Back in Action 77 years later...

[Luke R]

Awesome job John!
I don't suppose you happen to have any photos of the restoration process you are willing to post?

[rob love]

To simply show a before and after photo in no way does justice to the amount of effort that must have gone into a project like this. Congratulations.

[James P]

Bravo for the work done turning a range wreak/target back to a fine example of a M4

[jdmcm]

Thanks for all the accolades guys, but we certainly haven't transformed it into a museum quality show piece, we replaced the sections of hull that were completely destroyed or caved in beyond repair..which was a lot of it, plus the turret roof had something substantial hit it. We got the tank along with the Sherman Jumbo and we stripped all the interior fittings and brackets and linkage for use on the Jumbo Sherman, which is intended to be a proper nut and bolt restoration. The fellow we bought it from said once we stripped what we need we should scrap it...but that wasn't going to happen! We have left a lot of the damage as is, but in the interest of full disclosure none of it is actual battle damage, the tank was a training tank and never left the USA during the war, post war it was sent to the national guard and then finally to the range...see the photos below provided by Leife Hulbert via Joe Demarco and eventually Pierre-Olivier Baun showing the tank in active service with the national guard in the USA. Joe was able to match the USA registration number to our serial number, not a Pacific or ETO picture but still pretty cool to see it "before"

M4A3_75_Dry_3054591_#4-2_CONUS_PostWar_58.jpg

M4A3_75_Dry_CONUS_#2-1_56a.jpg

M4A3_75_Dry_CONUS_59.jpg