Percy Hobart

Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart (1942)

Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart KBE CB DSO MC , called Hobo (born June 14, 1885 in Naini Tal , India , † February 19, 1957 in Farnham , Surrey , England ) was a British officer and commander of the 79th Armored Division . He was best known for the special armored vehicles designed under his leadership, the Hobart's Funnies named after him , which were used during the Normandy landings ( Operation Neptune ).

Life

Percy Hobart was the son of Robert T. Hobart, British Indian Administrator , and Janetta Stanley. His sister Elizabeth was the future wife of Bernard Montgomery . Hobart attended Temple Grove School and Clifton College and studied history, painting, literature, and sacred architecture. In 1904 he graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich and then entered the Royal Corps of Engineers . There he served first in his native India and during the First World War in France and Mesopotamia , today's Iraq . In 1919 and 1920 he took part in the campaign in Waziristan to suppress tribal unrest.

In 1923 Hobart was transferred to the Royal Tank Regiment , the armored force. The writings of Basil Liddell Hart , a British military historian , on modern armored warfare had a major influence on Hobart. From 1923 to 1927 he was an instructor at the Royal Command and Staff College in Quetta . In 1934 he became a brigadier of the UK's first permanent tank brigade and inspector of the Royal Tank Corps . In this function he had to constantly fight for sufficient funds for his unit with the army command, which at that time was still dominated by conservative cavalry officers.

In November 1928, Hobart married Dorothea Field. They had a daughter together.

In 1937 Hobart was promoted to major general and took over the supervision of military training with the General Staff . In 1938, despite resistance from local commanders, he was entrusted with building the first tank unit in Egypt . For this unit, the later was the seventh British Armored Division , which in World War II as the "Desert Rats" (Desert Rats) became known.

After the outbreak of war in 1939, Middle East Commander-in-Chief Sir Archibald Wavell retired Hobart because the War Department opposed Hobart's unconventional ideas about tank warfare. Hobart was temporarily active in the Home Guard .

An article by Basil Liddell Hart in the Sunday Pictorial magazine , which strongly criticized Wavell's decision, brought Winston Churchill's attention to the matter and reactivated Hobart. He was commissioned to train the 11th Armored Division , which was intended for use in North Africa . Although he solved this task with great success, his opponents tried again to have him relieved, this time for health reasons, which Churchill prevented. When the 11th Panzer Division was relocated to Tunisia in September 1942, Hobart was withdrawn because he was unsuitable for combat operations due to his age and health. Instead, he was entrusted with the formation and training of a new unit, the 79th Panzer Division.

The Operation Jubilee , the experiment of Scottish and Canadian units, the port of Dieppe take, failed in mid-August 1942 the board. It showed the weakness of tank and infantry units in landing operations against fortified obstacles, which was important for the planned landing in Normandy .

In March 1943, the 79th Panzer Division was about to be disbanded due to a lack of material, when the British Chief of Staff , Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke , had the idea of ​​having Hobart set up and develop a unit of special armored vehicles. After discussing things with Liddell Hart, Hobart agreed to the new assignment.

Front view of the famous flail tank. One of the Hobart's funnies .

The unit was renamed the 79th Royal Engineers (Experimental) Armored Division . The unit's badge on each vehicle was a black bull's head on a yellow triangle. Under Hobart's command, the unit developed numerous converted tanks, which became known in the army under the nickname Hobart's Funnies (roughly: "Hobart's cucumbers") . At the beginning of 1944, Hobart Eisenhower and Montgomery was able to demonstrate a brigade of buoyant DD tanks , Crab mining vehicles and AVRE tanks, as well as a regiment of Crocodile Flamethrower tanks . These vehicles were used on the Normandy landings and were later described by Liddell Hart as a "decisive factor on D-Day ". Montgomery believed they should be available to the U.S. armed forces as well and had offered them half of the vehicles available. But the response was not particularly enthusiastic. Eisenhower liked the swimming tanks, but left the decision to the other commanders, such as General Bradley , who in turn delegated it to his officers. Except for the buoyant Sherman DD tanks, the Americans did not use any of Hobart's designs.

The vehicles of the 79th Panzer Division did not act as a complete unit, but were assigned to other departments for support. Towards the end of the war, the 79th owned almost 7,000 vehicles.

On August 20, 1945, the 79th British Armored Division was disbanded. Hobart retired in 1946 and passed away in 1957.

Awards

For his achievements during World War Hobart was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross . In 1943 Hobart was named "Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire " and thus raised to the nobility . Before that, he was Companion of the Order of the Bath . After the Second World War, the USA awarded him the Legion of Merit .

literature

• TJ Constable: They Called Him 'Hobo'. The Little-Known Story of Percy Hobart . Journal of Historical Review 18/1999, here:
• Patrick Delaforce: Churchill's Secret Weapons. The Story of Hobart's Funnies , Pen & Sword, Barnsley 2006, ISBN 1-84415-344-4
• Kenneth Macksey: Armored Crusader: The Biography of Major-General Sir Percy 'Hobo' Hobart, One of the Most Influential Military Commanders of the Second World War , Grub Street, 2004, ISBN 1904010644
• Peter Steinmüller: Through the breach in the Atlantic Wall , in VDI nachrichten 23/2019 of June 7, 2019, p. 26, here:

Web links

• Jon Diamond: General Percy Hobart: Britain's Genius Tanker
• Kyle Mizokami and Jalopnik: The 'Funnies' Were The Wildly Modified Tanks That Protected The Allies On D-Day
• Tank Museum Bovington video about Hobart's Funnies
• Tank Museum Bovington video about Percy Hobart