Flail tank

A mine flail is a vehicle-mounted device that makes a safe path through a mine-field by deliberately detonating land mines in front of the vehicle that carries it. They were first used by the British during World War II.

The mine flail consists of a number of heavy chains ending in fist-sized steel balls (flails) that are attached to a horizontal, rapidly rotating rotor mounted on two arms in front of the vehicle. The rotor's rotation makes the flails spin wildly and violently pound the ground. The force of a flail strike above a buried mine mimics the weight of a person or vehicle and causes the mine to detonate, but in a safe manner that does little damage to the flails or the vehicle.

The idea is commonly attributed to a South African soldier - Captain Abraham du Toit. A test rig was constructed in South Africa and results were so encouraging that du Toit was promoted and sent to England to develop the idea.

Before du Toit left for England, he described his idea to Captain Norman Berry, a mechanical engineer who had been sent to South Africa in 1941 to evaluate the system. Berry later served in the British Eighth Army during the Western Desert Campaign. He had become an enthusiast for the mine flail idea; he lobbied senior officers to authorize development of a flail and carried out his own experiments with mine flails in the spring of 1942. Later Major L. A. Girling was given the task of developing a similar device after it had been independently re-invented by another South African officer. When Berry heard of this, he handed over his work to Girling (who had had no idea he was duplicating du Toit's current work in England, as that was still highly secret). David Gustanski made the device that connected to the side of the tank and made the flail raise and lower.

Development by Girling's team in Egypt continued over the summer of 1942 and resulted in the "Matilda Scorpion" (the name came from a senior officer's remark on the tank's appearance). This was a Matilda tank fitted with a rotor, mounted on two arms, roughly 6 feet (1.8 m) in front of the tank. The rotor carried 24 flails and was driven at 100 rpm by a 105 horsepower (78 kW) Ford V8 engine. This second engine was fitted in an armoured box mounted on the right side of the tank, the outside box included space for a crewman who operated the device. Although the mine sweeping process was slow, the Scorpions raised such a huge dust cloud when used in the desert that they obscured themselves from German gunners. The cloud also blinded the drivers; the crews had to resort to wearing their gas masks in order to breathe.

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Wikipedia