Historical Collection Highlights

M5A1 Rhino

After successfully securing the beachheads in Normandy, the Allies were faced with the challenge of fighting in the Bocage or hedgerows. Hedgerows are mounds of earth, rocks, and dense shrubs. Between many of the hedgerows were sunken roads that look like tunnels made of trees and foliage. For hundreds of years, the Normans had pulled rocks from their fields as they were plowed and used them to create “fences” to designate land and keep in animals. The “fences,” slowly accumulating dirt and shrubs, began to grow, creating walls between each field. While training in England, the invasion force gained experience with navigating hedgerow country, but the larger Norman hedgerows presented more of a challenge. They could be anywhere between 6 to 15 feet high and 3 to 12 feet thick and normally only had one entrance or exit for people, animals, and farming equipment. This terrain gave the battlefield advantage to the Germans because it had predictable entrances, excellent cover, and broke down the countryside into smaller, easily defendable sections. Each field taken by the Allies was costly.

In order to secure the fields, the infantry worked closely with armor as the tanks gave protection from small arms fire. To create new entrances to each field a number of methods were employed. Engineers often used burrowed explosive charges to blow a hole in the hedgerow, but this process was slow and allowed for the Germans to readjust their fields of fire. Another method was to have a tank with prongs in the shape of artillery shells ram into the hedgerow and engineers would then place the artillery rounds in the wall and detonate them. Again, the noise of the tanks and time the process took allowed for the Germans to adjust. The best solution came from Sergeant Curtis G. Culin, Jr., who took one of the famous Czech Hedgehog beach obstacles and cut it into teeth that were then welded to the front of tanks. This allowed the tanks to ram through the hedgerow at speed immediately breaking through. Impressed by the device, General Omar Bradley ordered Ordnance units to produce the “Culin Cutter” en masse to outfit as many tanks as possible. For Operation COBRA, the Normandy breakout campaign in late July, three of every five tanks in the First Army were outfitted with the hedgerow busting teeth. The tanks equipped with Culin’s invention came to be known as “Rhinos” such as this M5A1 Stuart.