On June 6, 1944, multi-ton tanks swam toward the Normandy shore wrapped in canvas skirts while others drove onto the sand unrolling giant reinforced carpets in front of themselves. These were Hobart's Funnies, the specialized armor of Major General Percy Hobart's 79th Armoured Division, born from the August 1942 Dieppe raid where standard Churchill tanks spun helplessly on shingle beaches, were stopped by concrete walls, and were picked off from the cliffs.

This episode is a masterclass in extreme problem solving: how Hobart, forced into retirement and serving as a corporal in the Home Guard until Churchill personally demanded his return, mutated the durable Churchill and mass-produced Sherman platforms into flamethrowers, bunker busters, carpet layers, bridge layers, mine flails, and strobing searchlights, and why General Omar Bradley's de ...