US Firefly

[Jan_Donadoni]

Hello,
froma a short search it looks that also US had some british built/modded Sherman Firefly.
Can anyone confirm it? which units were they assigned to?
Has any such a unit ever been in the italian theatre of operations?

Thanks a lot.

Jan

[Adrian Harris]

Whilst anything seems to be possible in war, I seriously doubt the US army would use the Firefly. In the ETO, they seemed to standardise quite quickly on the M4A3, with the Ford GAA engine.

If they were to have a unit with Fireflies, it would mean they had to be provisioned with the M4A4 Chevrolet engines and spares, as well as British 17 pounder ammunition, which sounds like a Quartermaster's nightmare.

I think they were supplied with trial machines, but opted to stick with the 76mm as their Tiger killer.

Adrian.

[Tim Bowman]

Hello Jan

You might be confusing the up-gunned 76mm M4A2(76)Sherman for a Firefly.

As Adrian said, I don't believe American units would have used the Firefly, not because they wouldn't want to, but simply for logistics involved in supplying British/Canadian ammunition to American units on the front where U.S. forces were fighting.

That's just my two cents worth.

I bet John Grima would know the answer for sure.

regards
Tim

[Adrian Harris]

Mark Hayward's Firefly book (pp56) states that the Americans received some before the war ended but goes on to say "This narrative concentrates on British units and battles, as the Americans had no Fireflies until the end of the war".

So I wonder if the ones the did Americans receive were from demobbed British units ?

Adrian.

[Jan_Donadoni]

Here the links to some sources I found :
http://freespace.virgin.net/shermanic.firefly/
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/spoelstra ... irefly.htm
http://freespace.virgin.net/shermanic.f ... usnew.html
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/spoelstra ... efly-i.htm

Looks to be a hundred or more handed over to the US, again in a 1 to 4 proportion within the units, due to delays or other issue with the US 76mm.
And yes, the quartermaster would probably have preferred to be transfered to the russian front