I was watching a documentary about D-Day when I noticed something I thought was odd about the flail tank. I noticed that the flail seemed to spin towards the tank, so that the chains at the top of the rotating drum moved away and the chains at the bottom swept towards the tank. I wondered why this should be so - I saw all sorts of crap being flung straight at the tank - the noise inside from all the stones, soil, etc slamming into the tanks hull must have been horrendous, plus all the dust thrown up must have been choking the crew and an explosion triggered by the flail would have been directed toward the tank rather than away.
Yes, I know a tank is made of thick metal and is rather tough, but surely it would have made more sense to sweep away from the tank rather than towards it? Or was there a jolly good reason for it?
I do believe that the chains had to come out the top of the flail going away from the tank so that centrifugal effects would throw them out in front and they would strike the ground and explode the mines there. If the chains at the bottom moved away from the tank how would they ever reach the mines out in front?
If you run it the other way, the spot where the flails first hit the ground will be between the tank and the flail. You want to maximize the distance between the tank armor and any exploding bomb.
The first is that the direction of rotation means the mines are struck considerably further ahead of the tank body than otherwise. Your proposal would have the ground beaten just a fer inches or feet away from the tank’s nose, between the rotating drum and the tank. As actually operated, it detonated the mines out ahead of the drum.
The second is an inference from a couple of other facts I picked up looking for an answer. These things actually drove the chains several inches deep in the soil, and the tanks were extremely slow, about 1 mph. Perhaps resistance was such that if the drum were turning the other way, there’d be so much resistance the tank couldn’t move. I am sleptical of this, but it seams plausible.
I’d bet on my first guess if someone put a gun to my head.
By the way, you do know that the underside of Sherman tanks wasn’t particularly well armored, and the treads were susceptible to being blown off if mines exploded close to them, don’t you?
I thought your post sounded pretty sarcastic. Yes I am aware that Sherman had thin hull armour and all tanks have relatively weak treads. I’ve never built, worked on or operated a tank so I thought if someone out there had done, they might be able to clear up something that had been puzzling me.
FWIW I’ve visited the Australian War Memorial, the Imperial War Museum and the Bovington Tank museum. My grandfather was a tank driver in World War Two and I have friends who are ex-tank drivers. So I’ve seen and heard about the odd tank.
If I was being overly sensitive then I apologise. I just ask you to compare your post to Boyo Jims immediately before and contrast.
I thought it was a very good question, and I certainly didn’t intend any sarcasm. I did quite a but of hunting around for an answer, and in my case it was a picture of a mine actually exploding under a flail to suggest the distance issue.
Flails come in two flavors. The WWII variety were rather underpowered. For this (and other reasons) the flails on the Sherman swept towards the tank. Mines were destroyed by impact. The hammer (at the end of the chain) would smash the mine. The mine would go boom.
Most modern flails sweep away from the vehicle at much higher speed. The hammers are sharp (more like axe-heads), they scoop under the mine, shatter it and (we hope fling it out into left field. It may or may not explode, but such an explosion would be a low-order detonation. Besides such explosions would be over the heads of the Bad Guys.
Exceptions to the sweep-away rule would be the current version of the British Aardvark and the Minecat. The first version of the Aardvark swept away, but it is a non-armored vehicle unsuited to the battlefield. Aardvarks are only used in safe areas, so flinging mines out over villages and stuff is not a good idea. They reversed the flails and added a blast shield.
The Minecat simply lacks the power to go flinging mines any great distances. It is also used for humanitarian demining. As a result it uses the sweep-towards system also.
Saw a really interesting interview a couple of weeks back, with an ex-Royal Engineer officer who had worked with Hobart on the design of some of the “funnies.” Great old guy–he was down on the floor of his home with some absolutely incredible working models (I suspect he had built these himself at some point), about 1/35 scale, by the look of it. The model Shermans actually moved forward, and the flail spun round!
He also showed a piece of original flail; I had always assumed that it was just big, heavy chain–but it was even heavier guage than I had imagined, and at the very end was a fist-sized iron ball, much lile a medaeval mace. He explained this was to gouge into the ground several inches, as well as extra weighting on the chain to help it centifuge out to its full length while spinning.
A complete aside, but the first thing I though of when I saw this post was the most silly Dungeon and Dragons monster ever. The Flail Snail. I don’t know which direction the flails on its head went, though…
