is fury based on a true story?
The plot revolves around Sergeant Don “Wardaddy” Collier and his crew who embark on a risky mission, which puts several lives in danger. There is tons of tank warfare, and that is where the movie gives an impression of utmost authenticity.
Technically, no. ‘Fury’ is a story that was penned by Ayer and is a product of fiction. It is not directly based on a single story. However, Ayer was inspired by several actual events and WWII stories. Both of Ayer’s grandfather fought during the Second World War. He grew up hearing their stories, which were unlike those he had read or seen about. These were more personal accounts of firsthand loss, grief, and trauma.
“They were about the personal price and the emotional price. The pain and the loss are the shadows that sort of stalk my family. That was something that I wanted to communicate with people. Even though it was literally a fight of good against evil and it had an incredibly positive outcome, the individual man fighting it was just as tired, scared and freaked out as a guy operating a base in Afghanistan or a guy in the jungle in Vietnam,” according to Ayer’s interview (source).
Apart from that, one of the stories that inspired the movie of ‘Fury’ was that of Sergeant Lafayette “Wardaddy” G. Pool. His tank was named “In the Mood.” Pool and his crew “would kill 12 tanks, 258 armored vehicles and self-propelled guns, and 1,000 German soldiers in only 79 days,” according to RealClearDefense. Unfortunately, after participating in one of the most intense theaters of the Second World War, Pool was forced to get his leg amputated when In the Mood was hit by a German Panther tank.
Moreover, another inspiration for the movie is reported to be taken from a memoir titled ‘Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II’ by Belton Y. Cooper. Cooper worked with the 3rd Armored Division, which led the attack against the Germans in Normandy. He had been “responsible for coordinating the recovery and repair of damaged American tanks. This was a dangerous job that often required him to travel alone through enemy territory,” according to the book’s blurb.
Furthermore, the cast and crew, including Brad Pitt, also interviewed another war veteran named Ray Stewart. Stewart had been drafted into the military at the age of 19 and served as a member of the 2nd Armored Division during WWII. The division was nicknamed “Hell on Wheels.” Starting in Omaha Beach, Normandy, Stewart and his comrades “embarked on a 1,000-mile journey that ended in Berlin. Between those two locations, Stewart took part in many battles. Two of his tanks were destroyed by bazooka fire, mortars or the much-feared 88 mm anti-aircraft, anti-tank guns,” according to Charlotte Observer. “I was a kid when I went in. I was a man when I came out,” Stewart recalls.
In the movie, a U.S. Army sergeant (played by Brad Pitt) commands a medium-size Sherman tank in battle against a Nazi force with superior firepower, including a well-equipped Tiger I heavy tank. The film, which opens in theaters nationwide on Friday (Oct. 17), features the last working Tiger tank in the world.
The Sherman tank (officially called the Medium Tank, M4) was the most widely deployed tank in World War II. The workhorse vehicle was used by the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps and the British, Canadian and Free French forces, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Designed and built in the United States, a total of 49,324 Sherman tanks were made between 1942 and 1946. [ 7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare ]
The M4 was a reliable tank, but the German Tiger heavy tanks outclassed it. The Tiger I (officially known as Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. H) was deployed on all German fronts during WWII. The formidable tank weighed 50 tons (54 metric tons) and was heavily armored. About 1,350Tiger tanks were produced in total, between August 1942 and August 1944.
During a scene in "Fury," four M4 tanks go head-to-head with one Tiger I, and only one M4 survives the fight.
An M4 Sherman like the one featured in the film could penetrate the upper frontal hull of a Tiger 1 from between about 1,600 and 3,300 feet (500 meters and 1000 m), while the Tiger could knock out an M4 from the front at about 2,600 feet (800 m), according to a Tiger crew instruction manual.
Both tanks used in the film — the Sherman M4E8 and the Tiger 131 — are real, and belong to the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.
The Tiger 131 was built in Kassel, Germany, in February 1943 and was shipped to Tunisia to join the 504th German heavy tank battalion, according to the Tank Museum's website. On April 21, 1943, the Tiger was taken out of action by a Churchill tank of the British 48th Royal Tank Regiment, and was captured and repaired. On Sept. 25, 1951, the Tiger was given to the Tank Museum.
The Tiger was "one of [the] most feared weapons unleashed by the Nazis," capable of destroying an enemy tank from more than 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) away, Richard Smith, the Tank Museum's director, told the BBC.
Yet despite its ferocity, the Tiger wasn't invincible. Its tracks would freeze up with mud and snow in the winter, which Russian forces used to their advantage in battle. The tanks engines' were underpowered, making them difficult to drive. The tanks also faced problems because of their large size. Since few bridges could handle the Tiger's weight, the first version contained a snorkel that allowed the tanks to cross rivers up to 13 feet (4 m) deep, but later versions lacked this feature, according to the History Learning Site.
While the storyline is fictional, the depiction of Fury and its commander Wardaddy parallels the experience of several real Allied tankers, such as the American tank commander Staff Sergeant Lafayette G.
