Sherman Crab Tank

About

The Sherman Crab Tank is a type of Mine Flail used in World War II that has multiple chains attached to a spinning rotor in front to deliberately detonate land mines. The Sherman Crab, and other mine flails, became a meme on TikTok in early 2024, when fancam-like edits surfaced that used the song "Blaue Monarchie, Vol.3" by Cortex_Sound. Many on TikTok referred to the tank as the "spinny chains tank" or the "tank with spinning chains."

Origin

The Sherman Crab was created by the British army in 1942, during the first part of World War II. The mine flail concept was originally conceived by a South African Major A.S.J. du Toit. The British adopted the idea by using their Sherman tank vehicle and adding the "Crab" feature, which was spinning chains with flails attached to a rotor, made to deliberately detonate land mines. Sherman Crabs saw successful usage in World War II.^[1]

Memes and edits about the Sherman Crab surfaced in early 2024, following a photo slideshow posted by TikToker^[2] @danklumi on January 17th, 2024, who joked about using a Sherman Crab on Just Stop Oil protestors sitting in a road, gaining over 288,700 plays and 46,900 likes in one month (non-embeddable).

Spread

After the viral slideshows, others copied the format and gained more virality, like TikToker^[3] @gamer9673 on January 19th, 2024, whose identical slideshow received roughly 4.3 million plays and 591,200 likes in one month (non-embeddable).

Soon after, fancam edits surfaced with the Sherman Crab, like one posted by TikToker^[4] @music2023www23 on January 31st, 2024, gaining over 8.9 million plays and 806,700 likes in 18 days (shown below, left).

On February 4th, 2024, TikToker^[5] @47dimmka posted a similar edit about the mine flail, gaining over 23 million plays and 2.8 million likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

Going into 2024, users started to make recreations of the tank at home. For instance, on February 9th, 2024, TikToker^[6] @sahaj8303 posted a DIY Sherman Tank with paper clip chains, gaining over 356,300 plays and 16,400 likes in nine days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References