34.

Band of brothers - the german armor is showns for such a short time - but they look really close to the real thing - does anyone have any info on them?

Here's a write up from this site about the SPR Tigers:
http://www.sproe.com/t/tiger-tank.html


The two Tiger tanks featured in Saving Private Ryan are reproductions built on the chassis of Russian T-34 tanks. Operational Tiger I's are extremely rare, and could not have been used for rigorous film production, let alone a movie in which the plot requires one of them to be destroyed.

The T-34 was chosen because of its overall size and barrel height. The reproductions were based on measurements taken of a Tiger I at the Tank Museum in Bovington, England, and were constructed by Plus Film Services. The upper hull and turret were sized to proportionally match the chassis of the T-34. Band of Brothers, the HBO mini-series produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, used a similar construction process to recreate Tiger I tanks out of readily available T-34s.

The most obvious visual difference between a real Tiger I and the reproductions are the tracks, which do not feature the Tiger I's overlapping wheel design. Although the front of the tank features the appropriate machine gun and driver's viewport, these two features are a source of great controversy.

The small machine gun of a Tiger I was normally manned by the tank's radio operator, but the gun is fired only briefly during the Battle of Ramelle—blink and you'll miss it (screen capture 1 | screen capture 2). The machine gun on the second Tiger can be seen to move slightly just before it is destroyed. It is possible that both tanks had limited ammo for their machine guns, or that one was out of ammo and the other damaged, or that both tanks had injured radio operators. An operational machine gun on just one of the tanks could have made for some dramatic moments. As it is, the limited machine gun fire in the film is so brief as to be non-existant (and one wonders if it was a post-production CGI effect).

The driver's viewport on a Tiger I featured 6 layers of armored glass, as well as another sheet just behind them. These systems would have prevented Captain Miller from simply sticking his submachine gun up to the port and spraying the inside of the driver's compartment with bullets. Curiously, just a fraction of a second before the second Tiger is destroyed by a P-51, the driver's viewport is shown as having been replaced with a flat, unconvincing piece of material with what looks to be the driver's port painted on! This can only be seen for a few frames (see screenshot number , and is more than likely the result of whatever work was done to rig the tank for an explosion.

Another inaccuracy is the fact that the paratroopers easily open the tank commander's hatch, which would have been locked from the inside in order to prevent the enemy from using such an easy way to kill a tank crew. There is some criticism that the tank commanders are seen with their hatches open, thus exposing themselves to enemy fire, but this is actually a common way in which a tank commander would operate his vehicle, as it afforded him the best view of the battlefield. Obviously a tank commander had to use caution as to when and where he could safely open the hatch.

Both Tiger tanks feature the insignia of the I SS Panzer Corps, a unit that would not have been near the Merderet River on June 13th, 1944.

Because of the limited number that had been constructed, and the disposition of German forces on June 13, 1944, the date of the Battle of Ramelle, it is highly unlikely that any Tiger I tanks would have been in or around Ramelle at that time. The use of the Tiger I in Saving Private Ryan has much more to do with its reputation and popularity than historical accuracy.

The two Tiger I replicas from Saving Private Ryan were stored at The Tank Museum in Bovington, England for a time, but they have apparently been sold and removed from the museum. It looks like one of the tanks may have found its way to the United States, as one was reportedly used for a reenactment of the Battle of Carentan in Monterey, California by the World War II Research and Preservation Society. An article on the reenactment indicates that the Tiger tank is owned by Joe Fazio of San Francisco.

they should have used a T55 instead of a T34 for the base of the Saving Private Ryan Tiger. It looks really good, but I've always thought it looked like bobble head doll, because the turret looks to big and it forward instead of in the middle.

There is I believe only one Tiger I in running condition in the world. Anyone who complains they don't use real Tigers in movies when 99.999999999% of the audience doesn't know the difference or care anyway should get a grip.

Movie producers use what is available and what is affordable. There are practical limits after all.

The running gear on the Kelly's Heroes Tiger was a dead giveaway for me. Although I assumed they'd put together something from what they had available, which would have been quite respectable!

The other laughable substitution in movies I could think of is in "The Big Red One" That and the seemingly endless magazines the M1 Garand has!! haha

This is an old thread.
I've read somewhere that when the producers and director of Kelly's Heroes tried to use unmodified T-34/85's as faux "Tigers", Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland kicked up a fuss.
Apparently both actors are avid history buffs and they felt that using what is so so obviously a Soviet tank in the role of such a famous German vehicle was not acceptable.
If you look at the "Tigers" used in the movie, the details have obviously been copied from an early production Tiger, probably Tiger "131", the Bovington museum vehicle that was captured in Tunisia, North Africa.
And the 3 Shermans used in the movie are late model M4A3's originally built with 75mm guns but were later upgunned with 76mm guns and given to some countrys as part as of the U.S.'s Military Defence Aid Program.
I believe the movie was filmed in Yugoslavia hence the availability of T-34's and Shermans.
It would be great if they could someday film a movie using runners like Tiger "131" or the Henschel turreted Tiger II at the Saumur museum in France.
One can only wish!!
Cheers

jjumbo

I can understand old war movies painting US tanks and half-tracks grey and pretending they're German. At the time, the genuine damaged rusting (historically valuable and irreplacable!) items were being cut up for scrap! Most viewers won't know or care about the M47s in Battle of the Bulge or M51s in The Big Red One. But in an age before CGI, where else could a movie director find platoons of real life running tanks? A quick cheer for Sam Peckinpah and Cross of Iron. Maybe they were post-war models but I remember recommending the movie to some friends and adding "They used real T34's!". What the heck! is a T34?.

Full credit as well to movies that try to make real vehicles look like Tigers or Stugs. Of course, us armour fans love it but I also think today's more sophisticated audiences kinda know that's something unusual on screen - they won't count bogies or notice interleaved suspension, but it looks a bit like the big, angular, slab-sided tanks on the History channel.

I think now the technology exists to go one better and recreate the real thing with a combination of life-size mock-ups, models and CGI. Imagine what they could do with a dozen 1/6 scale r/c Tigers (I'm thinking of how impressive the Marine assualt vehicle in Aliens was!) or a computer generated fly-over as tank armies close at Kursk (absolutely nothing like Pearl Harbour ). Just please please please don't cast Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck? you mean Mr Wooden?

CGI would easily be able to portray ANY piece of armour ever used anywhere.

There is no need to use any real tank anymore for combat sequences. If you want to see people acting around a single one, yes, then the real deal could be used.

I believe Enemy at the Gates showed a good gathering of Pz IIIs in CGI.

If one looks at what can be pulled off today (Transformers anyone) I highly doubt it to be impossible to portray extremely convincing armour in a WW-2 movie.

And those can be blown up more convincingly than the one in SPR.

And sadly so often they dont care about the truth either.

I seem to remember at one point that kelly's heroes was filmed in Yugoslavia. I could be wrong...

Often they don't and yes it was - but you don't necessarily have to film at the actual historical location to pull off a location setting convincingly. I have no issues with the filming location of KH at all (major issue with the Harvard trainer pretending to be a Hawker Typhoon though!)