Fury (Post-release)

Re: Fury

After being part of a tank unit for 8 years, I am freakin' jazzed to see this movie! Gotta dig out my CVC jacket to wear to the theater that night

Re: Fury

Holster's kinda tricky, it was custom made for the film.

Re: Fury

Hope this movie turns out good.. its definitely a story that should be told!

I'm a little skeptical because of the cast.. nothing against them personally but I always feel that seeing big name actors in war movies can sometimes take away from the authenticity considering most soldiers were in their late teens or early 20's when they fought in ww2.

Re: Fury

Really looking forward to this movie coming out!

Re: Fury

Riceball said:

Look friggin awesome! It's nice to finally a see a WWII movie done from an American tankers perspective and that last scene where they square off against a Tiger looks really cool although I'd hate to be the crew of the Fury since even though the Fury looks to be an upgunned Sherman the Tiger still has the advantage in armor.

Speaking of the Fury and its gun, anyone know what model of Sherman that is? I was thinking maybe a Firefly or some other model with the 76mm gun on it but I don't recall the 76s having a muzzle brake on the end.

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I think the "Easy-8" variant had a high-velocity 76mm gun with a muzzle break. Just from the trailers, that's what I figured they were driving.

Riceball said:

Yup, the Firefly, it gave Shermans a fighting chance against Tigers although the Sherman's armor was still paper thin compared to the Tiger's, but then again, anything less than another heavy tank had paper thin armor compared to a Tiger.

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At the strategic/operational level, the Sherman was superior (and I'd argue was only outclassed during the course of the war by the T-34 and its variants). At the tactical level, yeah, one-on-one engagements were extremely lopsided in favor of the Tiger, particularly against Shermans with the 75mm gun. But over time, especially with the Allied air campaign, the Tigers would break down and -- with their factories having been bombed to rubble -- no replacement parts were forthcoming. The Germans had individually superior tanks for much of the war, but their problem was that they couldn't match the allies for production.

Not that any of this makes a difference to the crew in a tin-can facing off against one of these beasts. You'd have to flank a Tiger and get in close enough to penetrate its armor, or pray for close-air or on-target artillery support.


What I've always kind of hoped for is actually a "Band of Brothers" style miniseries featuring the British in North Africa. Man, talk about an uphill battle...

Re: Fury

Solo4114 said:

At the strategic/operational level, the Sherman was superior (and I'd argue was only outclassed during the course of the war by the T-34 and its variants). At the tactical level, yeah, one-on-one engagements were extremely lopsided in favor of the Tiger, particularly against Shermans with the 75mm gun. But over time, especially with the Allied air campaign, the Tigers would break down and -- with their factories having been bombed to rubble -- no replacement parts were forthcoming. The Germans had individually superior tanks for much of the war, but their problem was that they couldn't match the allies for production.

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Tigers started breaking down right from the get go, they were never known for their reliability. The problem that the German heavy tanks, including the Panther, had were that they were too heavy for their engines and transmissions to handle. Their engines and transmissions were designed for a tank that was much lighter, about at least 10 tons lighter if I'm not mistaken, but by the time they finalized the design of the Tiger it was much heavier than originally planned and they never upgraded the engine or transmission to compensate. Luckily for us they never managed to resolve that issue and as German tanks got heavier and heavier this issue never went away and their heavy and super heavy tanks never got to the reliability level of a Sherman or even their older tanks like the PzKpfw IIIs & IVs.

Re: Fury

Riceball said:

Tigers started breaking down right from the get go, they were never known for their reliability. The problem that the German heavy tanks, including the Panther, had were that they were too heavy for their engines and transmissions to handle. Their engines and transmissions were designed for a tank that was much lighter, about at least 10 tons lighter if I'm not mistaken, but by the time they finalized the design of the Tiger it was much heavier than originally planned and they never upgraded the engine or transmission to compensate. Luckily for us they never managed to resolve that issue and as German tanks got heavier and heavier this issue never went away and their heavy and super heavy tanks never got to the reliability level of a Sherman or even their older tanks like the PzKpfw IIIs & IVs.

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I'd heard that, yeah. I also heard they had serious problems with supplies, and other issues relating to things like tracks breaking down, etc. For the reputation they had as a terror on the battlefield, I gather they were a terror for the German motor pool as well. That and I gather they were pretty slow. Fine for a defensive vehicle, but lousy on the advance. (Although not like, say, the "infantry tanks" that some of the allied armies fielded early in the war.)


On a totally unrelated note, all of this makes me want to go home and play Gary Grigsby's Steel Panthers: World at War...

Great movie. Nothing we haven't seen before in countless other films, but the acting and writing is solid. You feel like you are in the tank, with the crew.

I want to like Fury but man that ending is pure garbage. Almost Die Hard 2 grenades in the plane garbage. Other than the ending it was a decent film. The pacing gets all messed up throughout it though

I was looking forward to seeing this with my Father, who was in the 4th armored, to see what he thought about the accuracy but he passed away in March.

Hi everyone, I have props from this film on my website www.alistmovieprops, have a look!!
I met Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal last year when I was with Brian Blessed at Comic Con London, great guys!!

The wife and I saw this last night. While it had some great and intense scenes, the pacing was iffy and the final battle was idiotic leaving us with a meh feeling walking out. I really wanted to like it but I doubt I would ever re-watch it, at least in its entirety.

Just got back and I have to say... that was one of the best movies I have seen in a very very long time. Was the end a bit over-the-top? Yeah... but still.. incredible movie with some of the best writing I have seen in a very long time. Someone said there was nothing in this that we haven't seen before, but I would disagree. While the general story is nothing new, the way it was presented was excellent. This is one worth seeing!

This was an excellent movie.

Inspired me to dig out my copies of Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima to rewatch for the first time in years.

Saw this yesterday, thought it was great. The only thing I had a problem with was:
And it was also pointed out to me that it would be odd for

I didn't have nearly as much of a problem with the SS trooper peeping under the tank and what happened next (as they guy might have been a kid just conscripted with little training, German was that depserate by then) as I was with the new guy being handed the pistol with the German on his knees (FYI, he's wearing a US raincoat, which is why he was singled out, several friends of mine had no idea why they were picking on him).
I know several people who worked on the film (and I have a crew baseball cap, which looks pretty cool) and while they got the look and the details dead on, I wasn't as impressed with the script or the tactics at the end. Yes, they would have taken on a Tiger with no dismounted infantry (it wasn't doctrine but it happened all the time at the end of WW2) but the tank battles are ridiculously close. A Tiger could take on tanks at extreme ranges, that crew could have smoked all those Shermans from well over a mile away if the gunner any good. The scene of 'Fury' closing with the Tiger reminded me of several scenes in the anime series, "Girls Und Panzer"!
All that said, I did enjoy the film and will be buying it on DVD as soon as it comes out. It just wasn't the 'end all- be all' WW2 movie I'd hoped it'd be...

p51 said:

I didn't have nearly as much of a problem with the SS trooper peeping under the tank and what happened next (as they guy might have been a kid just conscripted with little training, German was that depserate by then) as I was with the new guy being handed the pistol with the German on his knees (FYI, he's wearing a US raincoat, which is why he was singled out, several friends of mine had no idea why they were picking on him).
I know several people who worked on the film (and I have a crew baseball cap, which looks pretty cool) and while they got the look and the details dead on, I wasn't as impressed with the script or the tactics at the end. Yes, they would have taken on a Tiger with no dismounted infantry (it wasn't doctrine but it happened all the time at the end of WW2) but the tank battles are ridiculously close. A Tiger could take on tanks at extreme ranges, that crew could have smoked all those Shermans from well over a mile away if the gunner any good. The scene of 'Fury' closing with the Tiger reminded me of several scenes in the anime series, "Girls Und Panzer"!
All that said, I did enjoy the film and will be buying it on DVD as soon as it comes out. It just wasn't the 'end all- be all' WW2 movie I'd hoped it'd be...

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That's totally true, by the end of the war the SS wasn't what it used to be, where as it was an all volunteer force with strict racial standards and consisting of prior service personnel, by the end of the war they were drafting people into the Wafffen SS and they raised SS regiments in various occupied an allied nations consisting solely of non-Germans. So by the time that Fury took place the SS soldier they showed could have easily been one of the draftees and been more inclined to show mercy than an older member of the SS who was a volunteer. The other thing is that by and large the German Whermacht, SS included, were not as inclined to committing atrocities on the Western Front as they were on the Eastern Front. If that was a Russian tanker then that SS trooper would have almost certainly shot him, even a regular army soldier might have been inclined to shoot if it was a Russian.

As for the tank battle, I haven't seen the movie yet but I suspect it's a result of the usual Hollywood thing of shooting people much closer together than they would be in real life in order to keep everybody in camera without having to go super wide. I think it's one of those necessary evils of cinematography when it comes to filming war movies, they have to keep the action close or else they risk everything looking like ants crawling across the screen. That said, a Tiger most definitely can take a Sherman out from much, much further out than a Sherman can even hope to land a shot on the Tiger much less actually penetrating its heavy armor and killing it. At its max range the best a Sherman can hope for is to maybe damage the Tiger's optics or jam the turret but that's highly optimistic and an absolute best case scenario. There's a reason why on average it took 4 Shermans to kill one Tiger, out of a platoon of 4, the Tiger would kill 3 Shermans by the time the 4th made it close enough to get a shot at the sides or rear of the Tiger, the only place that a Sherman could hope to take out a Tiger and even then only at close range. A Tiger's frontal armor was so thick that the Sherman's low velocity 75mm had no chance of penetrating it at any range, except maybe at point blank.

I doubt I'll ever see a tank movie showing kills from proper ranges. "Courage under fire" started out well for the most part, showing kills well outside of sight. But those fake M1s were bunched way too close together and they mixed up with a bunch of T-55s at almost muzzle-to-muzzle ranges. While that did happen at least once (and prbably several times in WW2), most kills were well beyond 1000 yards.

Riceball said:

If that was a Russian tanker then that SS trooper would have almost certainly shot him, even a regular army soldier might have been inclined to shoot if it was a Russian.

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Oh yeah, no question there.

Riceball said:

That said, a Tiger most definitely can take a Sherman out from much, much further out than a Sherman can even hope to land a shot on the Tiger much less actually penetrating its heavy armor and killing it. At its max range the best a Sherman can hope for is to maybe damage the Tiger's optics or jam the turret but that's highly optimistic and an absolute best case scenario. There's a reason why on average it took 4 Shermans to kill one Tiger, out of a platoon of 4, the Tiger would kill 3 Shermans by the time the 4th made it close enough to get a shot at the sides or rear of the Tiger, the only place that a Sherman could hope to take out a Tiger and even then only at close range. A Tiger's frontal armor was so thick that the Sherman's low velocity 75mm had no chance of penetrating it at any range, except maybe at point blank.

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I like what a German tanker vet told me once, "Yes, our tanks were better than the amis (allied) ones, when they worked, that is. We always told American and British tankers when we got to talk with them (presumably as prisoners or after the surrender in 45) that our tanks were as good as 4 of yours, but the problem was, you always had five of them!"

p51 said:

Oh yeah, no question there.I like what a German tanker vet told me once, "Yes, our tanks were better than the amis (allied) ones, when they worked, that is. We always told American and British tankers when we got to talk with them (presumably as prisoners or after the surrender in 45) that our tanks were as good as 4 of yours, but the problem was, you always had five of them!"

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That was definitely part of the reason why we (the US) continued to field the Sherman for so long, we could crank them out and ship them over like nobody's business. We could send over what, 2 or 3 Shermans for every 1 Pershing? Of course your odds of survival were probably much better in a Pershing than in a Sherman, even though we might have had 5 Shermans to every German panzer it was certainly of little comfort to the crew of 4 of those Shermans.

Didn't help that our aniti-tank guns weren't that great either, or that we put off the development of the 3.5" rocket launcher in favor of a puny 2.75" shaped-charge warhead that was grossly ineffective against most German armor for all of WW2. Many GIs would steal a Brit PIAT if they could get their hands on them...

Yep, this is me, at the trigger of my M1A1 rocket launcher.

Anyone reading this thread has some type of interest in WW2. I strong recommend this book, it's a crushing indictment of the Army in giving a clearly inferior tank to the US Army against superior (yet often unreliable and impractical) German armor: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148 This is IMHO the best book ever written by anyone in Army Ordnance (and I was an Army Ordnance Captain myself, but decades after LT Cooper was).