Sherman Firefly vs Tiger

Introduction

The German Tiger heavy tank is today the most famous tank of World War II, if not one of the most famous tanks in history. Introduced in mid-1942, the Tiger featured extremely thick armour, providing it with what was at that time a formidable level of battlefield survivability. The Tiger also mounted a powerful long-barrelled 88mm gun that could at normal combat ranges defeat virtually every enemy tank then in existence. Germany's Tiger tanks dominated the battlefields of Europe for at least the next two years, striking fear into those Allied crews unfortunate enough to encounter them on the battlefield; many such crews did not survive these invariably brief and bloody actions. Although few in quantity, the relatively small numbers of Tigers available allowed the German forces to slow down the rising tide of Allied battlefield success for longer than they would have been able to otherwise.

By late summer 1944, however, the mighty Tiger was nearing its swansong. This period was the last time that the famous Tiger spearheaded Germany's defensive battles in any significant numbers. In August 1944, Tiger production ended in favour of the even more formidable King Tiger, which featured better-sloped armour and an even more powerful, longer-barrelled 88mm gun. With Tiger production halted, the inevitable attrition of combat meant that the Germans could only deploy the Tiger in decreasing numbers. This attritional process was speeded up that summer by the arrival on the battlefield of a new generation of potent Allied tanks that could, for the first time in the war, take on the Tiger and win. For this very task, the British had developed the Firefly, an up-gunned variant of the standard American-designed M4 Sherman medium tank. Instead of the 75mm gun of the standard Sherman, however, the Firefly mounted a potent 17-pounder gun that made it a deadly opponent for even the heavily armoured Tiger at normal combat ranges. Outperforming the 88mm L/56 gun of the Tiger, the theoretical penetrative power of the Firefly's 17-pounder only came close to being matched by the 88 L/71 gun mounted by the King Tiger, which was then only just coming into service.

This struggle for armoured supremacy between the Firefly tanks deployed on the one side by the British, Canadian and Polish armies, and on the other by Germany's Tiger tanks, was demonstrated most obviously during the summer 1944 battle for Normandy. During the two months of bitter combat that followed the Allied D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, the Allies painfully fought their way slowly inland in the face of fierce German resistance. Continued Allied offensive determination, however, gradually began to bear fruit during early August, as Germany's defensive resilience finally began to crumble. Indeed, by 8 August 1944, the fate of the entire German front in Normandy hung in the balance after powerful Allied offensives had torn it open in several places.

It was at one of these breaches, south of Caen, on the early afternoon of 8 August 1944, that the famous German Panzer ace SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Michael Wittmann led his troop of four Tigers in a desperate charge north towards the Allied lines. Awaiting this scratch force was a mass of Allied armour, which included a number of Fireflies. Advancing north, Wittmann's Tigers blundered into a classic tank ambush. In the course of this brief, bloody engagement, the fire of just one Firefly accounted for three of Wittmann's Tigers. As Wittmann's tank exploded after being hit, the famed German Panzer ace, who had proved such a scourge to the Allies in Normandy, met the warrior's death that befitted his military career. This combat episode provides bountiful testimony to the awesome killing power of the Sherman Firefly, the Tiger tank destroyer extraordinaire.