I’m watchin’ this movie and I’m thinking they used real Shermans and Tigers. I’m no armor expert though! Am I right or is this just good Holywood dress up? Also, is there any website I can go to that would list the armor used in movies such as Patton, A Bridge too Far etc.?
I am pretty sure the shermans are real, theres loads of those around. But i doubt the Tigers are. In SPR they used Russian T-55’s, but without having a look at the movie, i am not to sure about Kellys Heroes. I might be wrong, but it might have been T-34’s.
According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly’s_Heroes
The shermans are real but the tigers are actually T-34’s, heavily modified.
Love that movie, loved watching it when I was a kid, now my kid loves it.
I believe the Shermans are real but the Tiger(s) are not. They are simply a well done (in my opinion) Hollywood mock up built on the chassis of T-34’s. If you’ve ever seen Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, the Tiger in those movies is also built around a T-34/85. Like I said, well done, but not the real thing which I really wouldn’t expect any way.
As for a website, I’m not sure. If you go to imdb.com (internet movie database) they will usually have such facts listed in the Trivia section for a particular movie.
For instance, if you look up Patton in IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066206/trivia you’ll find*: “The American and British tanks in the film are World War II vintage M-24 “Chaffee” light tanks. The German tanks, however, are portrayed by American-built postwar M-47 and M-48 tanks. Ironically, both the M-47 and M-48 types are called “Patton” tanks.”*
oddmanrush My mistake, i stand corrected. T-34’s were used for both movies.
I do believe that the King Tiger’s in the Battle of the Buldge were also Patton tanks. The German tanks in A Bridge to Far were modern German Leopard’s.
No worries Bish! I’ve always thought it would be a cool idea to convert a kit of a T-34/85 into the Tiger from Saving Private Ryan. Just haven’t got around to doing it yet. That and I’m not exactly an expert scratchbuilder. Unless I purchased a kit of a Tiger as well and kit bashed the two together…but money don’t grow on trees. At least, not in my yard it doesn’t.
I am pretty sure i have seen it done. For the life of me i can’t recall where.
Check this site out: http://the.shadock.free.fr/Repros.pdf
Some of the reproductions are pretty convincing. And Bish, it looks as though some one did indeed do a repro Tiger on a T-55 chassis, but I don’t think it made a movie yet.
Last year, Hans Von Hammer was running a Group Build, “Hollywood Goes to War”. The GB basicly fizzled, but there was someone there doing the T-34 to Tiger conversion build. Search the GB forum for pics.
The running-gear and tracks are a dead-give-away. I’m still impressed with though.
Some of those old classics are WAY better than others
~Battle of the Bulge was awful, I mean really cheesy from what I remember. Tiger tanks in this movie are portrayed by M47 Patton tanks whilst M4 Sherman tanks are portrayed by M24 Chaffee tanks. Couldn’t they at least remove the .50 cal from the tops if they we’re supposed to be Germans? That one confused me as a young boy! Of course this movie isn’t that bad if you compare it to Anzio, which constantly showed germans crewing .30 Brownings(ok if it’s one scene, but the entire film?) I could overlook this even but the portrayal of Americans as a bumbling lot of morons—the only clear thinker was a cool cat named Robert Miitchem(who was cool even in that stinker) This movie may be the opposite of Saving Private Ryan , which is most realistic tribute to those that gave thier lives that could be imagined–albeit it concludes with a ficticious battle—The grity reality is undeniable and endorsed by Vets worlwide. (OF course no where as old as these others) The Tiger tank was a fantastic functioning mock-up (the same trick used in Kelley’s Hero’s by the way)
Sure, us modellers see its built on a T-34 chassis in a second, but I’m willing to forgive them this flaw–I ask myself what I would do if asked to create a 1:1 Tiger and in the sceme of things, I’d only dissapoint the detail buffs a bit?? We know the diffference, sure but it’s worth putting up with, just like it was in The Big Red One . Yeah, it’s no doubt worth it, especially at the end of Kelly Hero’s when Oddball takes some of his gold and BUYS the Tiger tank from the Germans !! He-he[:P] Now that sounds like something we would do—and take it right home to correct the running gear ! [:(]
It IS a model forum, so…
Those figures are made by Jaguar,I have another portraying the Sherman crew,Oddball,The Turk,and Gavin Mcloud’s charactor,also Formations make a real nice resin conversion for a M4A3 to Oddballs Sherman,very expensive but nice,maybe some day
stikpusher Maybe that the one i am thinking of. I knew i had seen one somewhere.
indy the other one that we see alot, and this includes kellys heroes, is US M3 halftracks being used by the German, i assume in place of 251’s.
Got that figure set too… Dunno why they included Crap-game though… He was wounded by the Tiger and not in that scene… Although I loved KH, watched it about 800 times, and can quote practically the entire script, it was still, far and away, an anti-war film… Oddball’s beatnik-type character was pure 1969 Vietnam hippy-draftee rather than a 1944 Army NCO, 'We see our role as essentially defensive in nature. While our armies are advancing so fast and everyone’s knocking themselves out to be heroes, we are holding ourselves in reserve in case the Krauts mount a counteroffensive which threatens Paris… or maybe even New York. Then we can move in and stop them. But for 1.6 million dollars, we could become heroes for three days.-"
and Carroll O’Conner’s “General Colt” (roughly and rather insultingly based on General Patton) was pure “establishment” although O’Connor “chewed up the senery” in his role and he had some GREAT lines… "If that guy is a Major, he’s a Colonel now! What the hell am I doing here?! BONZER, GET ME MY UNIFORRRRRMMM!"
Well… MG-34s & 42s were likely at a premium, fired too much ammo, & besides that, the Hollywood mantra has always been, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”… As for Mitchum’s character, he wasn’t even a GI… He was a war correspondent… As for the Americans being a “bumbling lot”, well… The Anzio operation WAS a colossal screw-up and not just FUBAR, but rather FUBB* (Fouled Up Beyond Belief)
*Polite version of “F-word”
Ya, it fizzled alright… A big wet fart of a fizzle… My own entry went South because a cat wrecked my Phalz D III beyond repair and no way was I gonna pay for ANOTHER Eduard kit… That little aircraft cost me close to 50 bucks on Ebay, after shipping… All I could salvage was the 1/72 Dr 1 I got from the Monogram Red Baron car kit and the “Stachel” figure from the Revell 1/28th Dr I kit (it was a forced-perspective shadowbox diorama of Stachel’s crash-landing in The Blue Max hence the mixed scales)
I’d bet it was the diorama requirement plus, I figured, a year would be good enough for more folks getting involved, but I think now that it actually it was TOO much time (Shoulda called it at 90 days, more akin to a real-world movie deadline, lol)…
In my defense, I was an FNG here and didn’t realize just how few diorama builders there were… Given that even fewer would be interested in a Diorama GB, I shoulda waited for another time and just allowed the models to be built alone… I just didn’t want a bunch of “Shelfers” built without placing them “in context” so that the scene was instantly recognizable, rather than a black T-38 pretending to be a “MiG-28” on a wood plaque or painting an M-47 grey with a couple of black crosses and calling it a “movie scene”, knowhutImean?
I DID switch to Plan B and got a 1/48th Mongram Mosquito done for a scene from 633 Squadron, but missed my own cut-off for the dio and said, “Screw it”… (The scene was at the beginning where Cliff Robertson’s character was looking over Gillibrand’s damaged tail and saying, “Gillibrand, I’m putting you in for a medal and when it comes in, I’m pinning it right on your tail.” … It was my first attempt at startng a GB, too… I took the lessons learned and started the “Before They Were Aces” GB, which seems to be working FAR better…
Well I still have my stuff for that dio still going. Although quite slowly. I have most of the ground work obtained and with Miniart announcing a Dutch structure I am not giving up entirely. Just putting it on hold. Seeing as how my idea that I was planning to build was kicking around in my head for many years, your GB was the spur to actually being doing something about it. But then now with AFVClub finally releasing an Churchill AVRE I have a Longest Day dio also in mind for one day…
I think you are right about the Tigers. They’re definitely T-34s. The roadwheels are russian and the tanks are too small to be Tigers.
~Bish~ Quite right—you see that in manyof the old war films, and its’not even like they try to show a captured halftrack(always a later version anyways) they always try to pass them off as German gear, it looks funny.
~Constructor~ There is no doubt of it.
~Hans- I did remember that Mitchem was a reporter in Anzio, but as I said, he’s portayed as the only American standing who’s not a dunce----Everyone knows that the U.S command stalled, lost the initiative, and plundered the small canine, but they were’nt all retarded, as the Italian director(Dino De Larentiis) filmed. He later became quite a big shot–but for me you can keep all his films (except the 1st Conan=pretty cool)[:D]
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That’s true. Didn’t BoB have the 251 and did someone else say that BoB Tigers Pz.'s?
The 251’s in BoB were actually the post war Czechoslovakian Praga/Tatra OT-810. Here’s a screen shot from the movie just before the half track takes a tank round, you can see the exhaust and the extra angles of the OT-810.
