Which modified tank was the best of Hobart's Funnies?

Fun fact: In Poland the old guard part of the military is called "concrete". A fitting name for something, that once sets in won't budge.

6:35 Like what Fat Electrician once said, "If it looks stupid, but works. Then it isn't stupid."

Mr. Terry’s students are fortunate to have a rock star for a teacher..  I don’t think many history teachers would admit they never heard of General Hobo and they learned a ton from a guy on YouTube..  I have no doubt Mr. Terry puts the work in to make history interesting for his students and will add General Hobo, his men and his funnies into his curriculum giving General Hobo, his men and funnies their due credit and his students will be more knowledgeable in return .

I was looking forward to this reaction and it didn’t disappoint..

All it takes is the will of a single man

Liddell Hart said of him: "To have moulded the best two British armoured divisions of the war was an outstanding achievement (7th armoured and 11th armoured), but Hobart made it a "hat trick" by his subsequent training of the specialised 79th Armoured Division, the decisive factor on D-Day."

The British used the Churchill tank as the basis for many of the "Funnies." The US senior officers recognised that it would take too long to wait for the British to supply the funnies, and then to train US troops on how to use them. Even simple things such as driving the tanks was made more complicated because the driving position was on the right for driving on British roads. Spares would also complicate the logistics train. The DD tanks were based on Sherman tanks, so were deemed OK to be used.

The weather conditions were stormy on D-day, but the Royal Navy had been training with the British Army for months, and understood the limitations of the DD tanks. The US Navy were less familiar with the tanks, so launched them more than a mile or off the beaches losing almost all of the tanks launched Omaha beach. A US officer saw what had happened and ordered the remaining tanks to be landed directly on the beach. Of course this resulted in delays in getting tank support onto the beaches.

On the other hand, the Royal Navy realised the problems and launched their DD tanks only a few hundred yards from the beaches, thus ensuring that almost all the tanks made it to the beaches.

One of the designs for a Funny, was a tank with a ramp on top of the turret. It was a bit like the bridging tanks, but the ramp was a bit smaller. It was used to create a route off the beach where there was a blockage with the sea wall.

The tank was driven straight to the wall, and the ramp angle was adjusted hydraulically from inside the tank to make it simple for the supporting tanks to drive up the ramp and over the sea wall.

If there was a big drop on the landward side, the next tank would be a bridging tank which made a ramp on the landward side so the following tanks could have a safe landing!

Fun fact about the Sherman Crab tank: the standard engine wasn't powerful enough to run the flail, so a second Sherman engine was mounted in an armored box strapped to the outer hull of the tank.

Also, the Duplex tanks are still visible on Normandy. I remember talks of one being raised and restored, but I haven't heard anything since.

19:30 its not really mines that are still around just unexploded ordenance in general.
we cleared out the mines long ago because we had maps of all the mine fields.   its the aircraft bombs and artillery shells that dug into the ground that are still an issue.

I believe it's called the fascine because it was named after Roman fasces which was a bundle of sticks carried by Roman statesmen

14:41 As a fella who’s now been out of school for longer than he was in school, PLEASE pass that message along to your Math teacher colleagues.

America was like. You had us at flamethrower tank😅

The Hobart designs would've been really useful if mass produced by the US for stuff like the crossing of the Rhine

I actually served with people who drove “bridge tanks” in the Army National Guard. As you can imagine with all that weight and hydraulics, they break quite often, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. And, quite honestly I’m just learning now this is what they were created for, but it makes sense

Tanks were so named, as the British were worried that the Germans would discover what they were up to, so they told the workforce making them that they would be " mobile oil tanks ", and the name Tank came into common use ..

Percy Hobart: I've got ideas for these specially designed tanks.

Most British officers: We don't care, your ideas are stupid.

The rest of the British officers and The Americans: WE WILL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE STALK

I think the phrase you are looking for to describe the upper class british attitude is a "Sense of propriety"

Hobart’s Funnies are certainly well know here in the U.K. My WW2 veteran Dad was full of stories about them as I was growing up. Another useful tool from the time was the Bailey Bridge. Mr Bailey was from here in my home town of Rotherham Yorkshire England. According to both British and American Generals it took two years off the length of the war. The Bailey Bridge was easy to transport and quick to assemble by unskilled  soldiers. There are many still in use today around the world including here in
Rotherham.

When my father was in the army during the late 70’s and early 80’s he was at a dinner and actually met General Omar Bradly. He said he could’ve spent hours talking to the guy but he still remembers it to this day as one of the greatest conversations of his life.

I really wish you were my history teacher in high school. You care about what kids need to learn for life and not just what you are told to teach. And on top of it all. You are bringing in Nick, a fat, tattooed electrician to be modern-day bill nye is absolutely legendary. I can only imagine how much your class like him and the way he acts