During WWII Dad moved from a front line tank unit (3rd County of London Yeomanry, Sharpshooters Regiment, originally based just around the corner from Loftus Road) to Bovington Camp in Dorset where he trained Soviet tank crews and shipped them back to Murmansk with Sherman tanks to fight on the Eastern Front. He also was part of the development team that transformed the US Sherman tank with a 75mm "pea-shooter" cannon to the Sherman Firefly tank where they mounted a 17 pounder anti-tank gun in the Sherman turret that could knock out the German Tiger tanks. Unfortunately only limited numbers of Sherman Firefly tanks, so one per squadron. One of Dad's best mates (he lost all 5 of them during the war), commanding a Sherman Firefly wrote to him after D-Day indicating very nonchalantly, "Vic, we 'brewed' two Tigers this morning". Ollie was dead himself 2 weeks later, as despite camouflage on the barrel to try and make it look shorter like a regular Sherman 75mm gun, was the tank they targeted first as it could kill them. The picture of the two Soviet Sherman tanks (one regular, one Firefly) on the Eastern front (likely trained by my Dad!)
