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Death Of A Tank Crew: Battle For Okinawa (WWII)
Published 3 years ago
Harrowing footage from the 1945 Battle for Okinawa shows Marines frantically attempt to extinguish a burning M-4 Sherman tank and dig their trapped buddies out from under the flipped vehicle.
According to the archival description, the tank had hit a Japanese landmine. In the footage we can see one of the slightly-wounded crew members who managed to make it out, likely launched from the vehicle. However, the rest of the crew became trapped inside the burning wreckage. The responding Marines were unable to free their trapped brethren before the vehicle became fully engulfed in flames and the onboard ammo began to cook off.
During WWII, much of the battle imagery seen by the American people was carefully edited newsreels intended to convey glorious victory by our troops on the battlefield. The film industry was complicit in that as well, showing powerful last-dying words... "tell my wife I love her" ... "win this for me" and other emotionally-driven nonsensical dramatized scenarios, when the reality of it was what we see in this video: horrifying and helpless carnage.
Somewhere between 15,000-20,000 US service members were killed at the 2 month and 3 week Battle for Okinawa, known at the time as Operation Iceberg. The tank in this video was just one of the 221 US tanks destroyed in the fighting. Approximately 110,000 Japanese troops and Okinawa conscripts were killed by US forces during the battle as well.
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