What happened to the Canadian Foni tank?

[Crewman]

Pre-Operation Totalize period, Normandy, early August 1944
by Maj.-Gen. George Kitching, GOC the Canadian 4th Armoured Division


To make the Germans think we had a tank larger than anything they had ever produced, I got the commander of our engineers, Lt.-Col. Bob Jones, to build a huge dummy tank which was to be mounted on one of our Shermans. The Sherman tank weighed approximately thirty-two tons; the heaviest German Tiger weighed fifty-six tons and this new phoney tank would look as if it weighed over one hundred tons. Our engineers went to work with a will. They produced Foni, as we called it, in a couple of days, made almost entirely of wood and tin plate. Its size can be judged by the the fact that the gun sticking out in front was a hydro pole and on the rear of the turret were three 40mm wooden Bofors guns for anti-aircraft protection. With its camouflage paint it looked very real at fifty paces and it attracted a great deal of attention from passing soldiers as it lumbered along a road towards the open fields. As our signal regiments had laid hundreds of miles of cable to ensure good telephone service we had a soldier perched at the end of the gun barrel to raise overhead cables before they became ensnared in Foni. Unfortunately, by the time Foni was ready for action I had become very involved with Guy Simonds in the final planning for Totalize so I could not accompany it on its trial run. However, John Proctor, my AA&QMG and Bob Jones went along in a jeep to observe the enemy's reaction. From what they told me, the reaction was fairly violent as the enemy engaged it with 88mm fire. However, Foni was not hit and returned to base unharmed. Its dimensions were 45 feet long, 12 feet wide and 10 feet high. Quite a tank.


George Kitching
Mud and Green Fields. The Memoirs of Major-General George Kitching
Vanwell Publishing Ltd., St. Catharines, Ontario, 1993
ISBN 0-920277-73-X
pages 191-192

Hi,

Does anyone know something more about this story?

What happened to the Foni tank?

Are there any photographs of this tank?


Best regards

C.