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Trails

D-Day 60th Anniversary: Hobart's Funnies

By Gavin Greenwood

Image: shows a tank with a flail attached to it's front. The flails are ripping through barbed wire beach defences

Photo: a Sherman 'Crab' gets to grips with barbed wire beach defences. Picture courtesy: Tank Museum, Bovington.

There are two ways of landing troops on a defended beach. One is to rely on a combination of bombardment and rapid movement to land assault troops as far up the beach as possible, trading probable lower human casualties for higher material loss. This technique was favoured by specialists units, notably the Royal Marines or the US Marine Corps.

The other is to land troops when low tide exposed obstacles and made mine clearance easier, but at the risk of higher casualties among the assault units but fewer material losses among landing craft and other specialised or hard-to-replace equipment

For D-Day the latter course was chosen as extensive reconnaissance had shown the extent of German defences and the risk they posed to landing craft at high tide. The British response to this decision, as well as the lessons learned at Dieppe, was to develop a number of specialised armoured vehicles that could support the first wave of infantry and breach the German coastal defence line.

Image: shows a colour photograph of a fully restored Chuchill AVRE tank. It is green and has a large mortar instead of the conventional gun barrel in its turret.

Photo: the Churchill AVRE had a turret-mounted Petard Mortar. Picture courtesy: Tank Museum Bovington.

The job of raising this force was given to Major-General Percy Hobart, an officer whose pre-war efforts to create modern armoured corps for the British army had earned him powerful enemies among infantry and cavalry traditionalists. Hobart was forced into retirement in early 1940 on still unexplained grounds, and promptly joined his local Home Guard unit as a corporal.

His rehabilitation began when Churchill came to power, and Hobart was elevated from a junior NCO in the Home Guard to command of an armoured division in North Africa. In 1943 Hobart was asked to raise and command the 79th Armoured Division, a formation that ended the war in 1945 with nearly 2,000 specialised tanks and other armoured vehicles, a number that was four times the size of a normal division.

Image: shows a black and white photograph of a tank with a huge piece of bridge attached to its front.

Photo: 'Arks' provided the instant answer to bridging problems. Photo courtesy: Tank Museum, Bovington.

The 79th Division was unique in that it never fought as a single unit. Rather, its brigades and regiments provided specialist armoured support for other formations. These tanks were quickly dubbed ‘Hobart’s Funnies,’ but few doubt the contribution they made in breaching or surmounting German defence lines.

However, the first specialised tanks that landed on D-Day to provide close fire support for the assault troops on all beaches were US-designed ‘swimming’ or DD (‘duplex drive’) tanks.

Image: shows three military vehicles in the indoor collection at Bovington Tank Museum. On the left is a Sherman Tank with canvass surrounding its turret, in the midle is a DUKW amphibious vehicle and on the right is a Sherman Tank with a large drum with chain flails attached to its front.

Photo: (from l to r) a Sherman DD, DUKW and 'Crab' at the Tank Museum. Picture courtesy: Tank Museum, Bovington.

The DD’s were Sherman tanks enveloped in a waterproofed canvas screen that enabled them to be launched at sea from landing craft and then slowly ‘swim’ to the beach. Once ashore the crews would deflate the screens allowing the tank to operate as a fighting vehicle.

The DD’s were exceptionally dangerous in anything other than the most placid sea, and many had been lost - often with their crews - in training off the south coast of England.

You can read the Tank Museum’s coverage of the commemoration of a wartime training accident at Studland Bay by clicking on this link

Their success depended on a number of variables, but the key was how close their launch point was to the beach. This was a difficult judgement call for the naval officers responsible for the landing craft, as the differing experience of British and American DD’s demonstrated.

Image: shows a black and white photograph of a Sherman DD - shot from the side it clearly shows the canvas surround.

Photo: on D-Day the US Army put their faith in the Sherman DD as the main source of armoured suport on the beaches. Picture courtesy: Tank Museum, Bovington.

The decision to launch 32 US Army DD’s some six kilometres off Omaha beach resulted in the loss of 27 of the tanks being swamped and sunk. British and Canadian DDs were generally launched much closer inshore and the great majority survived to support the infantry.

Having gained a foothold ashore, the Allied troops were faced with a variety of threats and obstacles. The immediate challenge for the assault wave was dominate the ground beyond the beachhead and then create safe paths through the extensive German minefields for the follow-on forces.

Image: shows a black and white photo of a tank with a large circular mat-laying contraption attached to the front

Photo: Bobbins laid down huge carpets of reinforced sacking over soft ground to prevent vehicles bogging down. Photo courtesy: Tank Museum, Bovington.

Hobart’s contribution were a series of specialised tanks operated by the armoured corps and the engineers. A modified Sherman tank, codenamed ‘Crab’, was developed for mine clearance by constructing a spinning drum (‘Flail’) of weighted chains on the front of the vehicle that would slowly churn a secure path across the beach and smash through barbed wire and other light defences.

A few Churchill flame-throwing tanks (‘Crocodiles’) capable of firing a jet of blazing napalm more than 100m were landed, but there is no record of them being used until the fighting moved further inland.

Image: shows a tank with a large bundle of wooen sticks attached to its upper rear.

Photo: 'Fascines’ dumped bundles of wooden poles into ditches to form an instant culvert. Photo courtesy: Tank Museum, Bovington.

Other tanks used by Hobart’s division included adapted Churchill AVREs (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer) armed with a 290mm ‘Petard’ mortar that could lob a 20 kg charge at bunkers and gun emplacements, ‘Bobbins’ to lay huge carpets of reinforced sacking over soft ground to prevent vehicles bogging down, ‘Fascines’ to dump bundles of wooden poles into ditches to form an instant culvert and ‘Arks’ to provide longer and more permanent bridges.

The 79th Division was also unique in that its units were among the few British formations to be routinely deployed with the US Army, reflecting the Americans decision not to create their own range of ‘funnies.’

Find out more about Hobart's Funnies and the tanks of Normandy 1944 at the Tank Museum, Bovington. As well as holding the finest collection of tanks in the UK and Europe, the Tank Museum has a collection of Funnies - including a Churchill AVRE and Sherman DD. Visit their website by clicking on this link

Read Gavin Greenwood's feature exploring the background to the D-Day landings

Read Gavin Greenwood’s feature about the training, logistics, build up and deception involved in the D-day landings

Read Gavin Greenwood’s feature about the Normandy Landings of June 6 1944

Explore some of the locations and museums in Normandy today that tell the story of D-Day

Read about the Mulberry Harbours and how they kept the supplies rolling after the D-Day landings

Read our feature on the different types of tank or Hobart's Funnies, developed for the D-Day landings

Read our timeline of events leading up to D-Day

Click here to explore D-Day web links