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Attempts to Save the World That Went Disastrously Wrong

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2023 27 min

Misguided - Philadelphia's 1918 parade amidst the Spanish Flu pandemic — Philadelphia's 1918 parade amidst the Spanish Flu pandemic. US Naval History and Heritage Command

The Great Panjandrum

As they prepared for D-Day, the Allies in WWII needed to figure out how to deal with enemy obstacles on Normandy’s beaches. One misguided scheme to clear the obstacles was the British Great Panjandrum. It consisted of a large drum stuffed with a ton of explosives, and affixed to rocket-propelled wheels. The idea was to ignite the rockets from a platform at sea, and the angled rockets affixed to the wheels would cause them to rotate rapidly. That would launch the contraption at targets and obstacles on shore, to blow them up and clear the way for follow on troops.

Misguided - How the Great Panjandrum was supposed to work — How the Great Panjandrum was supposed to work. Look and Learn

The device was supposed to be developed in secrecy. However, tests were conducted on a beach popular with vacationers, so the trials were witnessed by huge crowds. The design’s flaws emerged at the first trial run in 1943, when the rockets were ignited and the device was launched. It made its way up the beach before rockets on one of the wheels malfunctioned, and the Great Panjandrum careened wildly off course. The problem persisted with additional trials: it proved impossible to get the rockets on both sides to ignite simultaneously, or continue to fire simultaneously. After weeks of troubleshooting, the developers returned to the beach, this time with a third wheel to increase stability. That test was an even bigger embarrassment.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.