Make way for the Giant Panjandrum!

October 1, 2020 7:17 AM

The Giant Panjandrum was a WW2 device developed by the British military as a method for creating a tank sized gap in the concrete coastal defenses which comprised the Atlantic Wall. The device - designed by engineer Nevil Shute (yes, that one) - was to be launched from a landing craft and would be propelled like a fiendish Catherine wheel by cordide rockets fixed to its 2 huge iron wheels. The hub between those wheels housed a drum containing a 1800kg of explosives. The panjandrum would scoot up the beach at 60 miles an hour, crush any obstacles in its path and explode when it hit the concrete wall. What could go possibly go wrong? Twitter user Dreadnought Holiday takes up the story with the help of some great contemporary film of the test runs.

The Panjandrum. The Atlantic Wall. The Nonsense poem that gave the device its name - as chosen by Nevil Shute.

posted by rongorongo (35 comments total)

cordide

Cordite?

engineer Nevil Shute (yes, that one)

So, a breach on the beach?
posted by zamboni at 7:27 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

From the Wikipedia link:

However, it has since been suggested that the entire project was a hoax devised as part of Operation Fortitude, to convince the Germans that plans were being developed to attack the heavily fortified defences surrounding the Pas-de-Calais rather than the less-defended Normandy coastline.[1]

This sounds like No I Was Totally Joking, but I would definitely watch the movie about people trying to build this crazy idea on a beach, gawked at by wartime vacationers and unaware that the system is just leading them on to mess with Hitler's head.
posted by each day we work at 7:38 AM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

I presume this was devised as a last resort after the rocket-powered roller skates and old tunnel-painted-onto-a-wall trick didn't work either. Meep Meep.
posted by phong3d at 7:44 AM on October 1, 2020 [14 favorites]

I would definitely watch the movie about people trying to build this crazy idea on a beach, gawked at by wartime vacationers and unaware that the system is just leading them on to mess with Hitler's head.

Would that be more or less funny than if they knew they were messing with Hitler's head?

Probably depends on the script.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:07 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

However, it has since been suggested that the entire project was a hoax

Thanks for that detail. I imagine, for a military engineer, the only brief that would be more alluring than "Give me a design of a secret weapon to blow stuff up" would be "Give me a design of a secret weapon to blow stuff up - but make sure it fails in interesting ways".
posted by rongorongo at 8:22 AM on October 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

If you'd like to watch some discussion of this, and happen to have US Netflix, the one-season (criminally short) White Rabbit Project with Kari Byron, Tori Belleci and the late Grant Imahara looked at it episode 3. (I do not have a YT link for it.)
posted by mephron at 8:23 AM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Watching those gifs, it feels like it's some sort of visual representation of the current British government...
posted by dowcrag at 8:26 AM on October 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

I want this in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.
posted by meinvt at 8:31 AM on October 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

Also in the Mythbustersverse, there was an episode of Savage Builds where Adam built one.

Does lighting a bunch of rockets all simultaneously result in controlled travel? The answer will not surprise you!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:31 AM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

If you want to read Nevil Shute about the Normandy Invasion I recommend his Requiem For A Wren (AKA The Breaking Wave). The wrapping story is heart-breaking but the details are fascinating. For example, all that hardware on the beaches needed fuel, too much for the ships to carry. Enter the Pipe Line Under The Ocean (Operation Pluto) and in this novel Shute mentions its enormous spools of flexible tubing floating around in the staging area on the English side of the channel.
posted by Rash at 8:36 AM on October 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

It brings me nothing but childish delight to learn that the British war effort included "The Admirality's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development."
posted by Baby_Balrog at 8:37 AM on October 1, 2020 [8 favorites]

I don't understand why they didn't just make it wider, so it wouldn't tip and would go in the straight line they wanted it to.

(But it's totally cool!)
posted by overhauser at 8:40 AM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Adam Savage built one for his "Savage Builds" show on Discovery. The full show is like half an hour long, but here's a three-minute segment to give you a taste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGcbLapgbxE

And if you enjoyed that, here's the full thing: https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/savage-builds/full-episodes/wheel-of-death
posted by wenestvedt at 8:52 AM on October 1, 2020 [8 favorites]

I don't understand why they didn't just make it wider, so it wouldn't tip and would go in the straight line they wanted it to.

I had the same thought, then realized that bringing it to the beach in a landing craft put a hard limit on the width, unless you wanted to do beach-side assembly under machine gun fire.

I do wonder whether they considered putting an artillery piece in a landing craft to just fire an explosive shell at the concrete wall.
posted by fatbird at 8:55 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

I had the same thought, then realized that bringing it to the beach in a landing craft put a hard limit on the width, unless you wanted to do beach-side assembly under machine gun fire.

Why couldn't they mount the bar on top of the landing craft with the wheels on either side? Build a ramp on the walls. I'm sure there's a reason, I just can't see it.
posted by overhauser at 9:02 AM on October 1, 2020

Wow:

"At first all went well. Panjandrum rolled into the sea and began to head for the shore, the Brass Hats watching through binoculars from the top of a pebble ridge [...] Then a clamp gave: first one, then two more rockets broke free: Panjandrum began to lurch ominously. It hit a line of small craters in the sand and began to turn to starboard, careering towards Klemantaski, who, viewing events through a telescopic lens, misjudged the distance and continued filming. Hearing the approaching roar he looked up from his viewfinder to see Panjandrum, shedding live rockets in all directions, heading straight for him. As he ran for his life, he glimpsed the assembled admirals and generals diving for cover behind the pebble ridge into barbed-wire entanglements. Panjandrum was now heading back to the sea but crashed on to the sand where it disintegrated in violent explosions, rockets tearing across the beach at great speed."
posted by doctornemo at 9:06 AM on October 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

That makes the landing craft topheavy. Boats depend on a low center of gravity to avoid rolling over, especially in waves.

A more plausible alternative would be to take a Sherman hull, which fit in the craft, pack it full of explosives, put it in forward and just let it roll steadily up to the wall; then detonate it.
posted by fatbird at 9:08 AM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

There's a Dad's Army episode based on this. I watched part of it being filmed, so it stuck in the memory.
posted by Grangousier at 9:21 AM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

> Why couldn't they mount the bar on top of the landing craft with the wheels on either side? Build a ramp on the walls. I'm sure there's a reason, I just can't see it.

It probably weighed over 2,000 kilo; plans to make it even harder to load and unload from a landing craft while also making the carrier less stable was probably not worth trying when the only benefit would be that the device's aiming error might be slightly improved.
posted by ardgedee at 9:22 AM on October 1, 2020

I do wonder whether they considered putting an artillery piece in a landing craft to just fire an explosive shell at the concrete wall.
posted by fatbird at 8:55 AM on October 1 [+] [!]

Why couldn't they mount the bar on top of the landing craft with the wheels on either side? Build a ramp on the walls. I'm sure there's a reason, I just can't see it.
posted by overhauser at 9:02 AM on October 1 [+] [!]

Very few American landing crafts actually made it where they were supposed to due to the strong current. Fortunately not all of them sank or swamped they merely made it to the entirely wrong part of the beach. The British were luckier. Their beaches did not have quite as bad currents. Landing crafts unfortunately are not very seaworthy vehicles, being kind of like rockets themselves, not designed to be steered. Add anything that would be inclined to swamp them and they will. That glorious footage you see of them hitting the beach was not typical of how they performed.

They did indeed bring artillery pieces as close inshore as they could, but artillery pieces need something solid to be bolted to or else the recoil causes them to fly backwards violently. On a little landing craft it would get one shot at most and then the thing would be under water or in muck that enabled it only to point in a random direction, probably straight up. Artillery pieces can bury themselves if placed wrong. That is one of the reason they require a trained crew.The artillery pieces they did bring to the beach were bolted to naval gunships and those unfortunately had enough of a standard draught that they couldn't get entirely close off shore; they were also big enough to be so visible that they got a heck of a lot of return fire.

In most battles of that type everyone gets pounded to death by artillery they can't see. Again, machine guns look good for the movies but the actual guys in the landing crafts or on the beach could neither see nor be seen by whoever was launching the shells. For the guys on the ground it's much more like trying desperately to run through an air raid than it is fighting. You dig in and wait until your artillery makes their artillery stop and then run for the ruins ahead of you.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:25 AM on October 1, 2020 [5 favorites]

A more plausible alternative would be to take a Sherman hull, which fit in the craft, pack it full of explosives, put it in forward and just let it roll steadily up to the wall; then detonate it.

The anti-tank guns, mines and anti-tank obstacles of the Atlantic Wall might affect the plausibility of this particular scheme.
posted by zamboni at 9:25 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

I must be deleted. Justice demands it. I was a post meant for another thread.

My author is punishing himself.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:13 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

The 20th century, particularly mid-century, really came up with some QUITE AMAZING inventions.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:12 AM on October 1, 2020

Why couldn't they mount the bar on top of the landing craft with the wheels on either side? Build a ramp on the walls. I'm sure there's a reason, I just can't see it.
posted by overhauser at 9:02 AM on October 1 [+] [!]


Landing craft were for ferrying troops to the shore and meant to be basically disposable, so they were made cheaply. They were used in literally every beach battle and troop deployment in WWII, so I disagree that they weren't effective at landing troops. They also had to build a bunch of them, which actually delayed the DDay landing.

They also had landing craft tanks - tanks with inflatable floaties around them - the weather caused them to be ineffective during DDay - but also caused plane and ship bombing to be ineffective, as low cloud cover meant that most of the bombs missed their targets.


Even though plane and ship bombing was ineffective at Omaha Beach (it being a sneak-attack also lessened time for ship and plane bombing runs) generally they were successful at weakening beach fortifications so weapons like landing craft with guns or odd things like the panjandrum were already mostly obsolete.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:25 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

landing craft with guns or odd things like the panjandrum were already mostly obsolete.

Obsolete because the range of a destroyer's main gun was 20 miles, planes easily 5X that, so accurate readings by forward observers mean that beaches could be pounded way out of the reach of artillery and machine guns. By 1942, the Allies had like 3-5 to 1 advantage in air superiority, so that 20 mile range was basically insurmountable.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:31 PM on October 1, 2020

There is a brief mention towards the end of the thread of one of Nevil Shute's other projects, a flamethrower designed for use as an anti-aircraft weapon, which I'm just trying to imagine. Testing that would have been even more fun than the Panjandrum.
posted by Fuchsoid at 1:11 PM on October 1, 2020

MetaFilter: beach-side assembly under machine gun fire.
posted by Splunge at 2:15 PM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

The more I learn about WWII, the more I’m amazed we survived it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:33 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

The Dad's Army episode from 1972 inspired by this, 'Round and Round Went the Great Big Wheel' is a classic example of what TV Tropes calls Getting Crap Past The Radar, the title being a quote from the lyrics of an extremely rude drinking song.
posted by Major Clanger at 2:53 PM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

A lot of specialized armored vehicles were used very successfully on D-day. The panjandrum was not one of them.

See Hobart's Funnies.
posted by monotreme at 2:59 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

one of Nevil Shute's other projects, a flamethrower designed for use as an anti-aircraft weapon, which I'm just trying to imagine.

See his Most Secret for more about this type of weapon, not used against aircraft, but by a small boat against shore targets and other vessels. It's more squirting oil across a distance, and then igniting the stream at the end so the target explodes.
posted by Rash at 4:44 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

If they'd been serious about attacking the concrete fortifications, they could have used a topspin version of their Upkeep spinning bomb (simply by turning it end for end, probably) with the same fusing they planned for the Panjandrum.

The Upkeep could presumably have been launched from the water since it was designed to be dropped into water anyway, and it would have spun its way onto the beach, crushed its way through obstacles on land and blown up at the wall, and it carried more explosive than the Panjandrum.
posted by jamjam at 6:17 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Upkeep was classified until well into the 1950s; one of the odd things about reading the 1951 first edition of Paul Brickhill's The Dam Busters is noticing how carefully it elides any details of the bomb or even that it operated by skipping across the water. All that Brickhill could discuss was that the attack profile required a very low-level run with release at a precise distance. The 1954 film does of course show the bouncing bomb, although it still disguised some details, showing Upkeep as spherical rather than cylindrical.
posted by Major Clanger at 2:15 AM on October 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dam_Busters_(video_game)
posted by Splunge at 3:13 PM on October 2, 2020

They also had landing craft tanks - tanks with inflatable floaties around them - the weather caused them to be ineffective during DDay - but also caused plane and ship bombing to be ineffective, as low cloud cover meant that most of the bombs missed their targets.

They were worse than tanks with inflatable floaties. The U.S. amphibious tanks were just leaky waxed canvas boat hulls surrounding the tanks and were designed to handle 1 foot waves. They encountered 6 foot waves and many sank.

Even in today's modern armies landing craft are death traps (see the American amphibious assault vehicle that sank during training killing all but a few marines on board just this past July).
posted by srboisvert at 5:15 AM on October 4, 2020