Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Rugged, deadly and produced on a massive scale.

The medium tank M4 Sherman, is one of the most

famous tanks ever built.

It's innovations have inspired the fighting

machines of today, but it's flaws were fatal.

Shot at, set on fire, and left to die.

This Sherman tank is about to be brought back to life.

(electronic music)

On a tiny island in the south of England,

there's a team of guys who fix tanks.

They're leader is Dave Arnold.

- I am the managing director of the Isle of Wight

Military History Museum, that's who I am.

- [Narrator] Over the past 12 years Dave Arnold

and his crew, have restored more than 36 tanks.

Dave Barnes has been with the museum since the beginning.

- Well it's we don't really think of it like work work,

you know, we just get on with it.

It is an amazing experience, brilliant, really good.

- [Narrator] For their next job,

they're going to try something

no one else has done before.

They're going to take two destroyed Sherman tanks,

cut them in half, and weld the two halves

together, to make one good tank.

- This one we're gonna cut in the same place.

We're gonna cut it down through there, or approximately,

we're gonna cut round the bottom

of the sponson plate underneath,

and we're gonna separate the casting from the front,

at the front sections,

and then lift the whole front section off.

To be replaced with a new one.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

- [Narrator] The American medium tank M4 Sherman,

34 tons of steel.

Armed with a 75 millimeter cannon,

and three Browning machine guns.

The most widely used tank of World War II.

- The reason we want to do a Sherman is that it is the,

the tank of the second World War.

They built 43,000 Sherman tanks in three years.

So, if you're a museum, and you haven't got a Sherman tank,

then you haven't really got a very good collection.

- [Narrator] But today, finding one that hasn't

been blown to pieces, is next to impossible.

- So if you wanna build one, you've gotta start

with rubbish, and try and build something decent out of it.

- [Narrator] They've been hit with high explosives.

And set on fire.

- We believe that it was damaged by infantry held

rockets, anti-tank rockets.

We think it's probably LAW 80 rockets, infantry practice.

That's why they have so many holes in them.

One was hit on the front right quarter,

and one was hit on the rear left quarter.

- [Narrator] Together, there may be enough original parts,

to make one good tank.

- So everything that's wrecked from this one,

is good on that one, and everything that's wrecked

on that one, is good on this one.

Fantastic.

- [Narrator] All they have to do is cut them in half,

and put them together.

- [Dave] As far as we know, no one's ever done it.

(music and banging)

- [Narrator] First the hulls have to be stripped

down to the bare metal.

- [Dave A] All right come on boys,

let's do something useful.

Let's do something incredibly useful.

- [Narrator] Everything has to be scraped off,

pulled apart,

or cut away.

Dave Barnes does most of the heavy stripping.

- There are a lot of dirty jobs,

but that's what it's all about.

- [Narrator] Dave is only 21 years old,

but he's been working on tanks most of his life.

- Well, Dave being my Uncle and that.

He's had tanks since I was a very small boy,

about six or seven, and I've slowly grown up with it.

And then I come over on the holidays,

and been here ever since.

- [Narrator] As young Dave strips out the interior,

Dave Arnold cuts away at the destroyed armor plate.

- This is a brand new, thicky, warmy winter suit.

Because you pain in the ass camera people

keep me outside in the cold all the time.

The rounds that have hit the front

have obviously smashed through the sponson plate as well

and there's a crack running along the chimney

right along though the sponson plate.

So we're gonna cut the sponson along the original welds

right to the back of the tank, right back round

and we're gonna put a brand new plate

right in the whole thing then.

(crackling)

- [Dave A] It's all got dark.

- [Narrator] The parts that can be salvaged

will be broken down and rebuilt.

(traffic whooshing)

- [Dave A] All this suspension has been smashed to bits

by the incoming rounds,

in fact there's still some rounds stuck in it.

So all this suspension on this side

is all going to come off

and be replaced with much better suspension

that we managed to acquire off of the donor vehicle.

- [Narrator] Everything is seized with rust.

Removing the parts without breaking them is difficult.

- We resort to using the cutting torch and that

and we can take the heads off and try and punch them through

and that's never easy 'cause the rust ends up swelling

up in the hole and seizing it up.

(drill clatters)

- The plan is to remove the turret ring,

take the lot out and then the whole thing

will be ready for sand blastin'

prior to us welding the new front back in.

- [Narrator] The turret ring is going to be

a key component of the rebuild.

It's a precision engineer track

that guides the six tonne electric turret.

They're going to use it to fit the two tanks together.

So the crew needs to be careful not to break it.

Bob Darwood is a vehicle electrics expert

with an eye for detail.

- Bob is my old friend going back about 14 years.

We met on the trip to Germany

when we went there and restored a Comet tank together

for the German Tank Museum.

And I can't get rid of him either, much as I try.

- [Narrator] Bob is also the museums historian.

He catalogs the parts and records the data plates

and serial numbers of each tank in the collection.

- I'm tryin' to build up a library at the moment,

and that'll be a reference center

so we'll have reference material for vehicles etcetera,

'cause the general military history,

I've been collectin' military history books

and that sort of thing as long as I can remember basically.

(whoosh)

- [Narrator] During the war,

the Sherman went through nine different model designs

and over 100 variations were built.

In order for these two Shermans to fit together,

Bob had to be sure their model numbers were a match.

- This tank is an M4 A1 Sherman.

This was designed to fight Panzer II and Panzer III

and it would do it well.

(aircraft engines roar)

- [Narrator] Model M4 A1

was the first Sherman to see combat.

It was also the main allied tank

to lead the D-Day landings at Normandy

and it led the allied ground forces

in the liberation of western Europe.

As Bob and Dave work to remove the turret ring,

Dave Barnes prepares for sand blasting.

- David is busy stripping the back of the Sherman,

'cause that's gotta be stripped out

before we can sandblast it.

And so we hope we'll be sand blasting this afternoon.

(truck rumbles)

- [Narrator] The turret ring is ready to come out.

(welding tool crackles)

Supports are welded to keep the hull in place for cutting.

It's time to bring on the heavy equipment.

A 28 tonne crane.

- We need the crane to support the two castings

that I'm gonna cut off the front of the Sherman.

Should be fun, should be nice and smooth and safe

and easy.

- [Narrator] The two hulls have been stripped,

support welded and the turret ring safely removed.

Now the stage is set to cut these Shermans in half.

(tool crackles)

(fractured electronic music)

At the Isle Of Wight Military History Museum,

Dave Arnold and his crew are about to take on

some heavy lifting.

They're going to try to chop two 34 tonne Sherman tanks

in half, both tanks are to be cut along the center point

below the six tonne turret.

The cut has to be precise

so that the two halves will fit together.

- We're gonna cut it approximately there

and on the other side the same,

and we're gonna take this whole front cast section off,

and we're gonna replace the broken bit on the far one

with that new section.

- [Narrator] The cut section will replace

the damaged front on the second tank.

The armor is cast steel,

an inch and a quarter thick.

- It's composite construction,

which means that it actually uses casting technology

which is the top section,

but the bottom section of the hull, the floor,

the sides and the sponson is all fabricated

out of plate armor.

So this is all just flat plate welded together.

And then with the casting just welded to it.

Pass the torch round Dave.

Yeah I'm doin' it right now.

Stuff here and cut this bit

and then I'll hang over the side.

Got the big cutting torch ready,

slice down through, when we get to the bottom though,

where the nickel weld is,

we have to cut that through with a plasma cutter.

Because the ox here certainly won't

cut through the nickel well.

Shall I do it now?

Come on please, give us a couple.

(crackling)

- [Narrator] The cut is a one shot deal.

It requires skill and a steady hand.

Dave is a professional welder and the cut is perfect.

- I was actually impressed by it to be perfect honest,

'cause it was a very nice, straight cut.

- [Narrator] The damaged front end

is hauled away to the scrap yard.

Now the trick is to complete the cut on the second tank

along the exact same line,

otherwise the two halves will not fit together.

- This one we're gonna cut in the same place,

we're gonna cut it down through there.

- [Narrator] With the second cut,

there is no margin for error.

(cutting tool hisses)

Step one is complete.

- [Dave A] Up up and away.

A needle pulling thread.

- I love it.

They're just little toys in David's toy shop.

Don't try this at home viewers.

(chuckling)

Stick to restoring your cars.

- [Narrator] With the cutting complete,

it's time to take a break and celebrate a birthday.

- [Dave A] So what's it like to be 65 then Ginge?

- Recycled teenager with an attitude.

- Today Ginge is 65.

We're gonna hit him with a shovel and bury him.

'Cause I deeply believe in euthenasia.

- [Narrator] Ginge is a retired British Army tank driver.

- Ginge came to me completely by accident.

When we first started building the museum,

he walked in the door one day

and said, "I understand you're building a museum,

"can I help?"

And he's been here ever since, that was seven years ago.

- Ah, happy birthday Ginge.

- We're just gonna go down to a three day week now,

but what I can't figure out

is how he's gonna do five days work in three days.

(laughing)

- [Narrator] But Ginge's party is going to have to wait.

These hulls have to be sandblasted and primed

before the end of the day.

October 1941, after only nine months development,

the first M4 Sherman tanks

begin to roll off the assembly lines.

It was a marvel of American engineering.

It's look and performance was unlike

any other tank of it's day.

Taller than most tanks, it's 75 millimeter gun

was capable of firing two types of ammunition.

- They featured a lot of things

that were very very up to date.

The gun would fire high explosive and armor piercing.

In Britain we only used armor piercing shot with our guns,

right up until the latter part of the desert war

and by that time, our crews were crying out

for a weapon with that dual purpose

that the Sherman could offer,

that really set the Sherman apart.

- [Narrator] Besides the dual-purpose gun,

the Sherman was equipped with remarkable innovation.

A small electric gyroscope, designed to stabilize the gun

so that the tank could fire while on the move.

- The gun stabilization on the allied side

was almost totally an American invention.

- [Narrator] First developed during World War II,

today, gun stabilization technology has reached

a whole new level.

The M1 A2 is the main battle tank of the US Army.

- The M1 A2 SEP, Systems Enhanced Package main battle tank.

It is probably the most sophisticated tank

out in the battlefield.

- [Narrator] It's 120 millimeter, smooth bore cannon

is electronically stabilized to fired accurately.

Even while the tank is moving over rough terrain.

- The digital architecture that's built into the turret,

the dual actual head is one of the most

sensitive pieces on this tank

because you have a stabilized gun,

basically what stabilization means

is that if the gunner's or the commander's

holding onto the gauges,

that gun will stay on target.

And the tank could go up and down hills, turn, etcetera.

As long as those gauges are engaged to that target.

- [Narrator] When the gun sight locks on it's target,

the computer does the rest.

(boom)

- The ballistic computer, basically what it does,

it computes any variable that could impact where you hit.

And then adds the solution for wind, camp, speed,

barometric pressure.

'Cause the temperature of the round

also has implications to it.

And it's very fast and it's what makes the tank

as lethal as it is.

- [Narrator] It's one shot, one kill.

(traffic rumbles)

Meanwhile, the pressure is on.

Dave wants those hulls sandblasted and primed by sun down.

- That tank needs to be indoors as soon as possible.

Not, "oh well I'll do it again tomorrow,

"then tomorrow we'll think about it", it won't get done.

- [Dave B] In the mornin' it'll be ready, just start a fresh

and you can have that done tomorrow,

improv of the lot.

(drumming music)

- When you shock blast a tank,

the equipment's really fairly simple in it's theory,

it's simply a hopper full of a blasting medium

which is just an abrasive,

the one we're using at the moment is a bi-product

of metal casting.

It's the sort of sand from the molds and things.

It's sort of partially turned to glass

and then they crush it up

and just use that as abrasive.

Strips all the rust and the paint away off the

substrate, or the metal you're trying to blast

and gets it about as clean as you could possibly get it

to refinish basically.

- And now David is going to commence blasting

the bottom of the Sherman tank while it is suspended

on the crane.

With a piece of wood for extreme safety.

- [Narrator] Young Dave is sand blasting

beneath 14 tonnes of steel.

- I've got faith in our old crane don't get me wrong,

but it's still a bit lairey and that.

The whole tank's sat up at an angle

and you're underneath it.

If that dropped down on ya, that's it, you're squished.

So I was nervous and that but it sort of passed away

and you just get on with it don't ya.

Sometimes you gotta take risks in life don't ya?

With the raw steel exposed,

the tank has to be primed immediately

or it'll start to rust.

- Paintin' tanks isn't like refinishing a car,

it's fairly easy to once you've got the knack

of paint sprayin'.

When they built them at the Detroit tank arsenal,

Chrysler and people like that,

they had a tunnel of infrared lamps

and they could paint a tank and dry it in four minutes.

(spraying)

- [Narrator] It's been a long day.

The tanks have been chopped, sand blasted and primed.

But will these two hulls actually fit together?

(engine rumbles)

The crew at the Isle of Wight Military History Museum

have reached a critical stage in restoring their Sherman.

It's time to prepare the turret ring.

The plan is to use the ring

to hold the two hold Shermans together.

- At the moment, we're just cleaning the bottom

of the turret race off,

because we want it to be a nice,

snug fit back onto the front of the tank

where we're going to bolt it back on.

We're actually going to use the bearing as the jib

to locate the two halves of the tank back together.

- [Narrator] But fitting two sand cast steel hulls together

is more difficult that it looks.

- Obviously we don't know that both those castings,

even though we measured them,

whether both the castings are the same measurements anyway,

'cause obviously they're sand castings and every one

will be just a little bit different.

It's just like a little trial fit.

Well the thing was, we've got nothing to lose.

As it was, the tank was unusable.

- [Narrator] The turret ring will have to fit perfectly

otherwise the two halves will not align.

- Marks already in place over here.

There we go.

- So does everything else line up really well?

They're good mate.

Yeah so there's no different pitchin' is there?

- [Dave B] No they are absolutely spot on.

- They are actually, they're great aren't they.

- [Narrator] With the ring mounted on the front half,

the moment of truth is at hand.

- [Male] Watch your fingers gents.

(creaking)

- We're just sortin' out all the little

funny bits and pieces that we're gonna have to cut

and just reshape, so we're just checkin' things.

What we were really worried about

when we tried to match the castings together

is all this gnarliness,

that's actually original patterns out of the sand molds.

And on this where we've cut this,

that line almost sort of continues through into this plate

so this scabbiness isn't a million miles away

from the other side.

And then there's this fairly smooth on both sides there

and there's only that small line at the top

so it's gonna blend together really well.

So every single one could be totally individual,

so that's just a bit of luck really.

- [Narrator] The front end drive assembly

is installed to prevent the hulls from twisting.

It weighs three tonnes.

- Yeah the turret hull fitted

in exactly the same bolt holes,

the front end fits in exactly the same bolt holes,

so we actually used the components to actually

jig the thing back together again.

- [Narrator] The two Sherman tanks fit together

like pieces of a puzzle.

It's a result of the most revolutionary

aspect of the Sherman design.

An innovation known as production engineering.

- I think one of the things that separates the Sherman

from most of it's contemplates in other countries

was that in a sense, it was designed by industrialists

for simplicity of production.

- [Narrator] In 1941, Germany had the most advanced,

mechanized armor in the world.

And the United States was the only major power

without an up to date tank.

American engineers had to play catch-up

and design a tank that could take on German armor,

but still be simple enough to produce on a massive scale.

- On the Sherman, it's definitely designed

for churnin' them out as fast as possible.

Because the American's realized they needed

to turn up the volume of their production

so they went to it.

- [Narrator] The standardization of parts was they key.

- One of the great secrets of Sherman production

was the way it was effectively standardized

over a large number of companies.

Something that I think they singularly

failed to do in Britain.

It meant that to a large extent,

in terms of suspension, hull form, turret and yeah,

the Sherman was the same tank whether it came out of

a Ford plant,

a Chrysler plant, wherever you like.

And that standardization is probably one of the greatest

American achievements of the Second World War.

- [Narrator] During the first 12 months of production,

25,000 tanks rolled off American assembly lines.

More tanks in one year than Germany produced

during the entire war.

By the end of the war, over 130,000 American tanks

and tank destroyers were sent out into battle.

Simple, maintainable, interchangeable.

And capable of being mass produced.

(traffic rumbles)

- Same concept applies to the Abrams tank today,

is sort of this ascertainment strategy that we follow.

- [Narrator] The Joint Systems Manufacturing Center

in Lima Ohio, is part of the military industrial complex

that maintains the most advanced

fighting force in the world.

- You develop some common parts and you look

at every other system across the armor.

There's commonality, bolts, nuts, electronic units,

sights, thermal imaging systems

that are used on other systems, the Bradley,

the HUMV etcetera.

- [Narrator] Standardized, interchangeable parts

mean that in a time of war, production can be ramped up

at an incredible speed.

- Any industry today, if you had to ramp it up,

let's say we had another world war and we had to build

another 10,000 tanks.

The tooling and the machining that you see here today

at Lima, that you see at the JSMC,

is very easy to convert in any other,

because it follows the same principle.

- [Narrator] American M1 Abrams tanks never die.

They come here by the train load to be born again.

- Basically we tear the tank down to bare metal.

We recover a lot of the parts, we refurbish them.

- [Narrator] The parts are production engineered

to allow for rapid upgrades.

- You have what we call P3I.

Pre plan product improvements.

We've created a line replacement unit.

Each one of those is a self-contained module itself

that is replaceable.

- [Narrator] Production engineering means

that instead of having to build a new tank,

the basic Abrams model can be continuously upgraded

with the latest technology.

- You have the digital capability,

that's not comparable to any other vehicle

that I would say in the world.

Because if you want an improvement of any sort,

the majority of those improvements in let's say for example,

target acquisition, or speed within processing,

or communications,

you can do that basically through software or cards.

Very minimal hardware changes.

(drill rattles)

- [Narrator] When it rolls out the door,

the latest model M1 A2 is essentially a new tank

and in the event of war,

it can be produced in almost unlimited numbers.

- In the end and I don't care who we're talking about,

what nationality, anything else.

Quantity is probably the biggest advantage any army can have

in terms of armor.

Something like 50,000 Shermans built in the end.

They are bound to swamp the opposition

in almost every case.

Tigers, Pathers, superb tanks,

but never enough of them.

They will always be overwhelmed

so what carries the Sherman through to the end of the war

is it's mass availability.

That's more important that armor thickness,

firepower, anything else you care to name.

- [Narrator] By the spring of 1944,

more than 36,000 Sherman tanks

had been delivered to almost every allied army

on the front lines.

Many of those tanks were sent to England

in preparation for the top secret mission

code named, Operation Overlord.

The invasion of France.

(tense orchestral music)

(whooshing)

With the front end and turret ring holding it all together,

the next phase of the job can begin.

It's time to haul the Sherman into the welding jig.

It's the first time the crew

has ever used a rotating tank jig.

And it's going to be easier said than done.

The jig bolts into the Sherman's suspension plates.

(cranking)

- Okay this jig was made for another tank.

The idea of it being as tall and as far off the ground

is to get the center of gravity of the tank

as close to the center of the circle as possible,

to make it easy to rotate it.

- [Narrator] The jig is designed to replicate

the original manufacturing process.

- We gotta well down hand, so like these welds under here,

there were done downwards not upwards.

So obviously the only way you can do that

is have this thing upside down.

And the welds that was want to do on our joins,

we want to weld that downwards.

We want that surface horizontal to weld into it.

And then to weld from the other side,

we want to have this facing downwards

so we can get inside the tank and still weld downwards

into the other side of the joint.

- [Narrator] The downward position

allows gravity to draw the welds

between the thick steel armor.

The front end is prepped and jacked

to position the second ring.

Soon it'll be ready to roll.

- We started the process

of joining the two castings together.

We're using mild steel welding wire,

rather than do just a tack around the top,

we're actually putting a full weld

right through this flange.

The reason why we welded like this,

with a substantial weld, is because the welds gotta put up

with a lot of stress when we take the turret ring out.

- [Narrator] The turret ring has done it's job.

The rig is braced.

The Sherman hulls are finally ready to be welded together.

It's the moment they've all been waiting for.

But the crew is starting to get nervous.

With 20 tonnes of steel suspended in the air,

anything can happen.

June 6th 1944,

D-Day.

After years of planning,

the allied invasion of Normandy was set to begin.

They were facing a deadly, fortified line of defense.

The Germans had the best guns, the heaviest armor

and the most advanced,

mechanized fighting force in the world.

But the allies had numbers.

47 divisions.

150,000 troops and two million more ready to follow

the first wave.

At the front of the attack

were landing craft carrying Sherman tanks.

They were about to catch the German forces by surprise.

At the workshop on the Isle of Wight,

the crew is trying to figure out what to do with the jig.

The question of everybody's mind,

is once it starts rotating, what will stop it?

- The jig was designed just to rotate

the actual main hull of the tank,

but because we've joined the upper cast

front section to the bottom,

we've had to retain the gear box casings in the front

to locate the whole lot together.

Well the jig was never intended to have that much weight

off center within the jig.

So to actually rotate the thing inside

with all that weight off-center,

that's been pretty frightening.

Well there's probably 20 tonnes on that thing.

(chuckling)

And you're winding it up like a spring aren't you?

Liftin' it up against gravity

and winding it up like a giant spring.

- We're just being wary because we've never done it before

so once you're a bit familiar with something,

you get more casual with it.

It's a learning experience.

- No put it back in, I can't move it.

Put it back in John.

- I was extremely nervous

when they were putting the forklift up and that we had to

get ready and that to put the pins in,

but if something did slip

and that tank decided to roll round,

it would've just shot round.

And if you're in the way of it then well, good luck.

Simple as that really.

- [Narrator] The job has become more dangerous

than anyone expected.

(muttering)

As Dave and Dave worry about the jig,

Bob and Ginge salvage the mechanical parts

from the two Shermans.

The gears from the final drives

and the 400 horsepower radial engine.

(pumping electronic music)

The parts are stripped down to the bare metal.

As good as new.

- When you're physically working on a vehicle,

you've got that connection to history.

Basically that's what it does,

it gives you a much better insight.

You can read something in a book,

change a tank engine and it doesn't convey anything

about the amount of physical effort

that goes into doing that and liftin' heavy bits and pieces

and taking all the connections off etcetera

and how long that would take to do.

But once you've done that, say on a Sherman,

you've got a much better insight

into what a field engine change would take,

how long a vehicle's gonna be out of action

and how many men it would take to do,

type of equipment etcetera.

Yes typical, good quality American engineering.

Sometimes you find on the British tanks

you have to do a lot more fiddling

and fitting as such to get the components to fit sometimes,

whereas in theory we've never found it much of a problem

with an American part.

You take one part off the shelf,

take the part that's broken down or whatever,

remove it from the tank, swap it and they fit.

Which is what you really wanna be able to do.

(haunting music)

- [Narrator] But the M4 A1 Sherman

was not without it's flaws.

And on the eve of the D-Day mission,

the bad news had spread.

- The first thing to understand about the Sherman

is that by 1944 it's getting a bit long in the tooth

at least by wartime standards.

- [Narrator] By 1944, the 34 tonne Sherman

was no match for the new German tanks.

The 45 tonne Panther and the massive 70 tonne Tiger II.

- I think you'll find there is an element of nervousness

creeping in once the Shermans start confronting

the larger German tanks.

It's not universal, not by any means,

but you will read accounts from US Army,

from Canadian Army, from British Army sources

saying "what the hell do you think you're doing

"putting us face to face with these monsters."

- [Narrator] The Sherman tank was out of date

and German soldiers had discovered a serious flaw

in it's design.

- When the tank was designed,

all the ammunition was stowed in the top of the hull

above the sponson plates.

But it's vulnerable.

It's the thinnest part of the tank.

Absolutely stupid really.

If the round went through the sponson and hit the ammunition

locker behind it, the tank would explode instantly.

Straight away the turret would come off,

the crew would be killed instantly,

the tank would be write off in one go.

(boom)

- [Narrator] One hit on the ammunition compartment

and the Sherman tank would explode.

- Most of the people who manned it would testify

in it's rather macabre nicknames,

you may know them as, the German's call them Tommy Cookers.

British tankers usually referred to them as Ronsons

because the advertising slogan

for the cigarette allowed at the time was

lights first time, every time.

(boom)

- [Narrator] The Sherman had a reputation

for being a death trap.

Today's M1 A2 is designed to ensure crews survive ability

in the event of a direct hit.

- One of the greatest aspects of this tank

is in the tank design was that the soldier was first.

Soldier survive ability was number one.

- [Narrator] The storage of live ammunition

is one of the most important aspects of it's design.

- The ammunition is compartmentized in the back of the tank

and the ammo doors protect the crew

from an internal explosion.

And the way that's done is that the ammo doors

protect the crew forward and we have two blow out panels

on the top of the ammo compartment.

And those blow out panels are very loose and very thin.

So if there's an explosion, the explosion goes up

and the detonation and the cook off of the rounds

does not come into the crew compartment.

- [Narrator] Besides protecting the crew

from it's own ammunition,

the M1's high-tech, top secret armor

who will stand a direct hit by almost any firepower

in the world today.

- Crew survive ability is probably the top capability

or characteristic of the tank.

- [Narrator] June 6th 1944.

The Shermans had been modified to improve crew protection.

- You'll notice patches of armor welded on over the side.

Those are welded on specifically where the ammunition is.

- [Narrator] These applique armor plates

were the crews only defense against Germany guns.

And on June 6th, the men needed all the protection

they could get.

(drumming music)

Before sunrise, the allies launched a secret weapon

off the coast of Normandy.

Called the DD Sherman, these tanks had been modified

to float and drive with a propeller.

These Shermans were the first to land.

But with unexpected rough seas,

many didn't make it ashore.

The first landing waves were delivered onto the beach

directly into enemy fire.

(bullets rattle)

Blinded by thick smoke screens,

weighed down by wet gear,

the men had nothing to shelter them

except for a handful of Sherman tanks.

Within the first hours

thousands of allied soldiers were dead.

But reinforcements continued to follow.

By the end of the day, 156,000 allied troops had landed.

The German defense had been breached.

As Adolf Hitler had predicted,

if the enemy here succeeds,

consequences of staggering proportions will follow.

And he was right.

By the end of July, one million allied troops

and hundreds of thousands of vehicles were put ashore

in Normandy.

A month later, Paris would be liberated.

And the beginning of the end for the German forces

was at hand.

Back in the tank workshop,

the crew has devised a plan to prevent

the tank jig from spinning out of control.

They fasten it to the heaviest thing around

which is another tank.

The tank jig is locked into position

and Dave is finally ready to weld the Shermans together.

For the crew at the Isle of Wight Military History Museum,

the big day is at hand.

After 12 years collecting all the parts,

a Sherman tank is about to come together.

- The whole of this project has been planned

over the last few years.

Anything we've not known ourselves

we've actually now found out

just through people who have done this sort of

restoration before and also talking to welding companies

to find out about the metalogy to find out

what we can weld together with

and that sort of thing, that's actually now been sorted out.

- [Narrator] And now the heavy metal surgery can begin.

- Ah this is the bit I like,

that's why I've actually

removed everybody else from the working vicinity

to give me some peace and quiet so I can get on with it.

I couldn't put up with people just keep asking me questions

all day long while I'm actually trying to do it.

Apart from you guys!

(chuckling)

Castings are about an inch and a quarter thick.

You've obviously gotta weld from the middle outwards.

So you've gotta be able to get the torch wire

into the middle of the joint

so the only way you can do that is to V the plates.

So you can then get the angle on the torch one way,

then the other and then backfill the plates from the middle,

right back up through the outside.

Purity, the steel is so pure that the mig wire,

if you set the machines to their normal welding perimeters

for the thickness of metal,

the wire is actually just cutting through the steel

'cause it's so pure.

Once you see that happen when you're welding,

the wire will actually just slice through it

just like a knife through butter.

- [Narrator] The safety on the jig has worked.

- It's all workin' really well.

It does make a lot of difference

to actually weld on it.

The jig, it's the way to do it there's no doubt.

- [Narrator] The welding is complete.

- The welding process used 30 kilograms of wire

which actually equates out to be 8 kilometers

of welding wire.

- [Narrator] It's a massive turning point

for the crew at the Isle Of Wight.

Their two Shermans are now one.

- It feels really good at this point

to see the two bits come together.

I'm lookin' forward to actually doing the decorating

at the end, the grinding

and just sort of fudging them together nicely,

bit of decoration, make sure they look nice.

That's the bit I'm looking forward to.

- [Narrator] The final drive is taken out to be refitted.

The suspension is repainted and ready to install.

The heavy assembly phase is complete

and the mechanical components are ready for reassembly.

The D-Day landing at Normandy

was the Sherman's first combat action in northern Europe.

One on one it was no match against heavy German armor

but sheer numbers and the rugged nature

of the Sherman design helped to secure victory

in the battlefield.

Three million soldiers eventually

took part in Operation Overlord.

Troops from the US, UK, Canad, France and Poland

all armed with Sherman tanks.

It remains the largest successful

sea-born invasion in history.

(birds tweet)

(slow somber orchestral music)

The cost was enormous.

When Operation Overlord was over,

half a million soldiers from all sides

were missing, wounded or dead.

But for the rugged Sherman,

it's military service had only just begun.

It would fight through to the end of the war

and then continue to serve for decades afterwards

in various army's and conflicts around the world.

The fate of the Shermans is interesting.

That the last things that the American's wanted

were they have hundreds and hundreds of redundant tanks

dumped back on their doorstep.

So a lot of them were circulated to other armies.

The French for example used large numbers of them

and they spread throughout Europe.

As an interim tank until other countries

got back on their feet.

- [Narrator] Surplus Sherman tanks were circulated

to countries ravaged by war.

Modified to defend old borders,

the Sherman would also serve to establish new ones.

In the newly formed state of Israel,

surplus Shermans were modified beyond recognition.

- The Israel connection is fascinating.

The Israelis were not given tanks,

in fact they got very little help from anyone at the outset.

They initially started by finding scraps

and welding them back together.

It became vital for the Israelis themselves

to produce better tanks than what they'd got

and one of the ways they did this was to take the Sherman

and up-gun it and improve it

almost out of recognition.

It became effectively a new tank.

The Israeli's super-Sherman is the most powerful,

heaviest hitting Sherman ever built.

At 50 tonnes, it weighs almost twice as much

as the original Sherman design.

And it's 90 millimeter gun

made it a heavy contender in battle

to the beginning of the 1970s.

The capacity to upgrade in the extreme

is a testimony to the success to the American innovation

of production engineering.

- Amongst the old soldiers that come into the museum,

there is a definite fondness for the Sherman.

I think the fondness for them only arrives

out of the fact that they were issued with them in numbers

so therefore they can relate to them.

I think that's the thing.

- And occasionally you sort of meet German tankers,

we have done other the years,

and they all sort of refer to the stupidity of it

at the end of the day,

but I'm afraid war seems to be permanently with us

in one form or another.

We're sort of saying highfalutin but seems part of our role

is just to remind people that these things happened

and it's not just a movie that you watch at the weekend

or in the cinema.

It's very different to that.

- [Narrator] When this Sherman is complete,

it will take center stage in the collection

to help a new generation understand the machines

and the perils of war.

- Real achievement.

I'm looking forward to actually getting it done

and getting all the grindin'

and the fancy bits done and be able to stand back

and look at it and think "yeah we got away with it."

That's the bit I wanna see.

- [Narrator] Born in America, they liberated Europe.

Only to be destroyed on firing ranges

and abandoned on scrap yards.

Now, one Sherman re-made from two survivors,

begins a new life.

(rock music)