Clear those mines, men.

Earlier tooday, while taking a break from writing about “Dulce Et Decorum Est” for my English class, I fired up Company of Heroes. (It’s a World War II real time strategy game; more here). While going through one of the missions, I was a bit amused by one of the upgrades that was available for the Sherman tank: the Crab Mine Flail upgrade. The upgrade added a rotor thing to the front of the tank, with a bunch of chains attached to it. The rotor spun, slinging the chains around, which set off mines in front of the tank.

When I saw it, I assumed that it was just a fictional addition that the developers had added. It seemed like a silly “addition” to make to a World War II game, since there were so many real vehicles that the developers could have chosen from. Except, it wasn’t a fictional addition.

After finishing the mission I was on, I googled “mine flail.” The mine flail attachment really did exist (Wikipedia article, with lots of good info both on war versions and modern uses), and it really did look like something out of a horror movie:

Doesn’t that just look like something you’d expect to see in a Hellraiser movie?

I was unable to find a video of a Sherman Crab tank in action, but I did find this video of an Aardvark. It’s obviously not a tank, but the flail system is similar to the one used on the Sherman tanks.