In this image below square 3 looks to have lost its trunk in an explosion, left track is blown off and it seems that they are trying to tow it out of a crater to repair it the rear of the tank looks like it might’ve caught on fire. The paint on the rear of the tank and where the square 3 is painted looks damaged.
Not a hard rule, but fairly common, A Co. is Triangle, B Co. is a square, and C Co. is a circle for company ID markings. Depending upon the Battalion organization, HQ Co. or D Co. is a Diamond.
Yeah, the numbers have a clear different shape to them. I’m baffled that the same battalion would have more than one tank with the same symbol, so these shapes might’ve been a way to distinguish different platoons within the same company as opposed to different companies within the battalion?
They would not. Except for maybe exhaust deflation, I doubt they would add the lower wading trunk to a replacement tank. My other thought was at least with that company on Oki they had bars on the bogie. Maybe blown off but still think it’s from a different campaign/unit. I think there was 3 or 4 tank battalions on Oki.
There is some excellent footage of 6th TB M4A3s including from A Company with the T6 fittings on our film repository at the University of South Carolina. There are also a few 713th Tank Battalion (Flamethrower) M4 Composite POA-CWS-H1 flame tanks in it.
