He managed to emerge from the wrecked tank and commandeer a Sherman Firefly, equipped with a powerful seventeen-pounder gun, which he used to destroy the Tiger and drive off the other tanks.
Knowing his Sherman was outgunned, Gorman ordered his driver to ram the Tiger, which disabled both vehicles. On 18 July 1944 near Cagny his troop of M4 Sherman tanks ran into four German tanks, one of which was a much-feared Tiger II.
Arriving in France two weeks after D-Day, he served as a lieutenant with the second battalion of the Irish Guards in Operation Goodwood, the Allied breakout from Normandy. In December 1942 he was commissioned into the Irish Guards and trained in England in armoured warfare through 1943–4. He was attending the Imperial Service College in Windsor when war broke out in September 1939 and then moved to Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. Down, and Loreto Convent Grammar School, Omagh. John Reginald was educated at Rockport School, Holywood, Co. Soon afterwards, he moved north and joined the RUC, becoming a district inspector and later county inspector. After the war he joined the RIC and commanded its Phoenix Park depot, which he handed over to Michael Collins (qv) in 1922. Commissioned in the Royal Horse Artillery, he won the Military Cross (MC) at the battle of Jerusalem in 1917 and was promoted to major. Tipperary, for Argentina, where he worked for the national railway company, but returned to the United Kingdom on the outbreak of war in 1914. In 1908 Jack Gorman left his family’s large farm at Gurtishall, near Ballyporeen, Co. Cork her sister Veronica O’Brien (qv) became a well-known catholic mystic and spiritual adviser to King Baudouin of Belgium. Annette was the daughter of Kathleen and Patrick O’Brien, a physician from Midleton, Co.
Both sides of the family were catholic and unionist. Tyrone, the eldest of four children of Major John Kearney (Jack) Gorman (1891–1980), an RUC officer, and his wife Annette Mary Josephine O’Brien (1891–1966). Gorman, (Sir) John Reginald (1923–2014), soldier, policeman, businessman, civil servant and politician, was born on 1 February 1923 at Mullaghmore House, Omagh, Co.