Tanks, But No Tanks: Difference between revisions
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In most war films, particularly those set in the Second World War, historical tanks and armored vehicles will be replaced by either modern or more widely available contemporary vehicles that have either been painted in appropriate (or at least stereotypical) color schemes or given cosmetic makeovers to disguise their foreign or anachronistic features. The amount of effort that goes into this varies rather wildly.
There are many very good reasons for this. Antique armored vehicles are actually quite scarce. Tanks have never been particularly attractive on the surplus market since they are huge, heavy, fuel-guzzling lumps of steel useful for little else beyond waging war (often not even that, as older tanks are quite poor against newer but common anti-tank weapons) or making war movies. Surviving contemporary vehicles in operating condition can be hard to find and incredibly expensive to hire, transport and maintain for filming, in part because tanks tend to be just so flipping ''big'' and in part because military vehicle collectors are often understandably leery of renting their rare and often irreplaceable treasures to people who are just itching to [[Stuff Blowing Up|crash them, burn them, blow them up or drive them off cliffs.]] Many surplus vehicles are historical artifacts belonging to museums and likewise cannot be used recklessly or destroyed. Some of these vehicles may belong to countries you are technically at war with. And if you're filming a wartime propaganda movie at least half of these vehicles are going to belong to the enemy.
And many of these vehicles—particularly those from the defeated Axis nations—were never exactly common in the first place and survivors may not even exist: fewer than 500 King Tiger tanks were produced (as opposed to 47,000 M4 Shermans) and many contemporary Italian or Japanese vehicles were produced in even smaller numbers. (Even being [[Backed by the Pentagon]] won't help if all of the vehicles you need are scattered in small pieces across remote Pacific islands or buried in the Russian steppe.) Next, as the Sherman production numbers above suggest, filmmakers naturally took advantage of the huge glut of cheap surplus U.S. Army equipment in the immediate postwar period. Finally most contemporary armoured fighting vehicles have either been scrapped or met their end on the battlefield. Even Hollywood cannot destroy a tank twice.
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