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The Sherman Crab was a mine flail tank designed to clear a safe path through a mine-field by deliberately detonating mines in front of the vehicle; the design was first used during the North African Campaign in 1942.
The Crab weighed 32 tons [7] - around two tons more than a normal Sherman. Sherman Crab under test. The flail has been lowered to work in a dip in the ground. Great attention was paid to marking the cleared path through the mine field. Crabs carried a pair of bins filled with powdered chalk that slowly trickled out to mark the edges of the safe ...
Crab: A modified Sherman tank equipped with a mine flail, a rotating cylinder of weighted chains that exploded mines in the path of the tank. DD tank (from "Duplex Drive"): An amphibious version of the Sherman created by fitting M4A1 and M4A4 with a large watertight canvas housing. This increased displacement so the tank was able to float and ...
By the time of the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 all three units of the 30th Armoured Brigade were operating the Sherman Crab flail tank, designed to clear paths through minefields and other obstructions. [5] However in common with other 79th Division units they rarely found themselves operating together.
Extensive work on creating mine-clearance devices to be attached to Shermans in some fashion was also conducted up until the end of the Second World War, such as the Sherman Crab mine-flail tank. After the Second World War, large numbers of surplus Shermans were supplied to other nations, most primarily to Africa , South America and the Middle ...
Mine exploder T3E2 flail: E1 variant, rotor replaced with steel drum of larger diameter. Development terminated at war's end. Mine exploder T4: British Crab II mine flail. Mine exploder T7: Frame with small rollers with two discs each. Abandoned. Mine exploder T8 (Johnny Walker): Steel plungers on a pivot frame designed to pound on the ground ...
A preserved, World War II, Sherman Crab – an M4 Sherman tank fitted with a flail. During World War II the Sherman Crab was the primary (and most effective) mine clearance vehicle for the 79th Armoured Division, but AVREs carried a range of mine clearance devices to supplement them.
Captain Taylor in the second flail cleared a lane before his Crab was destroyed by a double mine, but the lane provided a clear exit. The team in Lane 4 was completely bogged, but Lanes 5 and 6 were successfully cleared within 15–22 minutes of landing, despite the breach commander's Crab being hit by shellfire on the landing craft ramp and ...