Speaker: Dr Henry Goodall, Chairman of Fonfa Trustees, will give a talk on Hobart’s Funnies

Topic: “Hobart’s Funnies”

Hobart's Funnies is the nickname given to a number of specialist armoured fighting vehicles derived from tanks operated during the Second World War by units of the 79th Armoured Division of the British Army or by specialists from the Royal Engineers.[1]

They were designed in light of problems that more standard tanks experienced during the amphibious Dieppe Raid, so that the new models would be able to overcome the problems of the planned invasion of Normandy. These tanks played a major part on the Commonwealth beaches during the landings. They were forerunners of the modern combat engineering vehicle and took their nickname from the 79th Division's commander, Major-General Percy Hobart. The vehicles converted were chiefly Churchill tanks and American-supplied M4 Sherman tanks.

FONFA (Friends of the New Forest Airfields Heritage Centre) was formed by a group of aviation enthusiasts, service veterans, historians and authors with an interest in establishing a memorial to the personnel who served in the New Forest and to preserving the aviation heritage of the New Forest for future generations.

Dr Henry Goodall is a retired Consultant Occupational Physician and former Territorial Army paratrooper, with a lifetime interest in aviation and military history. He co-ordinated the transfer of FONFA into the new Heritage Centre in 2015-16, with support from the New Forest District Council LEADER finance scheme, which provided ‘state of the art’ interactive visual display screens. He is a keen modeller, having created many of the model aircraft and dioramas in the Centre.