page_title: Rhino tank
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Rhino tank / Background
context_page_description: "Rhino tank" was the American nickname for Allied tanks fitted with "tusks", or bocage cutting devices, during World War II. The British designation for the modifications was Prongs.
  In the summer of 1944, during the Battle of Normandy, Allied forces – particularly the Americans – had become bogged down fighting the Germans in the Normandy bocage. This landscape of thick banked rock walls covered with hedges proved difficult for tanks to breach. In an effort to restore battlefield mobility, various devices were invented to allow tanks to navigate the terrain. Initially the devices were manufactured in Normandy, largely from German steel-beam beach defensive devices on an ad hoc basis. Manufacture was then shifted to the United Kingdom, and vehicles were modified before being shipped to France.
  While the devices have been credited with restoring battlefield mobility in the difficult terrain, historians have questioned their overall usefulness and tactical significance.
context_section_description: Following the Normandy landings of June 1944,  as Allied forces pushed inland from the French coast, they found themselves operating within an area of Normandy's countryside known as the bocage. The actual bocage landscape extends further than the limited definition of bocage normand, that is to say, from the area directly west of Arromanches-les-Bains, including the entire Cotentin Peninsula, to the south of Brittany, Maine, and Vendée. In some areas, this terrain stretches for 50 miles (80 kilometres). This landscape contained large earth dikes averaging 4 ft (1.2 m) high that were covered with tangled hedges, bushes, and trees that surrounded small raised irregular-sized fields, which were generally no more than 300 ft (91 m) across on a side. The nature of the hedgerows—"sturdy embankments, half earth, half hedge" up to 15 ft (4.6 m) high with sturdy, interlocking root systems—made excavating them extremely difficult, even with machinery. Narrow sunken roads were the only pathways between these banks. Tank movement was severely restricted, preventing the Allied forces from bringing their vehicular superiority to bear. The rolling landscape was also dotted with small rivers, woods, and fruit trees, along with scattered stone farmhouses and their outbuildings.
  Allied infantry, in particular the Americans, found themselves fighting from field to field against the Germans, who had in many places dug foxholes directly into the hedgerow embankments, providing their machine gunners and riflemen protection from overhead artillery fire. These defensive positions limited the ability of the American forces to coordinate large-scale attacks or receive sufficient and accurate artillery support. Openings that did exist within the patchwork of hedges were already covered by German anti-personnel and anti-tank weapons; armor moving through these gaps attracted immediate defensive fire. Tanks were able to push their way over the hedgerows, but in doing so they exposed their weak underside armor. Tactical developments throughout June involved combat engineers using explosives to blow holes in the hedgerows for tanks to move through; however, the explosions often attracted immediate German attention.
caption: An example of bocage landscape
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