Three beach funnies

[William Clodius]

In thinking about Hobart's claim that Montgomery suggested setting aside
a third of the "funnies" fror the Americans, I got to think about
thetimeing. Could this proposal have been while the three beah Neptune
landings were still the official plan? In that case with the
Commonwealth having two beaches and the Americans having one the
proportion is obvious. In the end they only completed enough funnies for
three beaches, which makes me wonder whether staffing for their
construction was set in the expectation that only the number necessary
(as officially planned in late 43) for three beaches in the May
invasion?

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

Post by William Clodius
In thinking about Hobart's claim that Montgomery suggested setting aside
a third of the "funnies" fror the Americans, I got to think about
thetimeing. Could this proposal have been while the three beah Neptune
landings were still the official plan? In that case with the
Commonwealth having two beaches and the Americans having one the
proportion is obvious. In the end they only completed enough funnies for
three beaches, which makes me wonder whether staffing for their
construction was set in the expectation that only the number necessary
(as officially planned in late 43) for three beaches in the May
invasion?

It is quite possible, essentially the process of going from 3 to 5
beaches (adding Omaha and Utah) was happening at the same
time as the funnies were being demonstrated.

It took the Mediterranean Command Team arriving in England to
have the clout to demand Overlord be expanded and it is people
like Montgomery, Eisenhower and Bradley who had to make the
decisions on things like the funnies. And certainly expanding the
attack caused significant problems when it came to having
enough beach assault units and mainly landing craft. The British
struggled to have enough funnies for their units at D-Day.

It should be pointed out the US was very reluctant to take non US
vehicles, which ruled out the Churchill and Valentine based vehicles,
for supply reasons. It seems there was an interest in most of the
equipment that was generic or Sherman based but for example
attempts to make a Sherman flame thrower took too long.

As Richard Anderson notes in Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall the
US also had a project to convert Shermans to engineer vehicles
authorised in August 1943, too late for Overlord.

Geoffrey Sinclair
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