WWII’s Most Absurd Secret Weapons

Within the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, an enormous Allied invasion power comprising some 5,000 ships, 1,200 plane, and 160,000 troops steamed throughout the English Channel in the direction of the seashores of Normandy. It was the opening act of Operation Overlord, the biggest amphibious invasion in historical past and the battle that may lastly safe an Allied foothold in western Europe and mark the start of the top for the German Third Reich. The problem dealing with the planners of Overlord was huge, for the European coast was defended by the Atlantic Wall, a formidable chain of concrete bunkers, gun emplacements, minefields, and seashore obstacles stretching from the tip of Norway to the Spanish Border. If Overlord was to have any likelihood of succeeding, these fortifications needed to be overcome. To this finish, Allied engineers got here up with a wide range of extraordinary ‘secret weapons’, from specially-modified tanks designed to swim ashore, clear minefields with whirling chains, and defeat bunkers with highly effective mortars and flamethrowers to large floating harbours known as Mulberry. They even had an undersea oil pipeline known as PLUTO to provide gasoline to the thirsty invasion power. However maybe essentially the most outlandish machine proposed for Overlord was a large rocket-propelled Catherine wheel designed to roar up the invasion seashores and ship a ton of explosives in opposition to the enemy defences. That is the story of the ‘Nice Panjandrum,’ essentially the most hilariously absurd secret weapon of the Second World Struggle.

In a earlier video, we coated the event of Hajile, a failed wartime scheme to airdrop cargo extra shortly and precisely by utilizing rockets fairly than parachutes to gradual its fall. Like Hajile, the Nice Panjandrum was the brainchild of the British Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Improvement or DMWD, a set of eccentric scientists and engineers nicknamed the “Wheezers and Dodgers” tasked with growing artistic options to robust wartime issues. Among the many DMWD’s members was Sub-Lieutenant Nevil Shute, an aeronautical engineer later to realize fame because the writer of novels equivalent to On the Seashore and A City Like Alice. When, in early 1943, the DMWD was given the duty of growing a weapon able to demolishing a bolstered concrete wall 10 ft tall and seven ft thick, Shute calculated that it could take an explosive cost of not less than one ton to blow a gap extensive sufficient for a tank to roll by way of. Really getting such a cost to the wall, nonetheless, was one other matter fully, for the abundance of land mines, barbed wire entanglements, machine gun nests, and different defences on the invasion seashores would make a manned demolition mission near-certain suicide.

The reply got here within the type of RAF Wing Commander C.R. Finch Noyes, who had beforehand designed an early model of the “bouncing bombs” used within the well-known Dambusters raid of Could 16, 1943. Noyes introduced the boffins at DMWD with a sketch of a very outlandish machine: a pair of gigantic metal wheels 10 ft in diameter and 1 foot extensive, related by a cylindrical drum containing 4,000 kilos of excessive explosive. Organized across the rims of the wheels was a battery of cordite solid-fuel rockets, which might propel the machine off a touchdown craft and up the seashore at 60 miles per hour, skimming effortlessly over landmines and thru barbed wire earlier than crashing into the goal, whereupon the wheels would collapse and the explosives would detonate in opposition to the bottom of the wall. Amazingly, Noyes’s proposal was taken significantly, and inside a month a prototype was constructed in nice secrecy at Leytonstone in Northeast London and transported below cowl of darkness to Appledore in Devon, headquarters of the Mixed Operations Experimental Institution or COXE. The positioning was particularly chosen to check secret weapons for the Overlord invasion because the seashores within the space intently resembled these of Normandy. Shortly after arriving at COXE, Noyes’ weapon was dubbed “The Nice Panjandrum” after a well-known piece of nonsense verse by 18th Century author Samuel Foote, which ends with the road “…until the gunpowder ran out on the heels of their boots”.

The primary check of the Nice Panjandrum was scheduled for September 7, 1943 close to a seaside resort city with the absurdly British title of Westward Ho! Regardless of the nice secrecy which had attended the weapon’s building, the check was performed in plain view of the general public seashores, and shortly attracted a big crowd of curious onlookers. As such a tool had by no means been constructed earlier than, the DMWD crew changed the explosives within the central drum with the equal weight of sand, and fitted the wheels with solely 18 rockets. Because the intrigued holidaymakers seemed on, the ignition swap was thrown, the wheels erupted into sensible rings of flame, and the Nice Panjandrum trundled down the touchdown craft ramp, throughout the surf, and up onto the seashore. At first all went nicely and the unusual weapon rolled straight and true, however quickly rockets started failing and flying off the wheel and the entire machine veered off to the correct and flipped over onto its aspect, ending its inauspicious first run stranded and wreathed in thick flame and smoke.

Concluding that the Panjandrum was underpowered, the DMWD crew doubled the variety of rockets to 36 and moved the check website to Instow Seashore close to the Torridge river estuary. However whereas this upgraded model travelled twice as far up the seashore, it additionally suffered from rocket shedding and wound up on its aspect. To enhance stability, the engineers added a 3rd central wheel and tried once more, this time launching the Panjandrum from a wood ramp mounted on the low-tide line fairly than an precise touchdown craft. Sadly, when the firing swap was thrown, nothing occurred, and because the engineers struggled to seek out the fault within the firing circuit, the tide washed in and engulfed the Panjandrum, inflicting the center wheel to break down. It was a pathetic however appropriately absurd finish to the third check.

3 weeks later, the engineers returned as soon as once more with a brand new model of the Panjandrum, which disbursed with the central third wheel and elevated the variety of rockets to 70. To the crew’s delight the weapon initially roared up the seashore at its designed pace, however a second later rockets as soon as once more started to fail and shear off, sending the Panjandrum careening again into the ocean, the place it overturned and the remaining rockets exploded, sending up a large column of spray. Realizing that the unique unguided idea was unworkable, the engineers subsequent added a system of steering cables mounted to spools on the touchdown craft, which may very well be differentially braked to nudge the Panjandrum left or proper. Nevil Shute was positioned accountable for working these brakes, and because the new design roared off the launch ramp, it appeared as if the system simply may work. Nevertheless, after a number of seconds the Panjandrum started to veer off-course, prompting Shute to faucet the brakes to right its trajectory. In response, the cable merely snapped, sending the Panjadrum careening as soon as extra into the ocean.

At this level, the crew’s rising pessimism was relieved considerably by DMWD’s announcement that absolute accuracy was now not deemed obligatory; Panjandrum simply needed to be able to travelling within the common course of the enemy. And so, in January 1944, a gaggle of high-ranking army officers gathered at Devon to watch what would grow to be the ultimate check of this troublesome weapon. As writer Brian Johnson recounts in his 1978 guide The Secret Struggle, the outcomes had been…lower than stunning:

“At first all went nicely. Panjandrum rolled into the ocean and commenced to move for the shore, the Brass Hats watching by way of binoculars from the highest of a pebble ridge. Then a clamp gave: first one, then two extra rockets broke free: Panjandrum started to lurch ominously. It hit a line of small craters within the sand and commenced to show to starboard, careering in the direction of [cinematographer Louis] Klemantaski, who, viewing occasions by way of a telescopic lens, misjudged the gap and continued filming. Listening to the approaching roar he seemed up from his viewfinder to see Panjandrum, shedding dwell rockets in all instructions, heading straight for him. As he ran for his life, he glimpsed the assembled admirals and generals diving for canopy behind the pebble ridge into barbed-wire entanglements. Panjandrum was now heading again to the ocean however crashed on to the sand the place it disintegrated in violent explosions, rockets tearing throughout the seashore at nice pace.”

However maybe essentially the most memorable episode of the entire spectacle was when one military officer’s Airedale canine – appropriately named Ammonal after the excessive explosive – chased after one of many careening rockets, almost being killed within the course of. Amazingly the entire debacle was captured by Klemantaski’s digital camera and is now preserved on-line for posterity.

Unsurprisingly, this spectacular failure marked the top for the Nice Panjandrum, which, together with dozens of different extraordinary proposals, by no means made it to the seashores of Normandy. As with Hajile, Panjandrum’s failure lay primarily within the limitations of latest stable rockets, which had been primarily based on the gun propellant cordite and had been troublesome to ignite concurrently. Certainly, in 2009, the city of Appledore celebrated the sixty fifth anniversary of the D-Day landings by constructing and launching a 3/4-scale duplicate of Panjandrum. Powered by trendy solid-fuel rockets and full of fireworks as a substitute of high-explosives, the recreated Panjandrum functioned precisely as Wing Commander Noyes had meant, rocketing 50 metres up the seashore in a straight line.

Surprisingly, nonetheless, it’s attainable that Panjandrum was really meant to fail proper from the beginning. Quite a lot of Operation Overlord’s final success was thanks to an enormous deception marketing campaign known as Operation Bodyguard, which satisfied the Germans that the goal of the invasion was not Normandy however the Pas-de-Calais – and for extra on this, please try our earlier video The Weird Story of the Huge Pretend Military That Defeated the Nazis and Helped Finish WWII. In accordance with some historians, The Nice Panjandrum was nothing greater than a hoax, carried out in service of this general deception. This concept makes a specific amount of sense, given {that a} weapon like Panjandrum would have been extra helpful in opposition to the heavier defences of Calais than these of Normandy. The truth that the weapon was examined in plain sight of the general public additionally calls into query the seriousness of the general mission. However as Canadian chemist Charles Goodeve, who headed the DMWD for a lot of the conflict, later revealed:

“We did far more unlikely issues than panjandrum.”

And given the numerous, many extraordinary WWII weapons and operations we’ve coated on this channel thus far, that isn’t troublesome to consider in any respect.

Shifting on from the rocket powered wheel bomb, through the conflict, Britain was taking a beating from the German ships and submarines and had been on the lookout for one thing to construct a ship out of that couldn’t be destroyed by torpedoes, or not less than might take a significant pounding with out incurring a deadly quantity of injury. With metal and aluminum briefly provide, Allied scientists and engineers had been inspired to give you different supplies and weapons.

A scientist named Geoffrey Pyke was the king of absurd innovations (as you’ll hear about within the Bonus Info in a bit, alongside together with his hilariously absurd however nonetheless efficient technique of escaping a German jail camp, which he did efficiently utilizing mentioned technique). However for now, the king of all of his numerous different concepts was to construct a 2,000 foot lengthy, 300 foot extensive and two million ton provider. Pyke named his mission Habbakuk, a biblical reference that appeared to reflect the mission’s aim: “…be completely amazed, for I’m going to do one thing in your days that you wouldn’t consider, even in case you had been advised.” (Habakkuk 1:5, NIV) Not like within the Bible although, the ship’s title was spelled with two b’s and one okay, which is considered merely a spelling error that was repeated so many instances that it grew to become official.

In addition to the ship’s dimension, what was so totally different about Pyke’s vessel was that it could be constructed of ice. There isn’t a actual restrict on the provision of ice; it’s simple to make, pretty sturdy (besides in heat temperatures), buoyant, and really simple to restore when broken. Additional, repairs might be made extraordinarily shortly with the correct gear, even throughout a battle.

The ship was additionally to incorporate 40 dual-barreled gun turrets, in addition to different anti-aircraft weapons, and an airstrip that might accommodate as much as 150 fighter planes or twin-engined bombers.

Pyke was capable of promote Winston Churchill on his plan in 1942, together with Churchill stating it must be given the best precedence.

In testing, although, it was found that ice won’t be as sturdy because the ice-bergs that Pyke modeled his concept on. It turned out that ice frozen into blocks for the hull may very well be damaged very simply with one thing as small as a hammer. The mission was quickly deserted consequently.

Nevertheless, later that 12 months, a New York polytechnic agency added cellulose- sawdust, wooden chips and paper shreds- to water and froze it for a way more promising base construction for such a ship. Not solely was it stronger than straight frozen water- with as little as 4% of wooden pulp added it made it as sturdy as concrete, pound for pound- it was additionally a lot slower to soften and extra buoyant. Pykrete, named after Geoffrey Pyke, may be lower like wooden and simply milled into shapes like steel.

There was one downside though- melting and refreezing would trigger warping within the construction. Checks confirmed {that a} pykrete ship would finally sag until constantly cooled to round 3° Fahrenheit. To keep up this, the ship’s floor must be coated in insulation and it could want a refrigeration plant and duct system.

To check the feasibility of getting round this downside, a small scale model of the Habakkuk was constructed in Alberta, Canada’s Lake Patricia to experiment with insulation and refrigeration potentialities and to see how it could stand as much as artillery shelling. The check ship was 30 ft extensive by 60 ft lengthy, weighed 1,000 tons and was stored refrigerated with a one-horsepower engine, which was adequate to maintain it from melting even by way of the recent summer time months.

In ballistic testing, it was decided {that a} direct torpedo hit would solely trigger a couple of 10 foot crater within the hull, which was insignificant given the dimensions of the proposed ship. Thus, it could be almost impervious to torpedo assaults for all sensible functions, as it could take an enormous variety of torpedoes and different bombs to sink the ship. So even when the ship was damaged up, the Axis powers would have needed to make investments an enormous quantity of their assets in a given space to do it (notably contemplating the arsenal of plane the ship carried), which might have weakened them considerably on different fronts through the assault. In the event that they had been unsuccessful, the ship may very well be simply and shortly repaired proper on the spot.

So general, the check ship made the total dimension model look like it would really work out.

Additional, at this level, it was estimated that building on the true Habakkuk would price a miniscule $2.5 million (about $32 million right this moment), which is an excessive discount for a ship like this.

Nevertheless, there have been nonetheless some hurdles to beat. The rudder on such a ship must be large. Learn how to successfully mount this within the construction in a method that may be proof against assault was an issue, as was controlling such a rudder. Additionally, the quantity of wooden pulp wanted would have impacted paper manufacturing; whereas this ship used considerably much less metal than most, the metal tubing it did want for reinforcing the construction would have depleted reserves for standard, confirmed warships; an enormous quantity of cork would even be required to insulate the ship; and, lastly, the ship’s prime pace of simply six to seven knots (6.9 to eight.1 mph) was deemed too gradual, even with it being pretty torpedo-proof when it comes to the principle construction itself.

Ultimately, these issues, mixed with the truth that through the planning part the vary of plane had elevated considerably to the purpose the place the necessity for a floating island grew to become much less obligatory, finally sunk the deliberate ship.

That mentioned, whereas the plan to construct Habakkuk was short-lived, its prototype was surprisingly resilient. It took three sizzling summers to utterly soften the smaller model of the boat.

Bonus Info:

Talking of Pyke and absurd secret weapons, beside an Ice ship, Pyke as soon as steered utilizing hundreds of balloons with microphones and transmitters hooked up as a method of triangulating enemy positions. He was not conscious on the time of the developments and improvement in radar know-how. One more oddball invention Pyke got here up with to assist in the conflict was a screw-propelled snow car. The car could be propelled by having two cylinders with flanges in a screw thread-like style spinning in reverse instructions and ranging their pace to facilitate turns. The M29 Weasel put an finish to the potential of Pyke’s snow car seeing the sunshine of day.

One more concept of Pyke’s was to make use of pykrete to shortly assemble buildings and protecting obstacles in a cellular conflict. Ultimately, this was deemed impractical given the quantity of apparatus, water, and pulp that may should be lugged round.

One other concept of Pyke’s, this one to resolve the issue of transporting gear from ships to shore within the many locations the place a harbor wasn’t accessible, was to create large pipe methods from the ships that may be prolonged to shore and past because the troopers superior… literal provide strains. Tools may very well be packed in hermetic containers that may be whisked by way of the pipes to the ready troopers. In the end a extra sensible concept was developed utilizing floating vehicles and floating concrete buildings.

The same concept was to increase the piping system to shortly transport not solely gear, however troopers too, notably over troublesome to cross terrain. Troopers could be given oxygen masks and propelled by way of the pipes through water flowing by way of. In an effort to get across the inevitable downside of troopers panicking whereas they’re whisked by way of these pipes they will’t get out of till they attain the top, he advisable drugging them first in the event that they felt they’d have an issue with it. As he mentioned, “The entire expertise (of driving in a pipe) nonetheless must be far much less disagreeable, and take very a lot much less time to turn out to be used to, than parachute leaping, or being bombed.”

One other of Pyke’s genius concepts, this time after the conflict, was to get across the vitality disaster by having trains not be propelled by standard fuels, however by human energy. His concept was to equip every practice automotive with dozens of bicycle-like contraptions. Passengers would then be anticipated to pedal. This could trigger individuals to eat extra (needing extra energy), which was an issue given post-war meals shortages. Pyke felt this was positive as a result of whereas sure meals had been briefly provide, sugar was plentiful and a pound of sugar, transformed to vitality through the human digestive system, would produce extra vitality than from burning a pound of coal or oil, which there was a scarcity of.

Regardless of just a few of his concepts having some benefit to them, with most being amazingly impractical, Pyke was stored round for a time just because the Chief of Mixed Operations, Louis Mountbatten, felt that Pyke’s regular stream of outlandish concepts was good for the opposite members of his workers to listen to, to attempt to get them to assume a bit extra out of the field.

One concept of Pyke’s that did pan out was his concept on the best way to escape from a German jail camp… the one he discovered himself in on the time. Most of his fellow prisoners thought he was loopy even then, as even when he was capable of get out of the camp, it was felt he would both starve, be caught, or killed, earlier than getting out of Germany itself. He proved all of them flawed changing into the primary to efficiently escape from the camp he was in. In his style, he meticulously studied all accounts of escape makes an attempt to this point by others and why and the place they failed. He then devised a plan, at which level he and Edward Falk, a fellow inmate, started a rigorous train routine to organize for his or her journey.

His plan went as so, with the start being each bit as seemingly impractical as lots of his different concepts, however nonetheless working: first, use the truth that there was an athletic gear shed that, whereas often checked by troopers, was checked at a time of day when, if the solar was out and it was the correct time of 12 months, the solar’s rays would glare off a window and trigger the troopers trying into the darkened shed to not be capable of see correctly. Thus, although he and Falk might see the guard and weren’t nicely hidden, the guard couldn’t see them within the small shack. After hiding out, they then managed to slide out of the camp at evening with the provision of meals they’d been rationing. Following a very harrowing journey, they made it to what they thought was the border and had been caught… seems, although, they had been really within the Netherlands when caught and weren’t caught by a German soldier, as they initially thought, however a Dutch one. That they had made it.

Sadly, Pyke’s story doesn’t have a contented ending, with the eccentric genius finally dedicated suicide in 1948 by ingesting a whole bottle of sleeping capsules and leaving a observe to say it was intentional.

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