run, so the number of Panthers deployed came as a surprise to Allied formation commanders and tank crews forced to engage them with guns that could not penetrate the frontal armour except at short range. Ken Tout, who served as a tank gunner and tank commander in the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry in Normandy in 1944, described the effect of mounting a 17-pounder in the Sherman: Panthers and Tigers accounted for only about 126 of the 2,300 German tanks deployed in Normandy; the rest being Panzer IVs, Sturmgeschütz III tank destroyers and other armoured vehicles that the 75 mm Shermans could penetrate. The importance of Caen and Montgomery's operations, which pinned German armoured forces in front of the British positions so the American units could break out to the west, meant that British and other Commonwealth units had to face over 70 per cent of the German armour deployed during the Battle of Normandy, as well as over half of the elite, well-equipped Waffen-SS Panzer units. As a result, the Sherman Firefly was perhaps the most valued tank by British and other Commonwealth commanders, as it was the only tank in the British Army able to reliably penetrate the frontal armour of Panthers and Tigers at the standard combat ranges in Normandy. This fact did not go unnoticed by the Germans, who realised that these long-barrel Shermans posed a much greater threat to their heavy tanks than the normal Shermans, and German tank crews and anti-tank gun crews were instructed to eliminate Fireflies first. Similarly, the Firefly crews realised that the distinctive long barrel of their 17-pounder gun made their Fireflies stand out from standard Shermans, so they attempted to disguise their tanks to reduce the likelihood of being targeted. Some crews had the front half of the olive drab gun barrel painted white on the bottom, or white with dark green on top, to give the illusion of a shorter gun barrel. Another suggestion was for a shorter wooden dummy gun to be mounted on the rear of the turret and point forward; however, this tactic does not appear to have been used in combat. Despite being a high priority target, Fireflies appear to have had a statistically lower chance of being knocked out than standard Shermans, probably due more to how they were employed than to the effectiveness of the camouflaging of the long barrel. Given the high value