WWII’s Most Absurd Secret Weapons

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a massive Allied invasion force comprising some 5,000 ships, 1,200 aircraft, and 160,000 troops steamed across the English Channel towards the beaches of Normandy. It was the opening act of Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious invasion in history and the battle that would finally secure an Allied foothold in western Europe and mark the beginning of the end for the German Third Reich. The challenge facing the planners of Overlord was enormous, for the European coast was defended by the Atlantic Wall, a formidable chain of concrete bunkers, gun emplacements, minefields, and beach obstacles stretching from the tip of Norway to the Spanish Border. If Overlord was to have any chance of succeeding, these fortifications had to be overcome. To this end, Allied engineers came up with a variety of weird and wonderful ‘secret weapons’, from specially-modified tanks designed to swim ashore, clear minefields with whirling chains, and defeat bunkers with powerful mortars and flamethrowers to giant floating harbours called Mulberry. They even had an undersea oil pipeline called PLUTO to supply fuel to the thirsty invasion force. But perhaps the most outlandish device proposed for Overlord was a giant rocket-propelled Catherine wheel designed to roar up the invasion beaches and deliver a ton of explosives against the enemy defences. This is the story of the ‘Great Panjandrum,’ the most hilariously absurd secret weapon of the Second World War.

In a previous video, we covered the development of Hajile, a failed wartime scheme to airdrop cargo more quickly and accurately by using rockets rather than parachutes to slow its fall. Like Hajile, the Great Panjandrum was the brainchild of the British Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development or DMWD, a collection of eccentric scientists and engineers nicknamed the “Wheezers and Dodgers” tasked with developing creative solutions to tough wartime problems. Among the DMWD’s members was Sub-Lieutenant Nevil Shute, an aeronautical engineer later to gain fame as the author of novels such as On the Beach and A Town Like Alice. When, in early 1943, the DMWD was given the task of developing a weapon capable of demolishing a reinforced concrete wall 10 feet tall and 7 feet thick, Shute calculated that it would take an explosive charge of at least one ton to blow a hole wide enough for a tank to roll through. Actually getting such a charge to the wall, however, was another matter entirely, for the abundance of land mines, barbed wire entanglements, machine gun nests, and other defences on the invasion beaches would make a manned demolition mission near-certain suicide.

The answer came in the form of RAF Wing Commander C.R. Finch Noyes, who had previously designed an early version of the “bouncing bombs” used in the famous Dambusters raid of May 16, 1943. Noyes presented the boffins at DMWD with a sketch of a truly outlandish device: a pair of gigantic steel wheels 10 feet in diameter and 1 foot wide, connected by a cylindrical drum containing 4,000 pounds of high explosive. Arranged around the rims of the wheels was a battery of cordite solid-fuel rockets, which would propel the device off a landing craft and up the beach at 60 miles per hour, skimming effortlessly over landmines and through barbed wire before crashing into the target, whereupon the wheels would collapse and the explosives would detonate against the base of the wall. Amazingly, Noyes’s proposal was taken seriously, and within a month a prototype was constructed in great secrecy at Leytonstone in Northeast London and transported under cover of darkness to Appledore in Devon, headquarters of the Combined Operations Experimental Establishment or COXE. The site was specifically chosen to test secret weapons for the Overlord invasion as the beaches in the area closely resembled those of Normandy. Shortly after arriving at COXE, Noyes’ weapon was dubbed “The Great Panjandrum” after a famous piece of nonsense verse by 18th Century writer Samuel Foote, which ends with the line “…till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots”.

The first test of the Great Panjandrum was scheduled for September 7, 1943 near a seaside resort town with the absurdly British name of Westward Ho! Despite the great secrecy which had attended the weapon’s construction, the test was conducted in plain view of the public beaches, and soon attracted a large crowd of curious onlookers. As such a device had never been constructed before, the DMWD team replaced the explosives in the central drum with the equivalent weight of sand, and fitted the wheels with only 18 rockets. As the intrigued holidaymakers looked on, the ignition switch was thrown, the wheels erupted into brilliant rings of flame, and the Great Panjandrum trundled down the landing craft ramp, across the surf, and up onto the beach. At first all went well and the strange weapon rolled straight and true, but soon rockets began failing and flying off the wheel and the whole device veered off to the right and flipped over onto its side, ending its inauspicious first run stranded and wreathed in thick flame and smoke.

Concluding that the Panjandrum was underpowered, the DMWD team doubled the number of rockets to 36 and moved the test site to Instow Beach near the Torridge river estuary. But while this upgraded version travelled twice as far up the beach, it also suffered from rocket shedding and wound up on its side. To improve stability, the engineers added a third central wheel and tried again, this time launching the Panjandrum from a wooden ramp mounted at the low-tide line rather than an actual landing craft. Unfortunately, when the firing switch was thrown, nothing happened, and as the engineers struggled to find the fault in the firing circuit, the tide washed in and engulfed the Panjandrum, causing the middle wheel to collapse. It was a pathetic but appropriately absurd end to the third test.

3 weeks later, the engineers returned once again with a new version of the Panjandrum, which dispensed with the central third wheel and increased the number of rockets to 70. To the team’s delight the weapon initially roared up the beach at its designed speed, but a moment later rockets once again began to fail and shear off, sending the Panjandrum careening back into the sea, where it overturned and the remaining rockets exploded, sending up a giant column of spray. Realizing that the original unguided concept was unworkable, the engineers next added a system of steering cables mounted to spools on the landing craft, which could be differentially braked to nudge the Panjandrum left or right. Nevil Shute was placed in charge of operating these brakes, and as the new design roared off the launch ramp, it seemed as though the system just might work. However, after a few seconds the Panjandrum began to veer off-course, prompting Shute to tap the brakes to correct its trajectory. In response, the cable simply snapped, sending the Panjadrum careening once more into the ocean.

At this point, the team’s growing pessimism was relieved somewhat by DMWD’s announcement that absolute accuracy was no longer deemed necessary; Panjandrum just had to be capable of travelling in the general direction of the enemy. And so, in January 1944, a group of high-ranking military officials gathered at Devon to observe what would turn out to be the final test of this troublesome weapon. As author Brian Johnson recounts in his 1978 book The Secret War, the results were…less than surprising:

“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 [cinematographer Louis] 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.”

But perhaps the most memorable episode of the whole spectacle was when one army officer’s Airedale dog – appropriately named Ammonal after the high explosive – chased after one of the careening rockets, nearly being killed in the process. Amazingly the whole debacle was captured by Klemantaski’s camera and is now preserved online for posterity.

Unsurprisingly, this spectacular failure marked the end for the Great Panjandrum, which, along with dozens of other weird and wonderful proposals, never made it to the beaches of Normandy. As with Hajile, Panjandrum’s failure lay mainly in the limitations of contemporary solid rockets, which were based on the gun propellant cordite and were difficult to ignite simultaneously. Indeed, in 2009, the town of Appledore celebrated the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings by building and launching a 3/4-scale replica of Panjandrum. Powered by modern solid-fuel rockets and packed with fireworks instead of high-explosives, the recreated Panjandrum functioned exactly as Wing Commander Noyes had intended, rocketing 50 metres up the beach in a straight line.

Strangely, however, it is possible that Panjandrum was actually intended to fail right from the start. A great deal of Operation Overlord’s ultimate success was thanks to a massive deception campaign called Operation Bodyguard, which convinced the Germans that the target of the invasion was not Normandy but the Pas-de-Calais – and for more on this, please check out our previous video The Bizarre Story of the Massive Fake Army That Defeated the Nazis and Helped End WWII. According to some historians, The Great Panjandrum was nothing more than a hoax, carried out in service of this overall deception. This theory makes a certain amount of sense, given that a weapon like Panjandrum would have been more useful against the heavier defences of Calais than those of Normandy. The fact that the weapon was tested in plain sight of the public also calls into question the seriousness of the overall project. But as Canadian chemist Charles Goodeve, who headed the DMWD for much of the war, later revealed:

“We did much more unlikely things than panjandrum.”

And given the many, many weird and wonderful WWII weapons and operations we’ve covered on this channel so far, that isn’t difficult to believe at all.

Moving on from the rocket powered wheel bomb, during the war, Britain was taking a beating from the German ships and submarines and were looking for something to build a ship out of that couldn’t be destroyed by torpedoes, or at least could take a major pounding without incurring a fatal amount of damage. With steel and aluminum in short supply, Allied scientists and engineers were encouraged to come up with alternative materials and weapons.

A scientist named Geoffrey Pyke was the king of absurd inventions (as you’ll hear about in the Bonus Facts in a bit, along with his hilariously absurd but nonetheless effective method of escaping a German prison camp, which he did successfully using said method). But for now, the king of all of his countless alternative ideas was to build a 2,000 foot long, 300 foot wide and two million ton carrier. Pyke named his project Habbakuk, a biblical reference that seemed to mirror the project’s goal: “…be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” (Habakkuk 1:5, NIV) Unlike in the Bible though, the ship’s name was spelled with two b’s and one k, which is thought to be simply a spelling error that was repeated so many times that it became official.

Besides the ship’s size, what was so different about Pyke’s vessel was that it would be built of ice. There is no real limit on the availability of ice; it’s easy to make, fairly durable (except in warm temperatures), buoyant, and very easy to repair when damaged. Further, repairs can be made extremely quickly with the right equipment, even during a battle.

The ship was also to include 40 dual-barreled gun turrets, as well as other anti-aircraft guns, and an airstrip that could accommodate up to 150 fighter planes or twin-engined bombers.

Pyke was able to sell Winston Churchill on his plan in 1942, including Churchill stating it should be given the highest priority.

In testing, though, it was discovered that ice might not be as strong as the ice-bergs that Pyke modeled his idea on. It turned out that ice frozen into blocks for the hull could be broken very easily with something as small as a hammer. The project was temporarily abandoned as a result.

However, later that year, a New York polytechnic firm added cellulose- sawdust, wood chips and paper shreds- to water and froze it for a much more promising base structure for such a ship. Not only was it stronger than straight frozen water- with as little as 4% of wood pulp added it made it as strong as concrete, pound for pound- it was also much slower to melt and more buoyant. Pykrete, named after Geoffrey Pyke, could also be cut like wood and easily milled into shapes like metal.

There was one problem though- melting and refreezing would cause warping in the structure. Tests showed that a pykrete ship would eventually sag unless consistently cooled to around 3° Fahrenheit. To maintain this, the ship’s surface would have to be covered in insulation and it would need a refrigeration plant and duct system.

To test the feasibility of getting around this problem, a small scale version of the Habakkuk was constructed in Alberta, Canada’s Lake Patricia to experiment with insulation and refrigeration possibilities and to see how it would stand up to artillery shelling. The test ship was 30 feet wide by 60 feet long, weighed 1,000 tons and was kept refrigerated with a one-horsepower engine, which was sufficient to keep it from melting even through the hot summer months.

In ballistic testing, it was determined that a direct torpedo hit would only cause about a 10 foot crater in the hull, which was insignificant given the size of the proposed ship. Thus, it would be nearly impervious to torpedo attacks for all practical purposes, as it would take a huge number of torpedoes and other bombs to sink the ship. So even if the ship was broken up, the Axis powers would have had to invest a massive amount of their resources in a given area to do it (particularly considering the arsenal of aircraft the ship carried), which would have weakened them significantly on other fronts during the attack. If they were unsuccessful, the ship could be easily and quickly repaired right on the spot.

So overall, the test ship made the full size version seem like it might actually work out.

Further, at this point, it was estimated that construction on the real Habakkuk would cost a miniscule $2.5 million (about $32 million today), which is an extreme bargain for a ship like this.

However, there were still some hurdles to overcome. The rudder on such a ship would have to be massive. How to effectively mount this in the structure in a way that would be resistant to attack was a problem, as was controlling such a rudder. Also, the amount of wood pulp needed would have impacted paper production; while this ship used significantly less steel than most, the steel tubing it did need for reinforcing the structure would have depleted reserves for conventional, proven warships; a huge amount of cork would also be required to insulate the ship; and, finally, the ship’s top speed of just six to seven knots (6.9 to 8.1 mph) was deemed too slow, even with it being fairly torpedo-proof in terms of the main structure itself.

In the end, these problems, combined with the fact that during the planning phase the range of aircraft had increased significantly to the point where the need for a floating island became less necessary, ultimately sunk the planned ship.

That said, while the plan to build Habakkuk was short-lived, its prototype was surprisingly resilient. It took three hot summers to completely melt the smaller version of the boat.

Bonus Facts:

Speaking of Pyke and absurd secret weapons, beside an Ice ship, Pyke once suggested using thousands of balloons with microphones and transmitters attached as a way of triangulating enemy positions. He was not aware at the time of the advancements and development in radar technology. Yet another oddball invention Pyke came up with to help in the war was a screw-propelled snow vehicle. The vehicle would be propelled by having two cylinders with flanges in a screw thread-like fashion spinning in opposite directions and varying their speed to facilitate turns. The M29 Weasel put an end to the potential of Pyke’s snow vehicle seeing the light of day.

Yet another idea of Pyke’s was to use pykrete to quickly construct buildings and protective barriers in a mobile war. In the end, this was deemed impractical given the amount of equipment, water, and pulp that would need to be lugged around.

Another idea of Pyke’s, this one to solve the problem of transporting equipment from ships to shore in the many places where a harbor wasn’t available, was to create massive pipe systems from the ships that would be extended to shore and beyond as the soldiers advanced… literal supply lines. Equipment could be packed in airtight containers that would be whisked through the pipes to the waiting soldiers. Ultimately a more practical idea was developed using floating trucks and floating concrete structures.

A similar idea was to extend the piping system to quickly transport not only equipment, but soldiers too, particularly over difficult to cross terrain. Soldiers would be given oxygen masks and propelled through the pipes via water flowing through. In order to get around the inevitable problem of soldiers panicking while they’re whisked through these pipes they can’t get out of until they reach the end, he recommended drugging them first if they felt they’d have a problem with it. As he said, “The whole experience (of riding in a pipe) however should be far less unpleasant, and take very much less time to become used to, than parachute jumping, or being bombed.”

Another of Pyke’s genius ideas, this time after the war, was to get around the energy crisis by having trains not be propelled by conventional fuels, but by human power. His idea was to equip each train car with dozens of bicycle-like contraptions. Passengers would then be expected to pedal. This would cause people to eat more (needing more calories), which was a problem given post-war food shortages. Pyke felt this was fine because while certain foods were in short supply, sugar was plentiful and a pound of sugar, converted to energy via the human digestive system, would produce more energy than from burning a pound of coal or oil, which there was a shortage of.

Despite only a few of his ideas having some merit to them, with most being amazingly impractical, Pyke was kept around for a time simply because the Chief of Combined Operations, Louis Mountbatten, felt that Pyke’s steady stream of outlandish ideas was good for the other members of his staff to hear, to try to get them to think a bit more out of the box.

One idea of Pyke’s that did pan out was his idea on how to escape from a German prison camp… the one he found himself in at the time. Most of his fellow prisoners thought he was crazy even then, as even if he was able to get out of the camp, it was felt he would either starve, be caught, or killed, before getting out of Germany itself. He proved them all wrong becoming the first to successfully escape from the camp he was in. In his fashion, he meticulously studied all accounts of escape attempts to date by others and why and where they failed. He then devised a plan, at which point he and Edward Falk, a fellow inmate, began a rigorous exercise routine to prepare for their journey.

His plan went as so, with the beginning being every bit as seemingly impractical as many of his other ideas, but nonetheless working: first, use the fact that there was an athletic equipment shed that, while regularly checked by soldiers, was checked at a time of day when, if the sun was out and it was the right time of year, the sun’s rays would glare off a window and cause the soldiers looking into the darkened shed to not be able to see properly. Thus, even though he and Falk could see the guard and weren’t well hidden, the guard could not see them in the small shack. After hiding out, they then managed to slip out of the camp at night with the supply of food they’d been rationing. Following a truly harrowing journey, they made it to what they thought was the border and were caught… turns out, though, they were actually in the Netherlands when caught and were not caught by a German soldier, as they initially thought, but a Dutch one. They had made it.

Sadly, Pyke’s story does not have a happy ending, with the eccentric genius ultimately committed suicide in 1948 by ingesting an entire bottle of sleeping pills and leaving a note to say it was intentional.

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