Hobart's funnies, the special weapons

In 1944 the beaches from Norway all the way down to the Spanish border where lined with obstacles of all sorts from the huge steel Belgian gates up to the poles with mines on top of them.

The Allies made numerous air reconnaisance pictures of these obstacles and the reconstructed them in England. 79th Armoured division had orders to come up with a number of special weapons to help the landing forces to overcome the obstacles on the beaches.

This lead to the following weapons.

Sherman A4-D4 DD (Duplex Drive)

This was an amphibious tank, driven by two propellors on the back of the tank. The tank had a boat shaped platform. On this platform a canvas construction was made. The canvas could be lifted from in side the tank by two gas cellinders. The canvas when fully elevated came one metre higher than the waterline. This ment that the tank could only float in quiet water. The tank could reach 7 kilometres an hour while in the water. In the water the tank looked like a very small fragile boat so it probably wouldn't attract much attention from the German defenders before it drove onto the beach. The tank was an invention or the engineer Nicolas Strauller.

The canvas construction has been lifted on this DD Tank that stands in the Bovington Tank museum in Southern England. The window in the canvas is only for display functions, made by the museum. the driver of the tank had to stand on top of the turret to see where he was going when the tank was in the water. Some troops thought that the DD stood for Donald Duck.

Sherman M4-D4 Crab flegeltank.

This tank saw it's first action in North Africa, however D-day would be the first operation in which it would be used on a large scale. The idea for this tank cam form the South African major A.S. du Toit. The crab was a normal Sherman tank with the one exception that it had a large drum in front of it with chaines attached to the drum. The tank driver could spin the drum, so that the chains would bang on the ground in front of the tank. These chaines would explode any mines that might be their on a safe distance in front of the tank. The tank could clear a safe passage through a minefield of three metres wide. On the back-end of the tank two containers with chalk where attached. With the chalk the tank could mark the path it had cleared.

Churchill MK-III Bobbin

Special units of the Britsh navy landed on the Normandy beached and took samples of the sand with them. From this the Intelligence concluded that at least part of the beach would be to soft to carry the heavy weight of tanks. The Bobbin was a Churchill tank that would lay a large wooden carpet on the beach. The carpet was 3 metres wide and 110 metres long. The carpet would also cover the barbed wire which would facilitate the infantry in crossing the barbed wire. After the whole carpet was laid, the tank could get rid of the drum that had carried the carpet, by blowing up small explosives. The churchill tank could then be of further service as a regular tank.

Churchill MK-VII Crocodile

On this tank the machinegun was replaces by a flamethrower. This canon was fuelled by a cart which the tank towed behind it. This cart contained 1800 litres of pressured (stikstof?). The crocodile could produce a beam of frames  upto 120 metres. This weapon would prove to be very effective against small bunkers and machinegun posts.

Churchill MK-III AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers)

The tank is equiped with a 25-pound Pertard-mortar. It had a range of two hundred metres. This tank could carry an SBG, a "Small Box Glider", this was a small bridge element in order to bypass tankwalls, and didges. In stead of a SBG, huge bundles of wood where also carried by these tanks for the same purpose.

The British and Canadians used all the types mentioned above on D-day. The Americans only used the DD tank and as we shall see without succes.

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