Coleton Bunyard

12-1-16

History

Mr. Mcallister

Fury

Fury is a movie about a world war 2 American Sherman tank crew fighting to push back

the Germans who at this point in the war are extremely desperate and willing to do whatever it

takes to stay in the fight. The crew is based on a real life tank crew with The events shown in the

movie take place during April 5th 1945. Although Fury is based on a true story, it also is not

based on a true story at the same time.

Arun Lakkavalli Shivashankar from Quora.com says The characters are fictional and so

is the Tank "Fury". So this means that the whole crew and the tank never fought against nazi

Germany helping secure victory for the United States military, but it doesn't mean that the events

in the movie didn't happen to tank commanders and their crews during the war. You see the

movie Fury is a bunch of different commanders different actual true stories of struggle and

desperation all rolled up into one and acted out by the fictional crew in the movie. So the movie

is still very realistic and stays fairly true to how things happened to these tank crews lives

during combat, and regular life during the war.

In one combat scene the crew of Fury, along with several other Sherman tank crews take

on the Germans most powerful and infamous tank, the Tiger. During the battle the Tiger destroys

nearly all of the Sherman tanks on its own. Nicolas Milton from the gaurdian.com interviewed an
actual world war 2 verteran named Bill Betts that has seen the movie and asked him about how

realistic the movie was and Bill had this to say about the combat scene with the tiger tank Fury

accurately portrays how superior the German tanks were. A Sherman provided you with

protection against most enemy fire but against a Tiger it could easily become your coffin. I

remember a very near miss where an eight cm shell from a Tiger tank went within inches of our

turret and we decided not to stay around too long after that. In open combat we never had a

chance. So, like in Fury, we always had to be one step ahead. It was only because we could call

up air strikes and had many more tanks than the Germans that we eventually won. Although the

way the Sherman fought was accurate it wasn't entirely necessary because the tank the our

fictional crew was operating was a M1A3E8 and had a gun capable of penetrating the Tigers

front armour making this huge sacrifice by the other Sherman tanks in the scene unnecessary.

This wasn't the only combat scene that Bill Betts had comments on though. During the final

scene when Fury and its crew were broke down and had to face a battalion of Waffen SS troops

Bill stated that I thought the film showed accurately how tough life could be in a tank, but the

final scene where the crew hold out against a battalion of Waffen SS troops was too far fetched.

The Germans seemed to be used as cannon fodder. In reality they would have been

battle-hardened and fanatical troops who would have easily taken out an immobile Sherman tank

using Panzerfausts (an anti-tank bazooka). They also seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of

ammunition and fuel. A Sherman tank only does five miles to the gallon so I think they would

have run out long before the final showdown. I found this to be extremely true because it did

seem as though the German troops were just throwing themselves at the immobile tank, without

a real strategy and just getting slaughtered. They could have easily just flanked around the tank
and destroyed it since it is very hard for the tank crew to watch the flank when they were

buttoned up. This is why tanks usually need infantry along with them, to keep them from

getting out flanked from hard to spot enemy troops. I mean for real these are elite German troops

we are talking about here, not just the filler troops of kids and old men that the Germans were

plugging into spots at the end of the war. It would have been an extremely lopsided battle to say

the least.

So in the end there were a few mistakes made in this film, even though fury is known to

be one of the more accurate world war 2 movies. Some could have been easily avoided like in

the scene against the tiger, but the final scene is the one that really took the cake, but I guess after

all people typically don't go to the movies for how accurate they are in the facts but more for the

the action and for an idea of what it was like in these horrible wars.
 Work Cited

Milton, Niclas. "A Tank Veteran on Fury: 'Very Realistic, but It Can't Show the Full Horror of

War." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 23 Oct. 2014. Web. 02 Dec. 2016.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/oct/24/fury-movie-tank-veteran-sherman-verdi

ct-realistic

Shivashanker, Arun. Quora.com. Quora.com, 1 Nov. 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2016.

https://www.quora.com/Is-Fury-based-on-a-true-story