To me, the New Vanguard Series is one of the best that Osprey does. These books get a chance to concentrate on one subject and look into it with some depth. They are also usually of a subject that one generally does not think of in the normal conversation of the period. Such it is with this one on the Sherman 'Crab'.

The flail tank is a piece of equipment that was pretty well a WWII development and one that did not last long after the war. It was recognized by the British, who were fighting Rommel in North Africa at the time, that there needed to be a relatively quick way to get through the numerous mine fields that the Germans had set up. Mine warfare in the desert was just about the only way to set up a workable defensive barricade as there was little else available. These mine fields were a way of channeling invading forces into a tight area where the defensive guns would be able to cut them down with withering fire.

As most mines will simply blow a hole in the ground if there is not something above it to provide compression and increase the blast damage, it was thought that some sort of contraption out ahead of the tank would work to explode these mines and not damage the tank itself. Thus the idea of a flail, basically a moving cylinder with chains attached to beat the ground and explode mines.

This works quite well, but the real problem was designing one that wasn't a mass of gears and pulleys. Another problem was that these flails were large and heavy, requiring considerable power to move. The experiments provided some rather bulky and clumsy contraptions. In North Africa, the Scorpion, a flail tank developed on the Matilda was built in the field and while it worked, it was not very successful in that there were constant mechanical breakdowns with few of the tanks surviving the campaign.

While this work was going on in North Africa, there was concurrent design work going on in the UK. Through much trial and error, the Sherman was chosen for the base tank and eventually the Sherman 'Crab' flail tank was developed in time to be used in the Normandy invasion and other campaigns until war's end.

The author does a sterling job of telling this somewhat convoluted, but immensely interesting story of the development of this weapon. All of it is ably illustrated by Tony Bryan and there are the usual quality period photographs to accompany the story.

It makes for another superb edition on a most interesting piece of equipment and a tale you are sure to enjoy.

October 2007

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