Flame Thrower: Memoir of a Crocodile Tank Commander, D-Day to the Rhine

Normandy, June 1944. Tank commander Andrew Wilson, a twenty-year-old lieutenant, is in charge of a troop of three British Churchill Crocodile flame-throwing tanks. The fearsome Crocodile was one of ‘Hobart’s Funnies’ – top secret armoured vehicles designed to punch a hole through Hitler’s Atlantic Wall defences during D-Day. But there was nothing remotely humorous about the Crocodile. This terror-weapon reduced German fortifications to raging infernos of clinging liquid fire in seconds, incinerating its occupants. It was truly a horrific weapon. The flame projector, firing a crude form of napalm, was also a powerful psychological weapon, so feared by the Germans that many surrendered after the first ranging shots.

Andrew Wilson, MC, vividly describes battling across 1,800 miles of enemy-held territory, the vicious street-to-street fighting, the constant risk of ambush from anti-tank panzerfausts and 88s, Tiger and Panther tanks. From Noyers Ridge and the Falaise Gap through to the final confrontation at the Rhine, here is a first-hand account of tank warfare at its deadliest.