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Hobart's Funnies were a number of unusually modified tanks operated during the Second World War by the 79th Armoured Division of the British Army or by specialists from the Royal Engineers. They were designed in light of problems that more standard tanks experienced during the amphibious Dieppe Raid, so that the new models would be able to overcome the problems of the planned Invasion of Normandy. These tanks played a major part on the Commonwealth beaches during the landings. They were forerunners of the modern combat engineering vehicle and were named after their commander, Major General Percy Hobart. ==History== Plans to invade continental Europe were completely revised after the failure of the raid on Dieppe in 1942. Invaders of the British beaches in Normandy would need to dispose rapidly of obstacles and coastal fortifications because the lay of the land favoured a rapid counterattack by German armour. General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff decided in 1943 to create special units for this purpose. and assigned responsibility to armoured warfare expert Percy Hobart for the development of vehicles and training crews to use them in action. Many of the ideas had already been tried, tested or were in experimental development both by Britain and other nations. For example, the Scorpion flail tank (a modified Matilda tank) had already been used during the North African campaign to clear paths through German minefields. Soviet T-34 tanks had been modified with mine-rollers. Close-support tanks, bridgelayers, and fascine carriers had been developed elsewhere also. However, the Funnies were the largest and most elaborate collection of engineering vehicles available. By early 1944, Hobart could demonstrate to Eisenhower and Montgomery a brigade each of swimming DD tanks, Crab mine clearers, and Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers - AVRE (Engineer) tanks along with a regiment of Crocodile flamethrowing tanks. Montgomery considered that the US forces should use them. A third of the "funnies" were offered to the Americans of all the vehicles available, but take-up was minimal. Eisenhower was in favour of the Duplex drive (DD) amphibious tanks but left the decision on the others to General Bradley. None of the other designs were used, because it was thought that they required specialised training and an additional support organisation. Also, the Americans were reluctant to make use of funnies based on the Churchill tank as they did not want the logistical complexity of adding another tank model to their inventory. In the light of operations during the US landing on Omaha beach, Bradley's decision has been criticised as it was felt that use of the range of "funnies" would have saved American lives.〔 〕 After D-Day, American forces did make limited use of the Sherman Crab mine-clearing tank.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hobart's Funnies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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