Speaker 1: Pushkin d day has dawned, and the gray brooding skies
Speaker 1: on gray storm tossed seas. Thousands upon thousands of gray
Speaker 1: warships are descending on the French coast. Ahead lies a
Speaker 1: broad ribbon of yellow sand, codenamed Omaha Beach by the
Speaker 1: Allied military planners. In happier times it was a magnet
Speaker 1: for vacationers, but now the gently sloping sands are strewn
Speaker 1: with explosive mines, barbed wire, and fearsome metal obstacles designed
Speaker 1: to rip apart any boat trying to land. Verdant green
Speaker 1: hills rise behind the beach, and hid amongst their folds
Speaker 1: are trenches, machine gun nests, and cannon emplacements. This is
Speaker 1: Hitler's Atlantic War, part of the three thousand mile chain
Speaker 1: of fortifications built from the Spanish frontier to the Arctic
Speaker 1: tip of Norway. The Nazis have sunk vast sums of
Speaker 1: money billions into the project, with just one aim to
Speaker 1: stop any Allied invasion dead in the surf. The battle
Speaker 1: chips offshore are hammering these fortifications with their big guns.
Speaker 1: But while the Germans are many things, they're not stupid.
Speaker 1: Their pillboxes are angled to make them impervious to these shells,
Speaker 1: whilst still giving the defenders inside a perfect sideline to
Speaker 1: shoot left and right along Omaha Beach. Each hour is
Speaker 1: appro and when the first American troops storm ashore, they'll
Speaker 1: be at the mercy of this withering barrage. Running across
Speaker 1: hundreds of yards of open sand under German fire will
Speaker 1: be a task as murderous as anything seen in World
Speaker 1: War One. The death toll could be enormous, and that's
Speaker 1: where an unlikely secret weapon comes in. We're aboard a
Speaker 1: landing craft with men of the seven hundred and forty
Speaker 1: first Tank Battalion. These tank crews are scheduled to hit
Speaker 1: the beach ahead of the infantry, with orders to train
Speaker 1: their cannon on the German defenders, knocking them out before
Speaker 1: they can annihilate the poor foot soldiers following behind. The
Speaker 1: seven hundred and forty First tanks won't be arriving by
Speaker 1: landing craft, though, in a cunning twist, these tanks will
Speaker 1: swim into battle all by themselves. The Germans have never
Speaker 1: seen anything like it in the water. Our tanks look
Speaker 1: just like small boats, says tank crewman Private Bill Murkert.
Speaker 1: Will be a big surprise for the Germans. When we
Speaker 1: come out of the surf. These special tanks are able
Speaker 1: to swim thanks to a set of propellers and a
Speaker 1: flimsy looking canvas screen allowing them to float. It's taken
Speaker 1: a huge effort to make these Sherman tanks seaworthy, but
Speaker 1: ally generals think it's the best way to reduce bloodshed
Speaker 1: on the invasion beaches. But can you ever really make
Speaker 1: a thirty three ton tank seaworthy? Even by the standards
Speaker 1: of the English Channel. D Day June sixth, nineteen forty
Speaker 1: four is something of a washout. It's the word summer
Speaker 1: weather in memory and more akin to the storms of winter.
Speaker 1: The sea's pretty heavy. Notes Bill Murkert brought his d
Speaker 1: D tank. He never practiced in this kind of weather.
Speaker 1: But more than three miles from shore, a yellow signal
Speaker 1: flag still goes up. The landing craft drops its ramp
Speaker 1: and builds. Sherman tank platters forward and into the waves.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to another cautionary tale.
Speaker 1: The tank was a defining weapon of World War II.
Speaker 1: German panzas had defeated Poland in the first weeks of
Speaker 1: the conflict, then rolled across Western Europe. These clanking, clattering
Speaker 1: guns on tracks that bested the mighty French army and
Speaker 1: thrown the British back into the sea. The blitzquig tactics
Speaker 1: of Hitler's tank commanders had taken them to the gates
Speaker 1: of Moscow and had very nearly swept the British out
Speaker 1: of North Africa. It was all very annoying for Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Winston Churchill. During the First World War, he had
Speaker 1: been in charge of the Royal Navy and had diverted
Speaker 1: a fraction of its immense budget to fund the building
Speaker 1: of so called land ships. These weren't ships at all. Rather,
Speaker 1: they were primitive tanks, and thanks to forward thinkers such
Speaker 1: as church the British had enjoyed an early lead in
Speaker 1: the development of armored warfare, but this foundational work was
Speaker 1: regrettably squandered at war's end. The defeated Germans were keen
Speaker 1: to learn all about the tanks that had helped seal
Speaker 1: their fate, but the British officer class preferred to return
Speaker 1: to a more traditional way of waging war on involving
Speaker 1: stirrups and swords and big beautiful horses. That neglect has
Speaker 1: robbed us of all the fruits of this invention, lamented Churchill.
Speaker 1: In the darkest days of World War II, these fruits
Speaker 1: have been reaped by the enemy with terrible consequences. Churchill
Speaker 1: adored adventures and adventurers. He loved bold schemes and unorthodox
Speaker 1: thinkers almost to a fault. Angered that his army had
Speaker 1: been left behind in the tank ray, the new Prime
Speaker 1: Minister decided to back his hunch and promote one Percy
Speaker 1: Cleghorn Stanley Hobart. Hobart was a fifty six year old
Speaker 1: lance corporal in the Home Guard, a ragtag army of
Speaker 1: old men and teenage boys who guarded against the Nazi
Speaker 1: invasion in their spare time, occasionally armed only with carving
Speaker 1: knives tied to broomsticks. Of course, Hobart hadn't always been
Speaker 1: a lowly lance corporal. He had been a major general
Speaker 1: in the regular Army and a fanatic about tanks. He
Speaker 1: wrote about them, he talked about them, and finally badgered
Speaker 1: his superiors into giving him command of a new tank
Speaker 1: brigade to test his theories. The German high command rather
Speaker 1: admired his work, copying his ideas so much so that
Speaker 1: after one panzer exercise. It was said to have raised
Speaker 1: a Champagne toast in his honor to Hobart. Hobart's fellow
Speaker 1: British officers, however, found his dedication to armored warfare rather tiresome.
Speaker 1: Hobo was drummed out of the army, and his many
Speaker 1: enemies in the General Staff fought fiercely any campaign to
Speaker 1: bring him back. Winston Churchill was not, however, a man
Speaker 1: to accept defeat, so he wrote to the Chief of
Speaker 1: the Imperial General Staff, this is a time to try
Speaker 1: men of force and vision, and not to be exclusively
Speaker 1: confined to those who are judged thoroughly safe by conventional standards.
Speaker 1: Will you kindly make sure the appointment is made the
Speaker 1: earliest moment. Further plots were hatched to have Hobart pensioned off,
Speaker 1: but he survived them all and eventually found himself in
Speaker 1: charge of a unit that was pretty experimental, even by
Speaker 1: his standards. The seventy ninth Armored Division was unique. Its
Speaker 1: role was to develop and deploy on the battlefield tanks
Speaker 1: capable of quite remarkable feats. Feats all intended to allow
Speaker 1: the Allies to crack Hitler's Atlantic Wall and invade Europe.
Speaker 1: If there was a minefield in the way, Hobart had
Speaker 1: a tank which was fitted with a rotating drum of
Speaker 1: chains to flail the ground and clear the explosives. If
Speaker 1: the Nazis had dug a deep anti tank ditch and
Speaker 1: the seventy ninth could bring up a tank carrying its
Speaker 1: own section of bridge, Hobart had tanks for every job imaginable,
Speaker 1: able to blast and burn and generally overcome anything Hitler's
Speaker 1: Invasion Beaches had to offer. These vehicles became known as
Speaker 1: Hobart's Funnies, and of course included a swimming tank. The
Speaker 1: idea of a swimming tank had been floating around for decades,
Speaker 1: but under a cloak of secrecy, the British now perfected
Speaker 1: the concept well almost To stay afloat, DD or duplex
Speaker 1: drive tanks had to displace a weight of water greater
Speaker 1: than their own weight. To achieve this buoyancy, a tall
Speaker 1: canvas screen was erected right around the vehicle, held in
Speaker 1: place by metal struts and inflatable rubber tubes. Even so,
Speaker 1: the vehicles still rode worryingly low in the water. To
Speaker 1: our eyes, DD tanks seem precarious, even a little mad.
Speaker 1: The Shermans looked a bit like they were hiding at
Speaker 1: the bottom of a big canvas bucket, but they seemed
Speaker 1: to have impressed the British top brass. Since D Day
Speaker 1: was to be a combined Anglo American effort, Churchill and
Speaker 1: Hobart needed some American buy in. Hobart had overseen many
Speaker 1: thousands of practice launches of swimming tanks with just as
Speaker 1: single sinking, so he set up a demonstration for his
Speaker 1: American counterparts. The US generals turned their noses up at
Speaker 1: Hobart's other funnies, his flameed ower tanks and bridge layers,
Speaker 1: but they rather liked the DD. They were fearful that
Speaker 1: if a German shell struck a landing craft on D Day,
Speaker 1: then four tanks would be sunk in one go. Swimming tanks,
Speaker 1: being harder to hit, seemed to solve this problem. The
Speaker 1: American generals instructed Washington to approve the immediate construction of
Speaker 1: hundreds of the contraptions and gave them a triple A
Speaker 1: priority rating at the same rating as the atomic bomb,
Speaker 1: a sign of the high hopes many had for the
Speaker 1: DD tank and the importance they placed on it. Now
Speaker 1: that swimming tanks were rolling off the production lines. Training
Speaker 1: could begin in earnest. Exercise Smash was scheduled for April
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four and would be a rehearsal as close
Speaker 1: to battle conditions as possible, complete with the firing of
Speaker 1: live ammunition. Under the gaze of Winston Churchill, General Eisenhower
Speaker 1: and King George. A force of DD tanks swam towards
Speaker 1: a deserted English beach. We knew we weren't going to
Speaker 1: make it, said one of the tank commanders. Wins in
Speaker 1: the English Channel that day were reaching force four and
Speaker 1: the waves were a meter high, causing the commander to
Speaker 1: eye the canvas screen around his tank nervously. A great
Speaker 1: wave crashed over the top, he said, and we sank
Speaker 1: to the bottom. Six tanks were lost on Exercise Smash,
Speaker 1: and six men drowned. A seventh tank got stuck on
Speaker 1: a sandbar and was abandoned by its crew. It then
Speaker 1: refloated and began drifting out to sea. Fearing it might
Speaker 1: float off and be discovered by the Germans, the Royal
Speaker 1: Navy blew it to pieces in the choppy waters of
Speaker 1: the Channel. It was no small thing to turn a
Speaker 1: tank into a boat, nor was it straightforward to turn
Speaker 1: soldiers into sailors. Cautionary tails will return shortly on D Day,
Speaker 1: the seas off Omaha Beach were running, if anything, even
Speaker 1: higher than they had during the ill fated exercise smash.
Speaker 1: Following those sinkings in April, the US Navy thought it
Speaker 1: had been agreed that the DD tanks would only be
Speaker 1: launched weather permitting, and that the tank crews would heed
Speaker 1: the advice of its sailors before venturing out into the
Speaker 1: winds and the waves and the wicked tide. Sadly, it
Speaker 1: was never set out what happened if the soldiers and
Speaker 1: sailors disagreed. Aboard the ships carrying the DD tanks of
Speaker 1: seven hundred and forty First Battalion, The most senior sailor
Speaker 1: thought it was obvious that the sea was too choppy,
Speaker 1: but the army officers looked at the same rolling waves
Speaker 1: and decided they'd take the risk. Everyone from Churchill down
Speaker 1: nearly thought the DD tank was a splendid idea, and
Speaker 1: after all the trouble and training, were the officers of
Speaker 1: the seven hundred and forty First really going to give
Speaker 1: up now because of a few waves. They had a
Speaker 1: job to do. On other D Day beaches and even
Speaker 1: further along Omaha Beach, Naval commanders were successfully arguing that
Speaker 1: it was folly to launch the DD tanks, so their
Speaker 1: landing craft were taking the armor right up to the shore,
Speaker 1: but Private Bill Murkert and his comrades in the seven
Speaker 1: hundred and forty first were ordered to set their propellers
Speaker 1: spinning and swim the three miles or more to shore.
Speaker 1: The swell was really big. Bill remembered. One moment you'd
Speaker 1: ride a crest and get a view of the beach.
Speaker 1: The next he'd be at the bottom of a trough
Speaker 1: and just see water all around you. The D Day
Speaker 1: plans were meticulous, calling for Bill's tank to land at
Speaker 1: a specific spot on Omaha Beach. In calm weather, this
Speaker 1: would have been most cinch, but against the seas that day,
Speaker 1: even an experienced sailor would have struggled. The DD tanks
Speaker 1: soon found themselves being swept off course, so the crews
Speaker 1: desperately steered their craft to fight the wind and currents.
Speaker 1: But this was a mistake no seasoned mariner would have made,
Speaker 1: because by doing so, the tanks only exposed their vulnerable
Speaker 1: sides to the butting waves. The struts holding up the
Speaker 1: canvas screen started to buckled. Bill recalled he had been
Speaker 1: standing atop his Sherman. I was bracing a struck, but
Speaker 1: I was in no doubt we were in serious trouble.
Speaker 1: Was soon proved correct. We were the first tank to
Speaker 1: sink and went straight down with a big gulp, dragging
Speaker 1: a couple of guys down with it. Twenty six other
Speaker 1: tanks soon followed Bills to the bottom. Some soldiers bobbed
Speaker 1: free in the chilly waters, but others sank with their vehicles.
Speaker 1: Bill Murkert dragged himself into a half inflated life raft
Speaker 1: to await rescue and reflected on the squandering of nearly
Speaker 1: half of the entire DD force. That lost firepower could
Speaker 1: have made a big difference to the soldiers fighting on Omaha,
Speaker 1: he concluded. Nineteen year old Sergeant Ben Franklin was one
Speaker 1: of those soldiers wading through the surf and sorely missing
Speaker 1: the support of a Sherman tank and machine gun bullets
Speaker 1: were hitting everywhere. Were scared of death, and there was
Speaker 1: nothing I could do but duck under the water when
Speaker 1: they came close and hold my breath as long as
Speaker 1: I could. The young infantrymen reached dry land, but with
Speaker 1: so few tanks to blast the German pill boxes and
Speaker 1: machine gun nests, he faced a daunting sprint up the
Speaker 1: exposed beach. In his bunker on the hill above, German
Speaker 1: private Franz Gockle was able to train his machine gun
Speaker 1: on gis like Ben Franklin, safe from attack by a Sherman.
Speaker 1: The Americans had a lot of beach to cross. As
Speaker 1: they swarmed towards me. I opened fire. The Americans fell,
Speaker 1: and many never stood up again. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many I killed. The lack of armor on that section
Speaker 1: of beach is blamed for the invasion there grinding to
Speaker 1: a halt, with the generals out to sea, pondering the
Speaker 1: idea of abandoning Bloody Omaha altogether and sending reinforcements to
Speaker 1: beaches where their tanks had more successfully cut a swathe
Speaker 1: through Hitler's defenses. That didn't happen. The attacking troops on
Speaker 1: Omaha Beach slowly but surely knocked out one German strong
Speaker 1: point after another. The Atlantic Wall had cost Nazi Germany
Speaker 1: a fortune to construct, but had held up the Allies
Speaker 1: for a few hours at most, so the sinking of
Speaker 1: the seven hundred and forty firsts DD tanks didn't lose
Speaker 1: the Allies the Battle of Omaha Beach. That fight was
Speaker 1: one but that are terrible and perhaps needless cost in lives.
Speaker 1: One wonders why the concept of amphibious tanks was ever
Speaker 1: serious the entertain in the first place, let alone given
Speaker 1: top secret triple A priority, soaking up resources and manpower
Speaker 1: badly needed elsewhere. Here's the thing about DD tanks, historian
Speaker 1: John McManus told the We Have Ways podcast, they solved
Speaker 1: a problem that didn't really exist. We had already worked
Speaker 1: out how to bring tanks ashore. He's right. An official
Speaker 1: Army report said the DD tank was not satisfactory for
Speaker 1: the purpose intended. It noted that up and down the
Speaker 1: D Day Beaches, the Navy had successfully delivered tanks where
Speaker 1: they needed to be without significant losses to German artillery.
Speaker 1: The fear that the fleet of landing craft would be
Speaker 1: decimated proved unfounded. It was ironically the swim in that
Speaker 1: wiped out many of the vital tanks. Zach Morris, author
Speaker 1: of When the Beaches Trembled, notes that in the war
Speaker 1: against Japan and the Pacific, where Incidentally, DD tanks had
Speaker 1: been rejected. The US Navy had instead equipped small landing
Speaker 1: craft with tank cannon. Thus armed, they could sail close
Speaker 1: to shore and bring those guns to bear on the enemy.
Speaker 1: Morris says the D Day planners were thinking, how can
Speaker 1: we make a floating tank? They were asking the wrong question.
Speaker 1: It should have been what can we take that already
Speaker 1: floats and make it into a tank. This all rather
Speaker 1: reminds me of milkshakes. Yes, you heard that correctly. Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School professor Clayton Christensen used the example of milkshakes
Speaker 1: to illustrate how people often set up off down the
Speaker 1: road to solve the wrong problem. Christensen told of a
Speaker 1: fast food chain wanting to boost its milkshake sales. A
Speaker 1: sophisticated research project was launched to find out what customers
Speaker 1: looked for in a shake, should it be cheaper, or
Speaker 1: chunkier or more chocolatey. The recipe was then tweaked accordingly,
Speaker 1: yet still sales and profits stayed flat. Puzzled, the fast
Speaker 1: food firm brought in one of Christensen's fellow researchers, who
Speaker 1: stood in an outlet and asked himself a strange question.
Speaker 1: It wasn't what flavor do people like nor how much
Speaker 1: do they want to spend? Instead, he asked what are
Speaker 1: customers hiring their milkshakes to do. The researcher noticed that
Speaker 1: half of all milkshakes purchased in the mornings by loan
Speaker 1: commuters who bought no other products. Quizzing these customers, he
Speaker 1: found that they had stopped in before their long drives
Speaker 1: to work. They were hiring the shakes to fill their
Speaker 1: stomachs for the next few hours, give them something to
Speaker 1: do as they drove, and all in a convenient package
Speaker 1: that would fit in their car's cup holder. Bagels, bananas
Speaker 1: or doughnuts weren't nearly as easy to consume at the wheel,
Speaker 1: and besides, they were guzzled down too quickly. The company
Speaker 1: had wasted time and money on altering the taste or
Speaker 1: cost of its shakes, when what it needed to do
Speaker 1: was make the drinks more attractive to commuting motorists. They
Speaker 1: should have formulated and marketed a breakfast drink a morning milkshake.
Speaker 1: As Dawn Norma and the author of the Design of
Speaker 1: Everyday Things, says, a brilliant solution to the wrong problem
Speaker 1: can be worse than no solution at all. DD tanks
Speaker 1: might have looked a bit rickety, but they were brilliant too.
Speaker 1: A tank able to ride the waves then rise up
Speaker 1: onto an enemy held beach to begin blasting away clearly
Speaker 1: impressed everyone who saw it trialed it solved the problem
Speaker 1: of how to make a tank float in calm seas,
Speaker 1: But was it solving the real problem at hand, how
Speaker 1: to invade Europe. Good designers never start by trying to
Speaker 1: solve the problem given to them, says don Norman. They
Speaker 1: take the original problem as a suggestion, not as a
Speaker 1: final statement, and they don't try to search for a
Speaker 1: solution until they've determined the real problem of The DD
Speaker 1: tanks were ingenious and their crews were heroic, but in
Speaker 1: hindsight it's all too easy to see that DD tanks
Speaker 1: were an unnecessary diversion. It's widely agreed that if only
Speaker 1: the seven hundred and forty first tanks had been landed
Speaker 1: on Omaha Beach in the conventional way, many soldiers' lives
Speaker 1: would have been saved. But that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the story. D Day was just the start of the invasion,
Speaker 1: and waiting in land was something more impenetrable and more
Speaker 1: deadly than Hitler's beach defenses. The soldiers leaving Bloody Omaha
Speaker 1: were about to enter a hellscape for which no ingenious
Speaker 1: Sherman tank had been designed. Cautionary tales will be back.
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler, ever, the lover of garish and gargantuan architectural projects,
Speaker 1: was convinced that the entire coastline of Europe could be
Speaker 1: made impregnable. If only enough concrete was poured, the lands
Speaker 1: he had conquered would become He decreed a festoon, a fortress. Field.
Speaker 1: Marshal Erwin Rommel, the man Hitler sent to oversee the
Speaker 1: defenses in France, took her more realistic view. Hitler was
Speaker 1: living in vulcan cuckook sheim cloud Cuckoo Land if he
Speaker 1: thought the Atlantic Wall would prevent an Allied invasion. Touring
Speaker 1: the Normandy beaches before D Day, Rommeld quickly realized that
Speaker 1: the much publicized Atlantic was far less formidable than Nazi
Speaker 1: propagandists would have the world believe. There were great stretches
Speaker 1: of coast where no fortifications existed at all, and many
Speaker 1: of the completed bunkers were equipped with a mishmash of
Speaker 1: weaponry and manned by substandard troops or foreigners from Russia
Speaker 1: or Eastern Europe fighting for the Nazis only under duress.
Speaker 1: Even had the fortresses of Hitler's ravings been real, many
Speaker 1: of his generals doubted the military logic of the whole
Speaker 1: Atlantic Wall project. These bunkers would be pommeled from sea
Speaker 1: and air by the Allies, with the defenders trapped inside
Speaker 1: until the invading armies overran them and took them prisoner.
Speaker 1: It would be better to retreat inland, slowly, making the
Speaker 1: Allies spill blood for every foot they advanced. The Germans
Speaker 1: would be helped in this by a formidable defensive network
Speaker 1: stretching miles back from the coast, and for which they're
Speaker 1: not spent a penny. It was built not by German
Speaker 1: engineers nor enslaved laborers. Instead, it had evolved over centuries
Speaker 1: thanks to Norman farmers and landowners. I'm speaking of the Bokage.
Speaker 1: The Bokhage was a patchwork of small fields divided by tall,
Speaker 1: thick hedgerows and deep sunken lanes. Such a landscape was
Speaker 1: easy to defend and a nightmare to attack. Coming to
Speaker 1: the first hedgerow, said one American soldier, we immediately saw
Speaker 1: death and destruction in its most violent form. A couple
Speaker 1: of German machine guns cleverly positioned could cut anyone wandering
Speaker 1: into the fields to ribbons. Sherman tanks could have tipped
Speaker 1: the balance in the Alli's favor, but they simply couldn't
Speaker 1: move in the Bokhage. These hedgerows weren't made of concrete,
Speaker 1: but centuries of compacted dirt and a criss crossing tangle
Speaker 1: of roots. The next best thing. Even a thirty three
Speaker 1: ton tank couldn't smash through them. The best a Sherman
Speaker 1: could do was drive up and over the embankments, but
Speaker 1: in the process they might fatally expose their vulnerable bellies
Speaker 1: to the enemy. One bitter two day battle saw the
Speaker 1: Americans advance just half a mile through the Bokhage, with
Speaker 1: more than four hundred tank crewmen killed or wounded in
Speaker 1: the process. According to one gi many American tankers fled
Speaker 1: the carnage. I saw dozens of them running like hell
Speaker 1: for the rear. He recalled. Such panic is understandable. These
Speaker 1: American soldiers had trained for months for the invasion, learning
Speaker 1: how best to cross the beaches and neutralize the Atlantic Wall,
Speaker 1: but no lessons had been offered on how to fight
Speaker 1: and win in the Bokhage, and while much thought and
Speaker 1: effort had gone into the DD tanks and the other
Speaker 1: Hobart funnies, there was certainly no armored vehicles specially modified
Speaker 1: to deal with these ancient Norman hedges. Although there had
Speaker 1: been some talk before D Day about hedgerows, said one
Speaker 1: American general, nobody anticipated how difficult they would be, so
Speaker 1: just a few miles inland from Omaha Beach, the advance
Speaker 1: ground to a halt. It had taken mere hours to
Speaker 1: break through the vastly expensive Atlantic Wall, but for week
Speaker 1: after week, the Americans struggled to beat the Bokhage. America's
Speaker 1: mechanized army was at its best when performing great sweeping
Speaker 1: movements with speeding tanks and trucks and jeeps, but it
Speaker 1: had been slowed to a snail's pace and then stopped altogether.
Speaker 1: We're stuck, complained one tank crewman. Things are going very awry.
Speaker 1: The whole theory of mobility we've been taught of our
Speaker 1: racing across the battlefield has gone up in smoke. In
Speaker 1: the dark maze of lanes and hedges. The death toll
Speaker 1: rose to an alarming level, and many of those untouched
Speaker 1: by bullet or shell left the battlefield with mental exhaustion
Speaker 1: so called battle fatigue, or simply lay down their weapons
Speaker 1: and deserted. It wasn't clear that anyone in command had
Speaker 1: the slightest idea what to do to break the stalemate.
Speaker 1: Why don't we get some saw teeth and put them
Speaker 1: on the front of the tank and cut through these hedges.
Speaker 1: The assembled tank crews laughed at the suggestion. The men
Speaker 1: had been brought together to brainstorm a solution to the
Speaker 1: Brakhage problem, but few saw much merit in this suggestion
Speaker 1: by their comrade from Tennessee. Wait a minute, said staff
Speaker 1: Sergeant Curtis Cullin, defending the man. He's got an idea there.
Speaker 1: The twenty nine year old Cullin mouled over the problem.
Speaker 1: What kind of teeth could cut through a hedgerow that
Speaker 1: had stood solidly for centuries? Steel teeth, presumably, But where
Speaker 1: was there a ready supply of sharp and hardened steel.
Speaker 1: Wasn't there plenty on Omaha Beach, suggested another member of
Speaker 1: the unit. The Germans, he pointed out, had littered the
Speaker 1: sands with so called check hedgehogs and Belgian gates, both
Speaker 1: sharp steel obstacles intended to damage landing craft and vehicles alike. So,
Speaker 1: without seeking any higher authority, someone was sent back to
Speaker 1: collect these steel beams, and the process began to weld
Speaker 1: them to the hull of a sherman. Cullin and his
Speaker 1: comrades didn't know it, but they were engaged in something
Speaker 1: with today call workplace innovation. The concept encourages business owners
Speaker 1: to pay greater heed to the ideas of their workers, who,
Speaker 1: after all, see the problems their companies face day after
Speaker 1: day and might come up with nifty solutions. Workplace innovation
Speaker 1: theorists promised that greater productivity and profitability can be achieved,
Speaker 1: but only of employees a given permission to experiment and
Speaker 1: a certain amount of space to manage themselves. That permission
Speaker 1: is often not forthcoming, which is why back in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty four, Sergeant Cullin kept his hedge cutting experiments a secret.
Speaker 1: He feared the ridicule of the higher ups, and maybe
Speaker 1: those officers would be right to laugh. Now, armed with
Speaker 1: several sharp steel tusks, Cullin's tank slowly drove into a hedgerow,
Speaker 1: and as always happened, it began to rise and climb
Speaker 1: over the barrier, exposing its belly. It was lucky no
Speaker 1: German was nearby with the bazooka, so Cullin put his
Speaker 1: thinking cap on again. What if instead of driving slowly,
Speaker 1: the tank driver went full pelt. We've got something that
Speaker 1: will knock your eyes out. Putting down the phone, the
Speaker 1: top us General in Normandy, Omar Bradley, hurried to Cullin's
Speaker 1: camp to see what all the fuss was about. He
Speaker 1: was greeted by a sherman that looked, for all the
Speaker 1: world like some metal rhinoceros. The tank backed off and
Speaker 1: ran head on towards a hedgerow, said Bradley. Its tusks
Speaker 1: bored into the wall and the tank broke through under
Speaker 1: a canopy of dirt. It had been a problem that
Speaker 1: had baffled Bradley's army for weeks, but here was the solution,
Speaker 1: and it was, in the General's words, absurdly simple. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a second to lose us. Steel was gathered up
Speaker 1: from the beach and a team flown back to England
Speaker 1: to round up every available welder and their machines. Within days,
Speaker 1: five hundred rhino tanks were ready for action, and soon
Speaker 1: after sixty percent of all US tanks sported tusks with
Speaker 1: which to break through the bockage and spray the German
Speaker 1: defenders with bullet and shell. The stalemate was at last broken.
Speaker 1: We could see that the Americans had learned how to
Speaker 1: break through, said one German soldier, now put to flight
Speaker 1: and retreating under heavy fire and constant air attacks. There
Speaker 1: would be much bloodshed to come, but the Americans were
Speaker 1: now trading lives for miles rather than meters gained, and
Speaker 1: some of that was down to the Rhino tanks, the
Speaker 1: brainchild of an ordinary soldier. The Rhino wasn't a product
Speaker 1: of an arms company or a defense laboratory. It didn't
Speaker 1: have the long development time, the huge budget, and the
Speaker 1: triple A priority of the DD tanks. It was knocked
Speaker 1: up in the field from scrap metal by men who
Speaker 1: had an intimate knowledge of the problem they were facing.
Speaker 1: The Rhino was well and truly mcguivered. There was a
Speaker 1: little sergeant, said the Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower. His
Speaker 1: name was Culin, and he had an idea. It seemed
Speaker 1: like a crazy idea, but this thing worked, and it
Speaker 1: worked beautifully. The key sources for this episode were Norman
Speaker 1: D forty four by James Holland, Overlord by Max Hastings,
Speaker 1: Beyond the Beachhead by Joseph Balkowski, as well as Ryan
Speaker 1: Dilly's interviews with D Day veterans Bill Murkert and Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1: For a full list of sources, go to Timharford dot com.
Speaker 1: The Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim Harford with
Speaker 1: Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by
Speaker 1: Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original
Speaker 1: music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design
Speaker 1: is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Ben A.
Speaker 1: Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. Do you want
Speaker 1: to support the stories we tell on Cautionary Tales? If so,
Speaker 1: you can join my new Cautionary Club at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com Slash Cautionary Club for exclusive bonus episodes, newsletters, ad
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