On the morning of the sixth of June, nineteen forty four, German defenders along the coast of Normandy watched something rise out of the sea that their training could not account for. Tanks that swam ashore behind canvas screens. Tanks that beat clear paths through minefields with spinning chains. Tanks that broke open concrete strongpoints, laid bridges across ditches, and cleared the way for the infantry behind them. These were the specialized armoured vehicles of the British seventy ninth Armoured Division, the machines the soldiers nicknamed Hobart's Funnies. This documentary tells the true story of how they were invented, the sacked general and the émigré engineer who made them possible, and the deeper reason one nation could produce them while another could not. It is a carefully researched account of the Duplex Drive swimming tank, the Sherman Crab, the Churchill assault vehicles, and the men who designed, crewed, and in many cases gave their lives operating them on D-Day. Along the way it separates the documented history from the popular myths, including the real story of the American beaches, and it honours the engineers, the tank crews, and the soldiers of Gold, Juno, and Sword. If a member of your family served in the seventy ninth Armoured Division, the Royal Engineers, or on the beaches of Normandy, please share their name and unit in the comments so their memory is kept alive. Subscribe for more true stories from the Second World War, told with a focus on accuracy, engineering, and the people behind the machines.

Sources and further reading
Imperial War Museums, The Funny Tanks of D-Day: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-fu...
Imperial War Museums, The German Response to D-Day: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second...
The Tank Museum, Bovington, Tanks on D-Day: https://tankmuseum.org/article/tanks-...
The Tank Museum, Bovington, How to Invent a DD Tank: https://tankmuseum.org/how-to-invent-...
The Green Howards Museum, Stanley Hollis Victoria Cross: https://greenhowards.org.uk/stanley-h...
The Juno Beach Centre, Canadian armour on D-Day: https://www.junobeach.org/canada-in-w...
The National WWII Museum, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches on D-Day: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war...
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, D-Day casualties in numbers: https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/d-...
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sir Percy Hobart: https://www.britannica.com/biography/...
Further reading: Kenneth Macksey, Armoured Crusader, a biography of Major General Sir Percy Hobart; David Fletcher, Vanguard of Victory, the story of the seventy ninth Armoured Division; Peter Caddick-Adams, Sand and Steel, a new history of D-Day.