June 24, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 54

WW2 Derring Do


Churchill’s Secret Weapons: The Story of Hobart’s Funnies, by Patrick Delaforce. Pen & Sword Military, 2006 (reprinting a 1998 book), 256 pp. £19.99; £15.99 from Amazon UK. Not available from Churchill Book Club.

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Did you know that “Churchill was undoubtedly the architect of the modern armoured division” (pp 27-28)? Neither did I, nor, I suspect, did Heinz Guderian or George Patton. And that is but an example of the basic problem with this volume—it seeks to tell one story (the subtitle) while rather falsely promoting another in the main title…not that Churchill’s name hasn’t been misused before.

At its core, this is the story of how Britain’s overstretched army made use of a variety of technical devices and weapons to expand its role in the war in Western Europe, especially in 1944-45. “Hobart” in the subtitle is Major General Percy (what a name for a military figure-indeed he was widely known as “Hobo”) Hobart. Often disliked by his peers for being acerbic, the irascible tank authority was in charge of what some dubbed “Churchill’s Toy Factory.” And this is primarily the tale of the British Army’s 79th Armoured Division which Hobart commanded, and how it trained, went ashore on D-Day, and then moved across Europe until VE-Day. Put another way, this is more a unit history than another book about how Churchill ran the war.

And it’s not a very well-written one at that. Suffering the problem of too many military books of bogging down under the weight of a tattoo of abbreviations and military unit designations, it is a hard slog for all but the most committed reader. Further, Delaforce often raises issues only to drop them and move on, leading to a choppy style of disconnected parts that makes it difficult to follow the story. On the bright side, there are plenty of maps (sometimes a mite hard to read) and illustrations to help carry the tale.

With Churchill’s support, Hobart encouraged new ideas—the “funnies” of the title, chiefly technical features built around British or American tanks that helped to extend the reach and power of too-few British and Canadian troops (the U.S. command generally shunned use of the innovations). Perhaps the best known was the “crab flail,” where a tank would drive ahead into a mine field with heavy chains being waved ahead of it to blow up hidden mines. This was both quicker and far safer than individual mine detecting, especially under fire. Another innovation was the tank that carried a scissor bridge for crossing small streams. The DD tank or “schwim-panzer” allowed a heavy tank to proceed to a beachhead from the water. The CDL (canal defence light) tank carried a huge searchlight for night operations while others carried flame-throwers useful in attacking deeply entrenched enemy forces. Others, called AVREs (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers) carried sappers and other engineers and their equipment close to enemy fortifications to assure their destruction.

Most of the book consists of British small-unit actions, relating how the “funnies” worked under battlefield conditions, some of them better than others. Making good use of first-person quotes of men who were there, Delaforce illustrates how the various tank technologies helped to save Allied lives while punching through German defenses. The result is a book focused on almost the individual soldier level, with all the confusion that limited line-of-sight provides.

The “secret” weapons were nothing of the sort, though they did provide an element of surprise when first utilized. Their story is of interest to those who were there (and their off-spring), and to those concerned more with tactics than strategy. But don’t let the Churchill references in the index fool you—this is largely Hobo Hobart’s story of planning and perseverance.
—CHS

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