German tank crews encountered the “Jumbo” — and realized that not every “Sherman” was the same.

On July 27, 1944, German tank ace Ernst Barkmann with 53 victories aimed at another Sherman and pulled the trigger — but instead of the usual explosion, he saw only sparks from a ricochet. His legendary Panther, which had destroyed American tanks by the dozens, proved powerless against an unfamiliar 38-ton monster. This was the M4A3E2 "Jumbo" — America's secret weapon that German tankers learned about too late. Of the 254 machines produced, more than half survived to the end of the war, withstanding 30-60 direct hits and shattering all Wehrmacht assumptions about the "easy prey" called the Sherman.

Composition Dark Times (artist: Kevin MacLeod) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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