The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Hobart's Funnies - January 9th, 2004

see educational sources

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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Hobart's Funnies

Necessity is the mother of invention, as the old saying goes; and in warfare, necessities can be urgent indeed. As a result, many technological innovations occur during wartime. The First World War brought us huge advances in aircraft design; the Second World War brought us atomic energy. But on a less grandiose scale, technical innovations occurred all the time in response to the immediate needs of the opposing forces..An article by Phil Llewellin in the June issue of Automobile Magazine recently brought some technical innovations that may not always have received their due: "Hobart's Funnies."

D-Day was the greatest amphibious operation in history. General Eisenhower's plan called for the Allies to put ashore 120,000 troops and 14,000 vehicles by the end of the first day. More than 6,000 vessels supported the assault.



Among the vehicles put ashore by the slab-sided landing craft were some of the strangest machines ever seen on a battlefield--and many of them had their genesis in an earlier raid whose name is all too familiar to Canadians: Dieppe.



In August, 1942, the Allies raided Dieppe with 6,000 troops and a force of Churchill tanks. They lost 3,500 men and most of their armor. One result of that disaster was further fortification of the French coast by the Germans, with steel and concrete obstacles designed to cripple landing craft, plus barbed wire, forts, pillboxes and huge, fortified artillery emplacements. But another result was a recognition by the Allies that they would need new, specialized kinds of armored fighting vehicles if they were to successfully invade France.



In March of 1943 Major General Sir Percy Hobart, who had commanded the famous British "Desert Rats" armored division in North Africa, was summoned to London to meet with General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Brooke wanted to raise a new armored division charged with developing, training and using a variety of special-purpose armored fighting vehicles to lead the Allies into France. Hobart was put in charge of Britain's 79th Armoured Division, devoted to that purpose.

When the Allies hit the beaches on D-Day, many of "Hobart's Funnies," as the products of the 79th Armoured Division were known, were also thrown into the fray.



One of the things Dieppe had made clear was that a landing craft big enough to carry nine tanks was also a dangerously inviting target for enemy gunners, offering them the opportunity to eliminate a large chunk of the invading force's armour with a single well-placed shell. For D-Day, the answer was to build a tank that could "swim" ashore after emerging from the landing craft at a relatively safe distance from the enemy. Tanks had been floated before, but conventional flotation devices wouldn't fit in the landing craft.

The new solution for D-Day was a nine-foot-high canvas screen attached to the vehicles hull with a waterproof seal. Air-filled rubber tubes and a simple metal frame gave it a boat-like shape--and also enabled the tank to float, just as you can make a brick float by putting it inside a floating bucket. The canvas walls took no more space than the tank did on the landing craft, could be raised in about 15 minutes, and too only seconds to lower once the tank hit the beach.



In addition to their treads, the "Duplex Drive" tanks had two propellers, driven by the main engines, which enabled them to glide through calm water at a brisk walking pace. Unfortunately, they were vulnerable to waves. The U.S. Army, for example, launched 64 floating Sherman tanks off Omaha Beach. Thirty-two of those were intended to support the First Infantry Division; all but five of them sank.



Hobart's 79th Armoured Division, however, had better luck: 33 of the 40 Churchill tanks they launched almost three miles offshore of Sword Beach reached the shore. The canvas hulls looked so harmless that no case was reported of anti-tank fire being directed at them while they were afloat. The amount of armour successfully landed was thus doubled over what might have been expected with traditional methods.

Many other of "Hobart's Funnies" were also modified Churchill AVRE tanks (AVRE stands for Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers). One problem faced by armoured vehicles on the beaches of Normandy was areas of blue clay that could swallow vehicles. The solution was a device called the Bobbin: an enormous reel of course hessian cloth, reinforced with steel poles and carried on a frame at the front of the Churchill tank. As the tank advanced, the cloth unrolled beneath its treads, providing a relatively secure footing for itself and following tanks until combat engineers could provide a more permanent solution in the form of perforated steel plates.



Mines were exploded by tanks equipped with hefty chains that ended in fist-sized steel balls. The chains flailed the ground as the tank inched forward. These specially equipped tanks were known as "Crabs." The military still uses similar devices to explode mines: in the IMAX movie Fires of Kuwait, there's a scene of a mine being detonated by a remote-controlled device that also flails the ground with chains.



Among the defenses faced by the invaders were ramparts and ditches high and deep enough to stop tanks. But the Allies also had special machinery to overcome them, beginning with an armored bulldozer used to fill in craters and recover bogged-down machinery. Then there was the Fascine, a bundle of wooden poles about eight feet in diameter, lashed together with stout wires, sort of like really heavy-duty snow fencing. It rested on the front of a Churchill tank and could be released to bridge a ditch or form a step at the base of a wall. Unfortunately, it was so bulky it required the tank's commander to either operate blind or direct operations from the top of the bundle, not the place you wanted to be during a battle.



A more sophisticated solution was the Armored Ramp Carrier, built by, among others, the MG Car company. This was a turretless tank that had ramps attached to the front and rear that could be extended to almost fifty feet. . Other vehicles could roll up one set of ramps, across the flat top of the vehicle, and up the other set of ramps to scale all kinds of awkward obstacles, such as seawalls.



Finally, there was the SBG (Small Box Girder) assault bridge, a huge device transported on the nose of a tank that could be lowered to span gaps as much as 30 feet wide, and which could support loads of up to forty tons.



Not all of Hobart's Funnies were purely engineering-related. The most spectacular came along just after D-Day. Called the Crocodile, it was a Churchill tank whose machine gun was replaced with a flamethrower with a range of about 200 yards. The Crocodile pulled a trailer containing about 400 gallons of fuel.



The 79th Armoured Division eventually totalled almost 7,000 vehicles. It was disbanded on August 20, 1945, just five months after one of its amphibian vehicles carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Rhine River. Field Marshall Montgomery wrote, "The record of the Division is unique and its contribution to the winning of the Campaign in northwest Europe incalculable."

Not bad for a bunch of "funnies."

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

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Hobart's Funnies



The tragic outcome of the Dieppe raid in August 1942 had taught the Allies the necessity of providing artillery cover for the initial infantry assault waves. The myriad obstacles installed by Rommel both on the beaches and inland was an additional argument for designing armoured vehicles capable of destroying them, all the while retaining their combat capabilities.

It was Major-General Sir Percy Hobart, placed at the head of the 79th Armoured Division, who was given the task of turning this idea into a reality. From his fertile imagination, together with that of his colleagues, sprang an astonishing array of vehicles with strange silhouettes, sneeringly nicknamed the “Funnies”. They were, in fact, tanks - generally Shermans or Churchills - which had been transformed and adapted to carry out specific tasks. The Crabs, for instance were fitted with flails to blow mines up, while the Crocodiles were equipped with powerful flame-throwers. Then there were the “bobbins”, the tanks carrying fascines and, most well-known of all, the DD amphibious tanks.


The “Bobbin”, a converted Churchill tank, was used to lay matting roads across the patches of sticky clay found on certain beaches.


Churchill-This tank could rapidly lay a bridge that would allow vehicles to cross a trench up to nine metres wide or scale a vertical object (such as a wall) up to 4.5 metres high.




The “Crab”, or flail tank, carried a drum fitted with chains at the end of its long steel arms, which could beat the ground and explode all the mines in its way.


This tank’s job was to use the fascine, or bundle of wooden poles, it was carrying to fill in antitank trenches or deep fords.


Designed by the Hungarian-born engineer Nicholas Straussler, the DD tank was fitted with a skirt of inflatable canvas around its hull, making it completely watertight. In the water, it was driven by a propeller. On land, the skirt was lowered and the engine took over as normal, hence the name DD (Duplex Drive).


Crocodiles” were Churchill tanks which had been equipped with a powerful flame-thrower instead of the front machine gun and a bowser containing an inflammable mixture. This equipment was also mounted on Bren carriers.

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Today's Educational Sources and suggestions for further reading:

www.d-daytanks.org.uk/tanks/
www.geocities.com/britsatwar/
www.normandiememoire.com
www.ihr.org

[snippy_about_it]

Hobart's Funnies were designed after the disastrous raid on Dunkirk. It was realised that vehicles were needed to overcome defences, anti-tank walls and ditches. General Hobart designed many different types of tanks to do this. One of the most reliable was a Sherman tank that could float in the water. They were used by the 79th Armoured division and were a classic example of British ingenious engineering. They were the reason for most of the successes on D day and enabled British and Canadian troops to get inland quickly and complete their objectives.



The Sherman Crab was a standard Sherman but had a flail sticking a few metres out to the front of the tank. The cylinder which the chains are attached to rotated at a very fast speed making the chains thrash the ground. If there were any mines in front of the tank, the chains would detonate the mines and there would be no damage to the tank. These were very useful on D day and if the Americans had not refused to use them on D day, they would not have had so many casualties on Omaha as the Crabs could have detonated the mines and, using the Sherman's main 75mm gun, took out the defences easily.



The Sherman DD tank was a great design. The screen which is shown up on the picture above, was held by a steel ring which went around the tanks body. The tank was again a normal Sherman tank. Two propellers were fitted to the rear of the tank to propel the tank in the water. The idea was that the Sherman DD tank (DD stood for Duplex Drive) would, with its screen up, drive into the sea from a landing craft about half a mile offshore (this is just a guess, I do not know the real distance) and, using the propellers, swim towards the shore. When the tank reached the shore, it would drive up onto the beach, lower its screen and take out the beach defences. The Infantry and other vehicles would arrive afterwards and would have no trouble getting off the beach as there was no German resistance. Sadly, at Omaha beach, only a few of the DD tanks reached the beach as they were launched out of the landing craft too far offshore as the Coxswains of the landing craft feared that if they got too close to the beach, they would hit a mine or be attacked by German Artillery or machine gun fire.



The Churchill was the idea for most of the AVRE's (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers) as it was perfect for the designs it was needed for. It had a low, heavily armoured hull that had a spacious interior and had escape hatches at the side for easy escape. Many of the Churchill AVRE's had some sort of bridging device on it. This variant carried a bridge up to a gap, i.e. an Anti-Tank ditch and would drop the bridge over the gap and then drive over the gap, and so would other vehicles. The Churchill AVRE's were fitted with a special, cast turret which had a Petard Mortar which lobbed a large mortar shell about 25-50 metres and would destroy concrete defences i.e. anti tank walls, bunkers or gun emplacements. They were a great success. Many survive in Normandy as memorials.



The armoured Bulldozer was the standard Caterpillar D8 bulldozer that was armoured. It was used in the initial assault for moving mounds of earth or beach defences like Tetrahedra or Hedgehogs which would block the way for other vehicles and Landing Craft coming in when the tide was higher.

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On this Day In History


Birthdates which occurred on January 09:
1554 Gregory XV [Alessandro Ludovisi], Roman Catholic pope (1621-23)
1803 Christopher Gustavus Memminger Secretary Treasurer (Confederacy) died in 1888
1816 John Palmer Usher Secretary Interior (Union) died in 1889
1822 John Porter Hatch volunteers Brevet Major General (Union), died in 1901
1859 Carrie Lane Chapman Catt women's rights leader/founder (League of Women Voters)
1870 Joseph B Strauss civil engineer/builder (Golden Gate Bridge)
1890 Karel Capek Czechoslovakia, writer (R U R ); coined the word "robot"
1898 Gracie Fields [Stansfield], England, music hall/vaudeville performer
1901 Chic Young cartoonist (Blondie)
1902 Rudolph Bing opera manager (New York Metropolitan Opera)
1904 George Balanchine dancer/choreographer/ballet producer
1908 Simone de Beauvoir France, author (Mandarins, 2nd Sex)
1913 Richard Milhouse Nixon Yorba Linda CA, (R) 37th President (1969-74)
1914 Gypsy Rose Lee [Rose Hovick], Seattle, burlesque actress (Gypsy)
1915 Fernando Lamas Buenos Aires Argentina, actor ("You look marvelous")
1915 Les Paul guitarist/inventor (Les Paul Guitar)
1917 Herbert Lom Czech, actor (Pink Panther Strikes Again, Dorian Gray)
1925 Lee Van Cleef New Jersey, actor (For a Few Dollars More, Escape from New York)
1933 Robert Garcia (Representative-D-New York, 1978- )
1934 Bart Starr NFL quarterback/coach (Green Bay)
1935 Bob Denver New Rochelle NY, actor (Dobie Gillis, Gilligan's Island)
1941 Joan Baez Staten Island, folk singer/human rights advocate
1941 Susannah York London, actress (A Man for All Seasons, Tom Jones)
1944 Jimmy Page London England, rock guitarist (Led Zeppelin-Stairway to Heaven)
1972 Kristie Hicks Bardstown KY, Miss Kentucky-America (1995)

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Deaths which occurred on January 09:
1324 Marco Polo Italian explorer, dies
1499 Johan Cicero elector of (Brandenburg, 1486-99), dies at 43
1843 Caroline Herschel "1st lady of astronomy", dies at 98 in Germany
1878 Victor Emmanuel II king of Sardinia (1849-61)/Italy (1861-78), dies at 57
1893 Mohara, Arab ivory/slave trader, dies in battle & is eaten
1979 Sara Carter vocalist/guitarist (Carter Family), dies at 80
1993 Felix Grucci fireworks expert, dies of Alzheimer's disease at 87

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Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1966 SCHIMBERG JAMES P.---CEDAR RAPIDS IA.
[REMAINS RETURNED 12/22/98]
1966 WILLIAMS THADDEUS E.---MOBILE AL.
[REMAINS RETURNED 12/22/98]
1968 DALY JAMES A. JR.---BROOKLYN NY.
[03/16/73 RELEASED BY PRG, DECEASED]
1968 GREEN NORMAN M.---WASHINGTON DC.
1968 IRSCH WAYNE C.---TULSA OK.
1968 NEWTON WARREN E.---CANBY OR.
1968 PHIPPS JAMES L.---MATOON IL.
1968 RAMOS RAINIER S.---BELLINGHAM WA.
1968 REHE RICHARD R.---LONG BEACH CA.
1968 SYKES DERRI---CHICAGO IL.
1968 WATKINS WILLIE A.---SUMTER NC.
[11/05/69 RELEASED]
1969 BYRD HUGH M. JR.---BEREA KY.
1969 O'BRIEN KEVIN---FARMINGVILLE NY.

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

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On this day...
1296 Earl Floris V signs accord with French king
1317 Phillips V, the Tall, crowned king of France
1349 700 Jews of Basel Switzerland, burned alive in their houses
1428 Pope Martinus V declares Jacoba van Beierens marriage invalid
1464 1st meeting of States-General of Netherlands
1493 1st sight of manatees (by Christopher Columbus)
1522 Adriaan F Boeyens of Utrecht elected only Dutch/last non-Italian pope (Adrian VI)
1570 Tsar Ivan the terrible kills 1000-2000 residents of Novgorod
1718 France declares war on Spain
1760 Afghans defeat Marathas in battle of Barari Ghat
1776 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, a scathing attack on King George III's reign over the colonies and a call for complete independence.
1788 Connecticut becomes 5th state
1793 Jean Pierre Blanchard makes 1st balloon flight in North America (Philadelphia)
1799 Income Tax introduced in UK
1811 1st Women's Golf Tournament held
1812 Swedish Pomerania (Germany) seized by Napoleon
1839 Daguerrotype photo process announced at French Academy of Science
1839 Thomas Henderson measures 1st stellar parallax (Alpha Centauri)
1847 1st San Francisco newspaper published (California Star)
1848 People's uprising in Palermo Sicily
1854 Astor Library opens in New York City NY
1855 Clipper Guiding Star disappears in Atlantic, 480 dies
1857 7.9 earthquake shakes Fort Tejon CA
1861 1st hostile act of Civil War; Star of the West fired on, Sumter SC
1861 Mississippi becomes 2nd state to secede
1863 -Jan 11th] Battle of Arkansas Post AR (Fort Hindman)
1866 Fisk University establishes
1879 Cheyenne prisoners led by Dull Knife revolt at Fort Robinson
1880 6' (1.8 meters) of snow falls in Seattle in 5 days
1903 Baseball's National & American Leagues make peace
1903 Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota established
1903 Frank Farrell & Bill Devery purchase AL Baltimore franchise for $18,000 & move it to New York City NY (Yankees)
1905 Bloody Sunday-demonstrators fired on by tsarist troops
1908 Muir Woods National Monument, California established
1908 Count Zeppelin announces plans for his airship to carry 100 passengers
1909 Ernest Shackleton reaches 88º23' south
1912 US marines invade Honduras
1929 KDB-AM in Santa Barbara CA begins radio transmissions
1933 Amsterdam confectionery worker go on strike against wage reduction
1936 Semi-automatic rifles adopted by US army
1937 Italian regime bans marriages between Italians & Abyssinians
1941 6,000 Jews exterminated in pogrom in Bucharest Romania
1942 Joe Louis KOs Buddy Baer in 1 for heavyweight boxing title
1942 US Joint Chiefs of Staff created
1945 US soldiers led by General Douglas MacArthur invade Philippines
1951 Life After Tomorrow, 1st film to receive an "X" rating, premieres
1952 Marines give notice that they will recall Ted Williams to active duty
1954 -87ºF (-66ºC), Northice Station, Greenland (Greenland record)
1956 Abigail Van Buren's "Dear Abby" column 1st appears in newspapers
1956 Samir el-Rifai forms government in Jordan
1957 Checheno-Ingush ASSR reformed in RSFSR
1957 British premier Anthony Eden resigns
1957 Dutch Newspaper Society expels communist daily paper "Truth"
1958 In basketball Oscar Robertson (Cincinnati OH) scores 56, Seton Hall team 54
1959 "Rawhide" with Clint Eastwood premieres on CBS TV
1960 Building of Aswan dam in Egypt, begins
1962 Mister M (Dr X) beats Verne Gagne in Minnesota, to become NWA champ
1962 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1966 Polish government denies exit visa to Cardinal Wyszynski revisionism
1967 Georgia legislature seats Representative Julian Bond
1968 Surveyor 7 space probe soft lands on the Moon
1969 Concorde jetliner's 1st test flight (Bristol England)
1970 Constitution of Singapore enacted
1972 Billionaire Howard Hughes said Clifford Irving's biography is a fake
1976 CW McCall CB song "Convoy" hit #1 on the country music charts
1977 Super Bowl XI Oakland Raiders defeat Minnesota Vikings, 32-14, in Pasadena; Super Bowl MVP Fred Biletnikoff, Oakland, Wide Receiver
1979 High-school player Daryl Moreau makes 126th consecutive free throws
1979 Supreme Court strikes down (6-3) PA law requiring doctors performing an abortion to try to preserve lives of potentially viable fetuses
1980 63 beheaded in Mecca, Saudi Arabia
1983 British PM Margaret Thatcher visits the Falkland Islands
1987 New Nicaraguan constitution takes effect
1987 Chinese/Vietnamese border fights, 1500 killed
1989 Johnny Bench & Carl Yastrzemski elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
1990 64th US manned space mission STS 32 (Columbia 10) launches into orbit
1990 Supreme Court strikes down Dallas' ordinance imposing strict zoning on sexually oriented businesses
1991 Baker & Aziz meet in Geneva; talks fail to defuse the gulf crisis
1991 Baseball officially bans Pete Rose from being elected to Hall of Fame
1997 Heart attacks sends Frank Sinatra back to hospital
1998 Anatoly Karpov defeats Viswanathan Anand to retain chess title
1998 Decapitated head of Danish Little Mermaid is returned
1999 French NATO forces killed a suspected war criminal in Bosnia while trying to arrest him. Dragan Gagovic had been charged in the rape and torture of Muslim women during a Serb offensive in eastern Bosnia in 1992-93.

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Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Connecticut : Ratification Day (1788)
Panamá, Canal Zone : Martyrs' Day/Dia de los Martires
Switzerland : Meitlisunntig Festival-Woman in Villmergen War (1712) (Sunday)
US : Pun Week (Day 6)
Fungal Infection Awareness Month.

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Religious Observances
Roman Catholic : Feast of St Adrian
Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Julian the Hospitaller & companions

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Religious History
1569 St. Philip of Moscow, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, was murdered by Czar Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible").
1777 Pioneer American Methodist bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal: 'My soul lives constantly as in the presence of God, and enjoys much of His divine favor. His love is better than life!'
1836 The first Roman Catholic college to be founded in the Deep South, Spring Hill College was established in Spring Hill, Arkansas.
1924 Death of British Armenian scholar F. C. Conybeare, 68. His researches did much to relate the Armenian language and culture to the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint).
1970 After 140 years of unofficial racial discrimination, the Mormons issued an official statement declaring that blacks were not yet to receive the priesthood "for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which He has not made fully known to man."

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

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Thought for the day :
"Imagination is only intelligence having fun."

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Question of the day...
How did a fool and his money get together?

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Murphys Law of the day...(Frisbee Law)
The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just beyond reach.

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Astoundingly Amazing fact #47...
There are one million ants for every human being.

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone in The FOXHOLE

[snippy_about_it]

Brrrrr.

[snippy_about_it]

"Imagination is only intelligence having fun."

I like that. It's Friday Valin, yippee. So did you pick out a nice bookcase?

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning feather. Love seeing that flag waving in here in the morning. Thanks.