August 19th, 1942. DEP, France. Canadian engineers sprinted across open beach toward German seaw walls and anti-tank obstacles. They carried demolition charges. They had no armored protection. German machine guns cut them down in waves. The sappers who made it to the obstacles worked in the open, exposed and dying.

 By the time the surviving troops retreated, the lesson was brutal and undeniable. Engineers needed to be inside tanks, not running alongside them. and they needed a weapon capable of cracking concrete bunkers without exposing themselves to enemy fire. Two years later, British forces landed on the beaches of Normandy with the answer, a tank that fired dust bins.

Not actual dust bins, of course, but the projectile looked so much like one that the war office gave it an official code name, the flying dust bin. This 40 lb high explosive bomb tumbled visibly through the air before slamming into German fortifications and detonating with enough force to crack reinforced concrete.

 The weapon that fired it was called the Patard, a spigot mortar mounted on a Churchill tank designated the AVR, the armored vehicle Royal Engineers. It looked absurd. It worked brilliantly. And at Omaha Beach, where American forces went without specialized armor, the cost of that absence became brutally clear. The DEP disaster created urgency.

According to regimental histories, a Canadian engineer officer who witnessed the slaughter firsthand conceived the core idea. Put the engineers inside the tank. Give them a demolition weapon. Let them breach fortifications under armor. Working with British tank designers at the Department of Tank Design, Canadian and British engineers developed what would become the AVRE.

 The Churchill Infantry tank was chosen for specific reasons. Its side doors allowed engineers to dismount under protection. Its spacious interior could store demolition charges and equipment. Its heavy armor could survive the close assault range required to hit bunkers with accuracy. The weapon itself fell to Milis Jeffris, head of MD1, Winston Churchill’s personal weapons development section.

 The prime minister had long advocated for mounting engineers in tanks, and he took personal interest in the project. Jeffris created the Patard mortar, formerly designated the mortar recoiling spigot 29 mm. That designation has caused decades of confusion. The 29 mm refers to the spigot rod diameter, the firing pin, not the bomb itself.

 The projectile was a large demolition charge, often described in sources as roughly 290 mm across, nicknamed the flying dust bin for its shape and tumbling flight. The flying dust bin specifications were formidable. Total weight was 40 lb with 26 to 28 lb of that being high explosive. The projectile measured 636 mm long.

 Muzzle velocity was extremely low, which meant the round tumbled visibly through the air, looking for all the world like a dust bin cartwheeling toward German positions. Effective range was 80 y dangerously close to the target. Maximum range at optimal elevation reached 230 yards, but accuracy dropped significantly beyond the effective distance.

 The reload procedure made the weapon even more unusual. The turret traversed forward over the co-driver’s position. The barrel broke vertically like a giant shotgun. The co-driver then opened his hatch and reloaded from outside, pushing a fresh round into the barrel while exposed to enemy fire. The tank sat stationary during this process.

In combat conditions, the reload took 15 to 30 seconds. Every shot meant a reload. Hatch open, upper body exposed, tank motionless, enemy watching. That was the price of the Patard’s firepower. The Churchill tank base provided the protection necessary for this dangerous work. The Mark III and four variants used for AVRE conversion featured 92 mm of upper hull armor and 89 mm on the turret front with additional applique armor added during conversion.

 The vehicle weighed 40 tunners, fully loaded, powered by a Bedford twin 6 engine producing 350 horsepower. The six-man crew included a dedicated demolition’s NCO, who primed ammunition and led dismounted operations. By October 1943, the Army training memorandum formally established the designation armored vehicle Royal Engineers.

 The vehicles were assigned to the 79th Armored Division under Major General Percy Hobart, whose collection of specialized armor became known as Hobart’s funnies. The name was affectionate, not mocking. These machines looked strange, but Hobart had proven himself at Dunkirk and in North Africa. When he insisted on unconventional solutions, the War Office listened.

 Production accelerated through 1943 and into 1944. By D-Day, 180 AVRE were ready. Over 750 would be converted by wars end. Each vehicle required removal of the standard tank gun and installation of the petard mortar. Modification of the co-drivers hatch to the sliding type. Addition of internal racks for demolition stores and fitting of attachment points for engineering equipment like fines, bobin matting and the smallbox girder bridge.

 The conversion transformed a fighting tank into a mobile engineering platform. Now, before we see how this performed in combat, if you’re enjoying this deep dive into British engineering, hit subscribe. It takes a second, costs nothing, and helps the channel grow. All right, let’s get into the combat record. June 6th, 1944, the fifth and sixth assault regiment’s Royal Engineers landed a VR across Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches.

 German defenders had never seen anything like it. The assault regiments hit the beaches in carefully planned teams called breaching groups. Each group combined AVRE with Sherman crab flail tanks for mine clearing and standard Churchills for fire support. Their mission was to blow gaps through the seaw wall, destroy bunkers covering the beach exits, and clear routes inland before infantry became pinned down in the killing zones.

 A German infantryman from the 325th Infantry Division left a vivid account of what happened. According to his testimony, a Churchill stormed up the roadway, bulldozed aside, and knocked out Sherman, drove straight through, burning fuel, and approached the German position without slowing. An 88 mm gun hit the turret front, but the round deflected off the armor.

 Another Churchill then fired its gun repeatedly at the concrete. He described huge explosions as the seaw wall disintegrated and collapsed, forming a mound of rubble the tanks could cross. At Sword Beach, 79 assault squadron responded to a call for help from number four commando at Wistrom. An officer collected 10 AVREs and subjected the enemy to what contemporary accounts called a terrifying rain of murderous flying dust bins for an hour.

 The AVREs reached the Ka Canal lock gates before Germans could blow their demolition charges. At La Hamill, an AVRE crew fired two Patard rounds at a sanatorium the Germans had converted into a strong point. The deadlock broke. Sergeant John Solomon of 222nd Assault Squadron described the weapon’s effect in his postwar account.

 The blast, he said, was devastating. This was not a shell which explodes and send splinters flying. This was solely a 40lb mortar bomb filled with plastic high explosive. The detonation was terrific. That was what it was designed for, to blast apart pill boxes. Casualty rates told the fuller story. In some sectors, 50% of AVREs were knocked out, but objectives were achieved. The beaches were cleared.

Infantry moved inland. The contrast with American forces was stark. General Omar Bradley had observed demonstrations of Hobart’s funnies, the collection of specialized armor that included the AVRE. He declined most variants for American use. His stated concerns included logistics that accepting Churchills would require retraining tank operators and maintenance men and creating a complicated separate supply chain.

 Time before D-Day was short, the amphibious DD tanks were accepted because they used the Sherman chassis American crews already knew. The British treated specialized armor as essential. The Americans took a more conventional approach. At Omaha Beach, multiple factors combined into catastrophe. rough seas, ineffective naval bombardment, stronger than expected German defenses, and critically the near total loss of armor support.

 Of 29 DD Sherman tanks launched for Omaha, 27 sank in rough seas. Infantry hit the beach virtually alone. 175 naval combat demolition unit personnel using handplaced charges suffered 52% casualties. 31 killed and 60 wounded trying to clear obstacles in the open. These men swam or waded ashore carrying explosives, then worked under German fire to attach charges to beach obstacles.

 They had no armored protection whatsoever. The British, by contrast, launched their DD tanks closer to shore and supported demolition teams with AVRE. Total Omaha casualties exceeded 2500. Compare that to roughly 1,000 each on the British beaches. Eisenhower himself acknowledged this after the war. The comparatively light casualties sustained on all beaches except Omaha, he stated, were in large measure due to the success of the novel mechanical contrivances employed.

 It was doubtful, he concluded, if assault forces could have firmly established themselves without these weapons. Germany had nothing comparable. Their closest equivalent was the Sturm Tiger, mounting a 380 mm rocket mortar capable of penetrating 2 and 1/2 m of reinforced concrete. Its projectile weighed 376 kg, dwarfing the Patard’s 18 kg.

 But the STM Tiger could fire at 6,000 m. It served as an assault gun meant to demolish buildings in urban combat, not an engineering vehicle designed to support sappers in breaching operations. More critically, only 18 to 19 Sterm Tigers were ever built, arriving in August 1944, too late to matter. They saw action in the Warsaw uprising and the Battle of the Bulge, but never in the role the AVRE filled.

The Stern Panza 4, nicknamed the Brum Bear, which translates roughly to grumpy bear, carried a 150 mm howitzer, and was more practical. 300 were built, but it lacked engineering equipment, side doors for sappers, or internal storage for demolition charges. It was a support vehicle designed to reduce buildings and strong points from standoff range, not an integrated engineering platform that could deliver sappers to an objective under protection.

 The Soviet ISU 152 earned the nickname Beast Killer for destroying German armor at Kursk. Its 152 mm gun fired a 56 kg concrete piercing shell at ranges exceeding 3,500 m. Over 3,200 were built, reflecting Soviet industrial capacity and doctrinal preference for massive firepower. But again, this was a multi-roll assault gun designed primarily for anti-tank work, not a purpose-built engineering vehicle.

The Soviets used it to blast holes in German positions, but they did not integrate engineering teams into the vehicle or design it for close assault demolition work. The AVR’s uniqueness lay not in raw destructive power, but in integration. Heavy demolition capability, protected transport for sappers, internal storage for charges, side doors for dismounted operations, all combined in one vehicle.

 No other nation produced anything comparable during the war. VREs rarely operated alone. Working with Churchill crocodile flamethrowers, assault teams developed devastating combined tactics the troops called corkcrew and blowtorrch. The AVRE would crack concrete defenses with its patard, blowing open embraasers or creating breaches in walls.

 The crocodile would then inject flame through the breach, filling the interior with fire. The combination was almost impossible to survive. The psychological effect was profound. German troops who might have fought to the death against conventional tanks often surrendered rather than face burning alive.

 On D-Day plus one, crocodiles from 13 troop caused 150 Germans to surrender after their first flame demonstration. The sight of armored vehicles methodically cracking and burning bunkers broke defensive morale across Normandy. The Battle of Duv radar station on June 17th, 1944 demonstrated these tactics perfectly.

 This 20acre Luftvafa position contained 30 concrete works, five anti-tank guns, minefields, and tunnels. 17 AVRE from 26th Assault Squadron supported by 28 Sherman crabs and 41 Commando Royal Marines reduced the position after naval and artillery bombardment. One Patard scored a direct hit on a 50 mm gun at 60 yards. Another destroyed an open imp placement.

 227 Germans surrendered. British casualties were three tank crew killed and seven wounded. The AVRE continued proving its worth throughout Northwest Europe. In November 1944, a troop from 16th Assault Squadron destroyed five pill boxes in the Ziggfrieded line. A fact recorded in veteran Harvey Smith’s memoir during Operation Estonia at La Hava in September 1944.

 Avrs supported the capture of 11,300 German prisoners for fewer than 500 Allied casualties. Six AVRs were lost when riverbanks proved soggier than expected. Operation Plunder, the Rine Crossing in March 1945, was the 79th Armored Division’s largest operation since D-Day. The 42nd Assault Regiment operated fies that carried 311 tanks and self-propelled guns across the river in 3 days.

 Lance Corporal Joe Ingram, writing in 1994, described the constant danger. The AVRE was a mobile explosive steel box, he wrote. Over a ton of explosive was carried by each vehicle. One AVRE hit by a shell from a German 88 mm gun simply exploded. The turret was found over 100 yards away.

 Among the most poignant AVRE stories is that of one Charlie from 26 Assault Squadron on D-Day morning at Juno Beach’s Mike Sector. This vehicle successfully helped clear the beach and made it inland. Then disaster struck. While attempting to drop a facine, a large bundle of wooden poles used to fill craters into a flooded hole blocking the main road.

 The Churchill itself slid into the crater and became hopelessly stuck. The crew abandoned their vehicle under German mortifier. Lance Sergeant Cecil Ashton along with Sappers Roy Manley and Alf Batson were killed. The tank remained buried and forgotten for three decades. In 1975, two British officers investigated and located it.

 French authorities and royal engineers excavated the vehicle in 1976. According to recovery accounts, it was still leaking oil after 32 years underground. The interior contained weapons, ammunition, and crew belongings. Today, one Charlie stands as a memorial at Grace Sumeam. In November 2014, the ashes of surviving crew member Bill Dunn were spread beside it.

 The Patar armed AVRE served until 1964, an extraordinary service life of over 20 years. Postwar 88 Churchill Mark 7s were converted to the FV3903 AVRE. Armed with the L9A1, a65 mm demolition gun able to hit targets at 1400 yd rather than 80. The Centurion AVRE replaced it in 1963 and remarkably saw combat in the 1991 Gulf War, earning the nickname the Antiques Road Show for its 40 plus years of age.

 Centurion AVRE were not retired until 1992, making the Centurion the longest serving British military vehicle. The Trojan AVRE, based on the Challenger 2 chassis, entered service in 2009 and deployed to Afghanistan that same year. While it carries no demolition gun, armed only with a 7.62 mm machine gun, it maintains the AVRE philosophy.

 protected engineering capability with hydraulic excavator arm, dozer blade, mine plow, and python mine clearing system. The Royal Engineers still operate AVRE today, 80 years after the concept was born from the blood of DEP, several Churchill AVRE survive in museums. The Tank Museum at Bovington holds a working Mark III Avre.

 Restored from a firing range wreck by Bob Grundy in 1988. The Imperial War Museum at Duxford displays MarkVre Bulldog in its Normandy exhibition. The Royal Engineers Museum at Chattam has an FV3903 Churchill AVRE. The Churchill AVRE Patard solved a problem every army faced, but only Britain addressed properly.

 How do you breach fortifications without massacring the engineers who have to do it? The answer was elegant in concept, if bizarre in appearance. Put the sappers inside a tank. Give them a weapon that can crack concrete. except the short range and the dangerous reload because the alternative men sprinting across open beaches with demolition charges was worse.

 The contrast between British and American beach casualties on D-Day made the value of specialized armor difficult to dispute. Specialized armor was not a luxury. It was a necessity. The flying dust bins that tumbled toward German bunkers on June 6th, 1944 looked absurd. They saved lives. They cracked the Atlantic Wall.

 and their descendants remain in service today. Carrying forward a tradition that began when an engineer watched his comrades die at DEP and decided there had to be a better way. British engineering.