Talk:Old Phyliss/@comment-2.27.203.18-20180909210211/@comment-2601:200:101:C18:55DA:96D5:569F:D910-20190829191442

The movie production had to make do with the Shermans available from the Bovington museum and other UK collectors. Still, by the setting of Fury in April 1945, not only were surviving trained armor crewman running out, hence why Norman "Machine" Ellison is dragged out of the personnel pool at the "Repple Depple" and assigned to WarDaddy's tank, but the tanks themselves were routinely rebuilt, often cobbled together from several wrecks at improvised repair depots, or, by this stage of the war, some French factories were temporarily put iinto use to repair Allied equipment as second-enchelon repair depots. Old Phyliss is obviously one of these 'hybrid' tanks. It should be kept in mind the very heavy losses the US Army Tank Command (and, to a lesser extent, the Tank Destroyer Command) suffered in the ETO...some units losing over 250% of their authorized strength over the ten months from D-Day to V-E day. However, of these, many could be cleaned up and patched together, or combined with complementary components of other wrecked Shermans. The Sherman's adaptability to different engines, main weapons, and multiple roles (tank destroyer, ARVs, SP guns, CEVs, and so on) was one of the key reasons American industry helped to win the war.