Moderators I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this question. Please feel free to move it if needs be. Thank you. Did any Free French Armoured unit receive Sherman fireflies during the war? If yes does anyone know which unit? If not what about postwar? It’s my understanding the French retired their Shermans in 1955.
No Sherman Fireflies ended up with the French. After initial Lend Lease deliveries of M2A2 & M4A4 tanks in North Africa in early 1943, to form 3 French Armoured Divisions, all replacement vehicles came through the US Army supply chain. Only in 1945 did a few Fireflies filter through to the US supply chain in NWE but there is no record AFAIK of them seeing any combat. Details of French Shermans in WW2 can be found here French Shermans At the foot of the page is a link to a listing of all known French Shermans in WW2. http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/french_shermans/liste_chars_francais.xls There are also pages for the post-war MDAP and French ‘Transforme’ variants accessed from the main Sherman Minutia page. Sherman minutia homepage
Harry Yeide in The Infantry's Armor, states the Sherman Fireflies were used by the US in Italy, April 1945 iirc.
"Sherman Firefly" by Mark Hayward published in 2001 is the most detailed work on the Firefly yet produced, AFAIK. He devotes 3 pages to the story of the Firefly and the US Army in NWE and Italy. The story is too complicated to summarise in this post. While some were acquired in NWE the conclusion was that none saw combat. It finishes with a note that the 555th Tank Battalion in Italy seems to have had some as there was a reference in a signal (Note some subsequent sources refer to the 553rd not the 555th Tank Batt). "9 May 1945, Cameri, Italy. C Company is to turn in its 17-pdr tanks". It went on that the Company was ".....hoping to do a lot of good with them....". That suggests they never got to use them. But other than that the only reference the author was able to find was a record that the 5th Army was holding 12 Fireflies in April 1945. There are no other details of when, where or to which unit they had been acquired or issued. So it must have been some kind of local transfer arrangement rather than a formal allocation to the US Army. Fireflies didn't arrive in British and Commonwealth units in Italy until early Oct 1944. One unit was the 6th South African Armoured Div which operated under the control of the US 5th Army in late 1944 and into 1945. So conceivably it might have been the source of the 555th US Army Tank Batt Fireflies.
