Tank Overhaul

Dave Arnold and his crew at the Isle of Wight Military History Museum are set for a real challenge. They’ve rescued a rare 1945 COMET Tank from an Army firing range. It’s been shot to hell and they only have four months to get it ready and running for the crowds at Tank Fest 2006. We’ll see tons of action in the shop as they tear it apart; overhaul the engine; strip, sandblast, paint and put it back together again. Along the way, we’ll find clues in the form of serial numbers and markings that retrace the war-time mission of tank and crew behind enemy lines; from the crossing of the Rhine to confrontation with the deadly Panzerfaust, and the final race for Berlin.

Jacques Littlefield is a nice guy with a whole lot of tanks. In fact, with over 300 military vehicles, he has the largest private tank collection in the world. Jacques’ team is currently working on the jewel of his collection, the extremely rare and coveted PANTHER. This one has been rescued from the bottom of a river in Poland and it has been – literally- blown to pieces. The damage and the mechanical complexity make this the toughest and most expensive job Jacques’ crew have ever done. But the damage also contains clues that lead us back to the scene to reveal what really happened to tank and crew on their final day of battle.

The American M4 Sherman is the best known, most widely used tank of the Second World War. It is also the most controversial. Was it the all-American tank that won the war or a completely under-designed death trap? We go to the Isle of Wight Military History Museum, where Dave Arnold and his crew are about to try something no one else has ever done before. They are going to chop two destroyed Shermans in half to piece together one good one. If they can pull it off it will be a testament to the most revolutionary aspect of the Sherman’s design – American-style production engineering allowed for production on a massive scale. It will show just why the Sherman, despite its flaws, remains one of the most important tanks ever made; and one of the many reasons why the Allies won the War.

We go to the Tank Workshop in Tooele, Utah where a crew of dedicated restorers race to finish a very special project. Their boss, Karl Smith, has gathered the largest private collection of World War II vehicles in the United States, and he’s throwing a VE-Day party with a big surprise. The crew has discovered that one of the M-18 HELLCAT Tank Destroyers in the collection is the same machine that a local veteran served in during the Second World War. They have two weeks to tear it apart, install a new engine, and get it running so they can take one very surprised veteran for the ride of his life.