Churchill Crocodile
type of infantry tank/flame tank
The Churchill Crocodile was a British flame-throwing tank of late Second World War. It was a variant of the Churchill tank, a heavily armoured infantry tank. The flamethrower was mounted in the hull of the tank with the fuel in a trailer pulled behind.
The Crocodile was introduced as one of the specialised armoured vehicles developed under Major-General Percy Hobart, informally known as "Hobart's Funnies". It was produced from October 1943, in time for the Normandy invasion.
Although originally developed for the Mark IV, the latest Mark VII variant of the Churchill was used.
Design and development
From early in the war, there had been experiments with mounting flamethrowers on British vehicles, leading to vehicles such as the Cockatrice, Basilisk and the Wasp (the latter being a flamethrower on a Universal Carrier). The Churchill Oke, a flamethrower-carrying Churchill Mark II developed by a Royal Tank Regiment officer, was tested operationally on the Dieppe Raid. Parallel development work was carried out by the Petroleum Warfare Department, AEC and the Ministry of Supply (MoS) on Valentine tanks. The Department of Tank Design preferred the Churchill, which was the infantry tank successor to the Valentine, as a basis for further work.
“Churchill Crocodile” enters the record as type of infantry tank/flame tank. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Churchill, Crocodile and type can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Churchill Crocodile” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Churchill, Crocodile and type provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2950115. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Churchill Crocodile”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Churchill Crocodile primary sources, Churchill Crocodile archive and Churchill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Churchill Crocodile”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Churchill Crocodile” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.