The "Insane" 30-Cylinder Engine That Made The Sherman A Tiger Killer !

#ShermanFirefly #WW2History #TigerTank #TankHistory #MilitaryEngineering Before it powered anything, the Chrysler A57 Multibank was an act of desperation — five ordinary six-cylinder sedan engines bolted in a circle around one shaft. Thirty cylinders. Thirty spark plugs. Five carburetors. 5,400 pounds. The US Army calculated the maintenance hours, refused to fight in it, and shipped all 7,499 to Britain. But the engine was eleven inches too long for a Sherman. So the hull had to be stretched. Two years later, British engineers needed a tank with enough room inside to swallow the 17-pounder and its thirty-inch shells. The only Sherman long enough was the one nobody had wanted. That tank became the Sherman Firefly — the only Allied tank that could reliably kill a Tiger. On 8 August 1944, a Firefly gunner named Joe Ekins — a shoe factory worker from Northamptonshire — destroyed three Tigers in twelve minutes. One of them belonged to Michael Wittmann. The story of the worst engine of the Second World War, and the eleven inches it left behind.