Rhino tank

Rhino tank
An M4A1 (76) W-based United States Rhino tank crashes through a hedgerow.
Service history
In service	1944
Used by	Canada, United Kingdom, United States
Wars	World War II
Production history
Designer	Various, but generally credited to Curtis G. Culin
Designed	1944

"Rhino tank" (initially called "Rhinoceros")^[1] 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 dirt and rock walls covered with trees and 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.

The devices have been credited with restoring battlefield mobility in the difficult terrain, a claim which some historians question.