The Customizable British Tank That Made D-Day Possible | Tanks! | War Stories

[Music] [Music] [Applause] during the dark days of August 1942 there was still every chance that Hitler might yet win World War II although America had been dragged into the conflict by Hitler's rash declaration of War it would take years to assemble a real fighting force in Continental Europe in the meantime British Empire forces still effectively stood alone against the might of Hitler's forces in the [Music] West on the Eastern Front the Soviet Red Army was under immense pressure from the great German offensive which had taken the sixth Army to the gates of Stalingrad and Stalin was in increasingly vocal in his demands for a second front in order to demonstrate that Britain was not entirely impotent and to prepare for the day when British forces would be required to Stage a fullscale invasion of the continent a large-scale raid in force was planned against the German held town of deep the Russians don't forget had been trying to insist that the British mount a second front for some years in as early as 19 42 there was no way the Allies could have mounted the an invasion across Channel until they were absolutely propar one of the features of the deep raid was the first deployment of a new British tank known as The Churchill these early tanks had specially adapted exhaust Outlets to allow them to operate in water up to 6 ft in depth despite the deployment of 29 of these the very latest machines to reach the Army the attack on deep was nothing short of a disaster it always strikes me as odd that we should have taken what was then effectively our most top secret weapon and plunked it on a beach in France which we almost certainly some of them were going to get captured so it was the first time it had been used it at that time had a dreadful reputation for unreliability which didn't help and it was only its great ability to absorb punishment which seems to have been the reason that it was used there at all confronted by a series of concrete anti-tank barricades and an extensive system of anti-tank ditches the new tanks failed to clear their way off the beach and into the town casualties were high and the entry of the Churchill was not an auspicious success the Canadians used church or tanks in that raid and they came horribly unstuck partly because the tanks did not behave very well on the beach they tended to pick up the stones that broke their tracks but those that did get a Shore that got well off the seaw wall onto the prominade then found they couldn't get any further because the Germans have blocked the streets with enormous concrete blocks and they completely prevented anyone from working their way into the town at the time there was nothing they could do the Canadian Royal Engineers would simply operate on their feet carrying packs of explosives with them and these men were cut down before they got anywhere near the targets half the time nonetheless the Canadians fought hard and despite the fact that the tanks could not get off the beach they actually managed to establish a foothold in the [Music] town but as the superior German forces gained the upper hand large numbers of exhausted prisoners were gathered together to parade for the cameras and the German news reels had an unexpected field day the 28 modern tanks which landed were all [Music] destroyed these images of the knout Churchill tanks proved to be a great propaganda coup for the Germans who were presented with br new examples of the latest British technology for study evaluation and as trophies of war the Germans captured obviously every single one that landed none of them got back their view of the Churchill was so dismissive that Beyond testing a few they never even bothered using them I think they came to the conclusion that we meant to throw them away because they were useless interesting that in the end of course the church who comes back to haunt them right to the end of the war despite the unhappy scenes of defeat the Deep Ray did provide a great deal of valuable experience for the Allies which will be put to use in the D-Day Landings 2 years later against all expectations the Churchills would be back and they would play a crucial role in the events of June 1944 [Music] [Music] despite the adverse experience at DM the sturdy Hull of the Churchill tank was chosen as the basis for a highly versatile range of specialist machines known by the initials AV which stood for assault vehicle Royal Engineers they were formed into a special command of the 79th armor division under Ma PCS Hobart he trained what was known as the first tank Brigade in Britain in the 30s he was then sent out to the Middle East to train what became the famous seventh armor division The Desert Rats he did it extremely well and the men adored him he pulled out and was given command he first of all trained the 11th Armored Division which was a conventional Armored Division always training them to an absolutely incredibly high standard he then took over 79th which originally was just going to be another regular Armored Division and was commanding it when the order came through to change to the development of specialized armor now it would be wrong to credit Hobart with the invention of any of this stuff he was not a technical man he was a tactician and a training expert a lot of the ideas that he pulled in came from other sources as a direct result of the experience gained in the DF raid an ingenious variety of avres were designed to assist in the real Attack on Hitler's Atlantic War [Music] the most important of these was a special adaptation of the Churchill which had its main gun replaced by a massive 290 mm mortar known as a patard this device could hurl a huge explosive charge which was intended to blow apart concrete defenses of the type which had proved so effective against the tanks at DF it's basically a church or tank but it's been modified it's a combined demolition vehicle and sort of multi-purpose field engineering tank has no anti-tank gun or anything like that instead it has this enormous thing known as a petard mortar which fires an equally enormous thing called a flying dust bin of a very short distance which will then demolish pretty well anything it gets anywhere near in a throwback to the days of World War I the hull of the AV was also found to be capable of carrying a bundle of wood 8 ft in diameter known as a fine this unlikely cargo could be dropped into an anti-tank ditch to create a simple bridge to allow tanks to cross for crossing larger obstacles such as sea walls the AV could also be adapted to carry a box gerder Bridge with a span of 30 ft which was capable of carrying Vehicles up to 40 tons in weight in the event that the soft sand of the beaches would prove too difficult for tanks to cross yet another variation on the AV was developed this one carrying what was known as a bobbin a huge reel of canvas which was unrolled in front of the tank to allow the vehicle to cross areas of soft sound in order to prevent exploding mines making huge craters in the soft sand of the beach there was also a variant of the AV which carried a huge plow on the front of the tank which was designed to bring mines to the surface so that they could be detonated later on finally in the list of specialist machines which had become affectionately known to the Troops as hobart's funnies was a demolition version of the AV most of these things consisted of a frame which was hinged onto the front of the tank from these various brackets along here and this Frame carried with it a whole load of plastic explosive charges different quantities for different obstacles some of them you just drove the tank up you stopped at the wall you laid the charge against the wall and backed away some were actually hooked so you hooked them over the wall you then went off to a respectable distance trailing electric wires and blew up the wall while the specialist machines were at work on their particular tasks they still needed the support of conventional armor to protect them against anti-tank guns or enemy tanks for that purpose the Allies relied on two main variants of the trusty Sherman tank discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries and adree podcasts presented by world-renowned historians all on History hit watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to watch everything from the gripping story of the Band of Brothers to operation Barbarosa and D-Day immerse yourself in the dramatic stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description the first of the was the duplex drive or DD swimming tank which used a collapsible canvas screen and a propeller mounted on the back of the tank to allow the vehicle to swim ashore and reach the shallow water where they could neutralize enemy anti-tank positions while the specialist tanks went about their work of breaching the enemy defenses it seemed almost chaos when we landed because there was shouting everywhere of have come this way go that way but it wasn't it was orderly chaos the Allied plan for the Battle of Normandy was exceptionally sound and exceptionally safe but it had to be this battle absolutely had to succeed if the Allies have been defeated on D-Day if they've been defeated in the Battle of Normandy uh it is almost impossible to say what the future consequences would have been for the Second World War [Music] [Music] it was not just the Allies who had learned the lessons of Da the German High command also realized that their defenses could be improved in particular their sea defenses needed to be much more effective against the Allied tanks which the Germans now knew were capable of swimming their way ashore from ships m a considerable distance out to sea a careful study of the results of the battle at Deep proved the value of both concrete obstacles and anti-tank ditches in addition thousands of anti-tank obstacles were placed beneath the high Watermark which were designed to make it very difficult for armor to reach the shore to complete the task of preparing the Atlantic Wall Hitler chose Field Marshal irn rumel he was appointed in January 1944 the Atlantic Wall opposite DJ was was commanded by General Romo my father's old adversary from the desert and of course he thought he understood indeed very well what roml was about roml believed that the only chance for defeating the Allied invasion was to do so on the D-Day beaches and drive it into the sea uh this famous phrase of his chief of staffs which he picked up and used that this would be the longest day uh what he meant by that was if the Allies were allowed at the end of D-Day still to be assure then Allied strength would mean that victory in the Battle of Normandy for them would be inevitable and there was nothing the Germans could do one of the main elements of rl's defensive strategy lay in a massive belt of anti-tank mines along the entire length of the coast which in places stretched to a depth of half a mile from the shoreline this first line was intended to be backed up by an additional belt of Mines up to 5 m deep cited further in land it has been calculated that this grandio scheme would have required million mines to complete despite the more limited resources available to him rumel still boasted that the beaches would become what he described as a zone of death although the Atlantic Wall was still far from complete in mid 1944 the defenses were fairly well advanced in the Normandy area and a considerable effort on the Allied side went into the development of vehicles which could be used to clear a path through the Mine Fields one such vehicle was the second main variant of the Sherman tank known as the crab the crab is really an amalgamation of the American Sherman tank and a British mine sweeping flail device the flail is a drum here with these huge chains hanging from it it's driven from the Tank's own engine through a a gearbox and the whole thing rotates relatively slowly the chains fly around really vigorously thrashing the ground as they go along and exploding anti-tank mines in the path of the tank sometimes when the blow goes off the bang is so strong the blast is so strong actually lifts the whole jib up at the front it goes up in the air goes thumping back down again it's still going round it's still thrashing the ground and if the odd one flies off the odds are still in your favor so at the end of the day of course the tank needs a lot of work done on it for its next flailing job there are instances where the Germans laterally came up with a very unseemly trick of laying a conventional mine linked to an aircraft bomb the tank would drive over the aircraft bomb flailing and not upset it the flails would strike the mine the mine would detonate the aircraft bomb which by then was under the tank and that was the end of the crab completely with this mindboggling collection of specialist vehicles at his disposal hobart's 79th division resembled a contractor's yard with a specialist machine for almost every conceivable application this is actually what's known as the the crocodile version of The Churchill and this is a flamethrower this would uh spout highly combustible uh jelly which would then be ignited to to burn uh enemy strong points and on occasion enemy men so it's a very inhuman and nasty weapon it had a little trailer which was attached to the back which housed the fuel and in action this would provide enough busts of Fire for about 3 minutes in action thereafter this weapon would be redundant and the crew would rely on the normal six pounder up in the turret here it was usually employed against really stubborn defenses and the classic example is the French Fortress at breast which the Germans were holding and it became such an obstinate Target that they borrowed some crocodile tanks and their Crews from British 79th armor Division and brought them up for a demonstration and once the Germans had witnessed what these things could do they quickly changed their minds and surrendered we were glad of the churches because the snipers were were um in fox holes and the only way to get them out was to was a flamethrower uh must have been a horrible death but I think it must have been pretty well inst instantaneous [Music] the British and Canadian Forces operating on D-Day possibly with the experience of DF still in mind took full advantage of Hobart and his funnies as the vehicles were affectionately known the American General Bradley however is alleged to have declined all offers of assistance and this was to have disastrous consequences for the American forces fighting on Omaha Beach the old argument that we didn't invent it therefore it can't be any good is the one that's put forward I think if we look at it the 79th Armored Division simply wasn't big enough to serve three armies it was already serving the British and Canadian armies I think if we'd have extended it ourselves to support the Americans except in very special cases we would have been spread too thin um as to why the Americans didn't adopt specialized armor themselves um the church would have been an anacronismo different from anything they produced that they would never have got used to it it's a a dreadful tank by American Standards so for that reason they wouldn't have they did take fls later on and the US Engineers developed their own range of vehicles which just never came into action in time they were a bit behind us on that on dday itself the experience of the DD swimming tanks varied massively from Beach to beach probably the most spectacular failure of the swimming tanks the DD tanks in the early part of the operation in the sectors where they were successful they did very well indeed the tank swam ashore or drove ashore if they felt it was too rough to swim and did what they were supposed to do in the main on certain sectors I would site particularly of some of the American be which is they launched too far out they launched into very bad seas and a crosswind whereas the British and Canadians were heading straight into it and they certainly lost a lot of tanks and a lot of men but probably a bit more liberal interpretation of what they were for would have solved that problem at Omaha Beach 28 out of 30 DD tanks sank to the ocean floor many taking their Crews with them deprived of armor support casualties among the American infantry on Omaha were the highest on dday on the Canadian Juno Beach the situation was more positive and 21 out of 34 DD tanks made it to the shore overall the British had better luck than either the Canadians or the Americans and 31 out of 34 DD tanks launched at sword Beach made it to the shore on Juno Beach the Double D tanks were particularly effective in assisting the Canadian infantry who had been pinned down by some well prepared German defenses the arrival of the swimming tanks soon neutralized the German anti-tank guns and allowed the advance to continue Inland also on Juno Beach the AV machines proved that they could be highly effective not only not only did they successfully clear the beach of Mines but using their petards they were able to breach the seaw wall and drop faines into the anti-tank ditch which allowed the supporting infantry to attack German strong points in the houses behind the beach here too they played a vital role and they were able to offer assistance to the Infantry by demolishing German strong points the was a a a port it was impossible to get up from the sea it was so well defended so it had to be attacked from behind but it was well fortified in both directions and this was a classic example of all the specialized armor the flamethrowers the flails the aage with all their various trimmings and fittings all working as a team and what they did they selected a number of lanes and then each section of 79 armor div would go in it would do its appointed job and then it would clear off and then the real armor the fighting armor and the Infantry go in and took the port and it was done brilliantly very smoothly and very quickly of 50 crabs and 128 avres deployed on D-Day 12 crabs were knocked out and 22 of the avres a mercifully small sacrifice for so much progress [Music] as commander of Allied 21st Army group field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had the enormous responsibility of leading the forces on the ground during the Normandy campaign of 1944 when uh my father was asked to command Operation Overlord his first move was to talk to Eisenhower in and North Africa and then go to Churchill to explain that the original plan to have a three division front would not work and it needed to be expanded to a five division plan and indeed this was the plan that he launched when he got back to England at the beginning of January 1944 he set a very precise strategy for The Campaign which was outlined at a meeting of senior commanders in St Paul's School London on May the 15th 1944 it was intended that the four Allied core which landed on the five beaches on D-Day would penetrate to a depth of about 10 km in land and capture the towns of bay and Kong by D-Day + 10 the Allies would have secured the line of high ground running from sow to V bage while the British engaged the German forces in a battle which was intended to be fought south of Kong it was planned that Patton's third Army my would expand southwards in a grand encircling movement designed to trap the German forces and by dday Plus 90 the Allies would be encamped along the river s and Paris would be in their hands by committing his forces around Kong it was the British who would face the bulk of the German armor although new types of tank were beginning to reach the German forces they still had to rely on older designs to fill the bulk of the Panza divisions the majority of German tanks in Normandy were not tigers and Panthers rather they were a rather obsolescent model the Panza 4 which had in fact been around since the late 1930s in one model or another this is the Panza Mark 4 now it's not as glamorous a machine as the Panther and the tiger which always seem to to take the spotlight in any discussion of German armor but this was the real Workhorse it really was uh an incredible machine because it was in service from the outbreak of the war and continued to be manufactured through all the changes right into 1945 one of the reasons for that is it proved itself to be supremely capable of being up armored and upgraded as the situation demanded and this tank is a particularly good example of that we can see on the front here it's had all of this additional armor bolted on to the front of the tank which brings a lot of weight but the vehicle can still cope with it more importantly up in the turret there we've got this new high velocity 75 mm anti-tank gun and there are very few tanks where you could go from what was a short barreled small gun in that tur turret to a massive gun like that and still be able to use the same vehicle but that's what's happened with the Panzer 4 the Allies were much more likely to encounter a Panzer four than they were a panther or a tiger nonetheless all of the Allied Forces began to refer to any German tank as a tiger and for that reason uh frequently this is the machine that they would have seen when they would have reported that they saw a tiger there can be few campaigns in the history of warfare which were as meticulously planned and so heavily insured against failure as the D-Day Landings of 1944 the anglo-american forces which stormed ashore on Hitler's Fortress Europe enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in men ammunition ships tanks planes and all the rest of the panoply of War Bon War developed in the Normandy campaign the Allied tank strength was Far numerically superior to the German that is down to the American productivity America being away from the war zone it wasn't being bombed where certain in Britain our tank production was limited by the size of the our war effort and Germany's case they being bombed night and day their tank supplies were limited to their raw materials as well they were producing probably about 20,000 tanks a year but 23,000 tanks were being destroyed by 1945 so their numbers were actually decreasing the 6th of June 1944 would see two considerable Armed Forces pitted against one another in the Normandy area something like 160,000 Allied troops in three airborne and five and a bit uh amphibiously landed infantry divisions were deployed in Normandy on the 6th of June against German Defenders of very in quality it should be said but quite considerable numbers during The Landings and for up to 20 mi in land the Allied Forces could rely on the massive guns of the Allied battleships which were capable of firing devastating barrages of Heavy Artillery fire against the German [Music] forces even for those Germans who had fought in Russia Naval gunfire proved to be a devastating experience which was shocking in its intensity the power of the heavy shells from The 16in Guns of the battleships produced a barrage which was so intense the tiger tanks which weighed 56 tons were flipped onto their sides like children's [Music] toys in the opening days of the Normandy campaign the Allies could rely upon the support of nine battleships 23 Cruisers and 73 [Music] Destroyers on land the situation of the Germans was if anything worse four years of savage Warfare in Russia had drained the strength of the German Army for the duration of the Normandy campaign only 20% of the available German forces could be committed to the war in the west from 1941 through to 1944 about 2/3 of all the German war fighting resources were being tied up in the war against the Soviet Union what makes the Battle of Normandy important is that German Resources by June 1944 are so tremendously overstretched they have no real strategic reserves so by opening up the famous second front and by forcing the Germans to commit their troops to Normandy this is the overstretch which breaks the back of the German Armed Forces one of the great successes of the Normandy campaign was the secrecy with which the whole operation was shrouded the Germans were completely deceived as to the place and date of The Landings right up to the moment the first troops came ashore in the air the Allies had an even greater advantage on D-Day itself 5,000 Allied Fighters filled the sky and swept away the 119 German Fighters which opposed with their superiority of 50 to1 rocket firing typhoons of the Allied Air Force had a field day combing the terrain behind the Normandy beaches for any sign of movement on the ground we went a little further down the road and four Panther tanks were were had being knocked out by typhoons and they were on the railway line they'd been traveling up the railway line and they were really wicked those typhoon Rockets we used to sort of give up a chair every time the typhoons came when they uh when they went into the attack because we often saw them at Capri aad Drome we were in trenched uh on the edge of Capri aod Drome and U the Canadians were trying to capture it and um the uh they were assisted by these typhoons with their Rockets it was fantastic this complete virtually Air Supremacy uh possessed by the Allies was put to extremely good use during the battle for Normandy Allied bombers could reduce German Beach defenses Allied bombers could cut German lines of communication thus paralyzing the buildup of German forces opposite the amphibiously and Airborne landed British and American forces and of course Tactical Air Support could create absolute Havoc for any German unit in Normandy uh foolish enough to try to move in strength by Day news reels of the period show German vehicles covered in branches in an attempt to disguise any vehicle movements from the air on the German side the Allied air superiority was just one of a number of serious disadvantages which had to be overcome if they were to conduct a successful campaign in Normandy infantry Chief among these was the confusion and disorganization which prevailed in the chain of command as Supreme Commander Adolf Hitler constantly dabbled in every aspect of the forces at his command commanding all the forces in the west uh responsible for France Belgium and Holland is OB Commando vest Obi West based in Paris under the 69-year-old field Marshal Gert Von runtit and he is simultaneously in command of army Group B which is responsible for the defense of Normandy and this is commanded by field Marshall Owen roml and at the same time roml is also his Superior because roml has a watching brief from Hitler uh for the defense of the whole of Western Europe also roml who is one of Hitler's favorites has direct access to Hitler uh which Von runed does not he has to go through the German hierarchy there is this quite deliberate confusion of two field Marshals competing with each other to be in charge of the German organization by 1944 the flaws which affected the high command were also reflected in the declining quality of the men in the ranks the steady War of Attrition in Russia meant that the verar had to accept lower and lower standards of physical fitness for new recruits men who would previously have been refused for the armed services had to be called into action the German Army also had to allow the deployment of the 12th SS Panza division better known as the Hitler youth division this division was led by experienced officers drawn from the famous SS liand data Division and the ranks were filled almost entirely by teenagers the Germans have a handful of good units and then units which are under strength which are poorly equipped which have poor transport and uh for the idea of the German fighting Superman about one in 10 in rl's Army Group B uh were not actually German and in the front lines on D-Day Manning the pillbox positions that may have been as high as one in [Music] four among the Nazi satellites are Russian Mongols probably forced into service by the Nazis back on the beach prisoners continue to pour in many who surrendered were stunned by the fury of the Allied Onslaught and laid down their arms voluntarily the overwhelming demands of a war on three fronts posed hosts of additional problems for the German Logistics and Supply system Allied Fighters and fighter bombers had not restricted their attacks just to the Troops on the ground they also carried out a massive air and interdiction campaign against the German supply lines roads and railway lines were mercilessly targeted which meant that supplies of essential Fuel and ammunition stocks could not reach the hard pressed front line I remember once we went out onto on a on a a RI and uh we went down a road to this this little village and um the uh there were dead uh horses that were still harnessed to the German guns and I was so surprised to see that the Germans were still using horses to draw their artillery up to battle as the Allied breakout began to materialize at the end of July and into August 1944 the inability of the Germans to provide large quantities of petrol for their tanks and other vehicles did badly damage their ability to launch any significant counterstroke against the I as they broke [Applause] through to offset the many disadvantages which face the German troops fighting on the ground in Normandy they did enjoy some real advantages over the Allies many of the Panza divisions which will be used to face the Allies had a strong core of battle hardened troops which had already seen four years of brutal Warfare although the German tank Crews were vastly outnumbered by their Allied counterparts they had the advantage of experience which very few of the Allied tank Crews had apart from those in the seventh armor division who' fought in Italy and in North Africa the German forces had had a great deal of battle experience I mean they had fought very professionally on both fronts for a very long time so indeed had the British the interesting I think aspect of this is that the American forces who played such a vital part of course had much less battle experience which I always feel is probably one of the reasons why my father assigned them the breakout role rather than the holding role in the initial stages of the operation the German forces also enjoyed a very real superiority in the quality of their tank forces not only were the crews hugely experienced and battle hardened by years on the Russian front the tanks themselves were far better than those used by the Allies the main tanks used by the Panza divisions in Normandy in 1944 were the panther the tiger and the Panza 4 along with the stug three uh compared with the Allied tanks they had always had Superior armaments they had Superior sighting equipment they had Superior um armor the armor plating was always um sloped and if we see behind us the perfect example is the Cromwell we can see that the armor plate is actually at 90° which means if that armor is only 4 in thick the projectile has only got to go through 4 in of armor plate had that steel been angled at 45° it would have increased the distance the projectile would have to go through the armor by 50% so for a given weight of Steel you could actually get 50% more protection the Allied tanks did not have this protection the German tanks dead now the Cromwell first saw action in Normandy but again this tank was actually a 1942 design it was originally designed and started rebuilt in 1942 but normally was the first battle that actually saw in his service with it was an improvement on earlier wartime British designs but it was still lightly armored and lightly armed compared with the Panther and the tiger time and time again Allied tank soldiers described the disheartening experience of seeing their own shells bounce off the armor of the German tanks the Tiger tank then proceeded to turn around and came on my side of the Hedge and so there it was my perfect Target and I fired five projectiles at the Tiger tank and on the fifth one I think he got fed up with me hitting him with my little pier and he decided to let go with his big gun and uh as I fired the last one he fired and it landed on my left and um you have seen how close it was to My Eyes by the hole in the center of the of the spectacles that you have here I I feel throughout the entire war that we were generally always uh fighting with infer equipment and armaments and I think this is one of the demonstrations of the skill of both the uh Allied command and the qualities of the British soldier that despite the fact that we had inferior equipment in many cases that we were able to [Music] succeed [Music] following the D-Day Landings most of the Allied objectives were achieved on that crucial first day with one major exception the capture of K the city which should have been in Allied Hands by the end of D-Day plus1 was to remain in German hands until July the 18th 6 weeks after the beginning of the battle the reasons for the successful defense at K lay in the extremely difficult nature of the bokage country in which the campaign was [Applause] fought of course the baj country is that part of um Normandy in Land from the sea it's a land of small farms tiny fields and over the years these fields have been plowed out and rebuilt and they'd ended up with very high Earth Banks all around the edges of them into the Earth Bank the farmer would plant hedge rows and trees so you ended up with tiny sunken narrow lanes and a crisscross sort of pattern of these little Fields all over the place in the bage the tank Crews couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of them anti-tank guns could be hidden in in the fields they could be hidden in the hedges and the tanks had no choice but to drive along the lanes the sunken Lanes uh where they were sitting ducks as far as the the German anti-tank Crews and the German tank Crews were concerned to actually get off the road into the fields you normally have to break through the thick headed rows which normally meant you exposed the weaker part of your tank to the enemy fire the Americans came up with one or two novel ways of actually doing that they put a device on the front of some of their tanks which was a very crude form of hedge cutter and all it was was a kind of jagged tooth like thing fitted to the front of the tank and the the theory behind it at least was the tank with this device would charge at the bank and instead of rising up over it would slice off the top and make a little cutting for itself and whiz through and everybody else then followed through the Gap this fellow had made it's only limited success because obviously the Tank's going to start Rising first before the Hedge R cutter sort of cuts in and secondly it's going to slow the tank down almost to a halt so sometimes they may have had to have more than one go both the Canadians and the British used it of course as well as the United States [Music] Army in this difficult environment the advantage was with the defender and the bage soon became known to the Allies as the green hell faced with their inability to take the remaining objective the British High command had no alternative but to fight in the bage as casualties steadily mounted the Airfield at copyette on the outskirts of K became a vital Target it was tenaciously defended by the youngsters of the Hitler youth division against a series of assaults by Superior British forces in an attempt to outflank these stubborn Defenders at kiket Montgomery dispatched his highly experienced seventh armor division The Desert Rats to make a broad sweep south of K which was scheduled to begin on June the 12th the attack was aimed at the small town of v bokage and it was here that one of the most famous tank actions of the war would be fought the Allied spearhead was halted and almost single-handedly destroyed in a fierce battle through the streets and fields surrounding V bokage by German Tiger tanks of the 101st heavy Battalion led by the famous tank commander Michael [Music] vitman Whitman literally one tank destroyed such a large collection of British armor vehicles including cromwells that it showed that our armor design was still some way behind behind Germans and it needed to be improved which it was later in the war in a single day the British forces lost over 60 tanks and a huge number of accompanying Vehicles by Nightfall on July the 13th V bokage was back in German hands the defeat of the seventh armor division at Villa bage represented really the loss of the last real opportunity to make the battle for Normandy the mobile battle which the Allied planners hoped and indeed expected that it would be Montgomery decided to try one last offensive designed to capture the territory south of K it was codenamed Operation Goodwood and scheduled for the 17th of July goodward began with an overwhelming air Naval and artillery bombardment designed to blast a path for 750 tanks to advance towards The High Ground south of K once again their opponents were to be men of the first SS Panza Corp many of whom had been in action since June the 8th in the steady War of Attrition the SS core had been reduced to a strength of just 100 tanks but they could still command deep defensive positions of the bage and they were backed up with the deadly 88 mm anti-tank guns the opening Allied barrage was so intensive it was described by some German Veterans as the biggest and most intense artillery bombardment they had ever witnessed even in Russia despite massive preparations which were made Goodwood was an even greater failure than the previous offenses all although the southern sector of Kong was cleared of the enemy the Allies lost 200 tanks in a single day as they tried to cross the all fighting for K continued until July the 20th but once again the operation had to be postponed with part of the city still in German hands operation goodward is perhaps the most controversial of all of Montgomery's battles during the Normandy campaign measuring its success or failure really depends on what you believe operation Goodwood was intended to achieve if for example you believe what some people believe that the attack was supposed to be a breakthrough attack then quite clearly it failed to do that Montgomery with hindsight uh would claim that the deliberate intention of this attack was to tie down the last of the German armored reserves against British second Army so enabling us first Army my to break out on the 25th in operation Cobra despite all the British had done operation Cobra still faced some tough fighting before the American forces were finally able to break out of the bage and sweep southwards into open country as the American offensive began to gather Pace the British forces took advantage of the confusion in the German ranks to form the northern pincer in this huge encircling movement which was designed to trap the German forces in Normandy in a huge pocket centered on the town of Fes in the face of continued resistance the British forces kept up the drive southwards and by August the 20th they had linked up with the American forces to close a ring around fet it was now that the Allied Air Force swept In For the Kill 10,000 Germans died in the incessant air attacks 50,000 more were taken prisoner these men represented the remains of 40 German divisions which had been destroyed in the battle for Normandy four fifths of the German Army who had been committed to the campaign in Normandy had been destroyed Montgomery had won his battle and exactly as planned the Allies were on the river San by dday plus [Music] [Music] 0

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: D-Day history, D-Day operations, War Stories, armored vehicles, battle strategy, defense technologies, heroic feats, historical documentaries, historical events, historical narratives, historical tanks, military bravery, military heroes, military narratives, military technology, military triumphs, tank battles, war machines, war strategies, wartime engineering, wartime stories

Id: igOUhEDNf-Y

Length: 52min 25sec (3145 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024