The Great Panjandrum: A Hilariously Terrible Idea

As the British military brainstormed ways to break the German-built Atlantic Wall during World War II, desperation drove them to unorthodox ideas -- one of those, the Great Panjandrum, was a literal rocket-powered, rolling bomb. Tune in to learn how the Panjandrum came to be, what went wrong with it, and how amazing it is that no one actually died during testing.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in and thanks to our super
producer Casey Pegram, our guest producer Andrew Howard, and I
guess thanks to the British This. This is a weird one.
This is the epitome of ridiculous. Yeah it is ben

(00:49):
I'm no, Um, yeah it's Uh. It's ridiculous for for
multiple reasons, first and foremost being the name of the thing. Um,
it was a gonad and get it out of the way.
Today's episode is about a weapon that sounds like it
came out of a Doctor Seuss book, not only in
the name, but also in the design. Uh. It was
called the Grand Panjandrum. Yes, the Grand Panjandrum, which, through

(01:16):
a series of bizarre events, is an actual word today.
It's one that I had not heard before we began
researching today's episode. It reminded me of it felt like, yeah,
Dr Seus's works. It felt like it would also maybe
be in a Riyard Kipling poem. Uh. This If you
were to categorize Ridiculous History episodes by genre, this would

(01:39):
squarely be in the genre of who on Earth thought
this was a good idea? So greenlit this picture right right. So,
war has a long and storied history of sparking invention.
It's a horrific thing that leads to atrocities, but it
all so leads to remarkable breakthroughs, at least as some

(02:03):
of the most extraordinary moments of human ingenuity. War has
given us countless medical breakthroughs, countless technological breakthroughs. The list
goes on. But one thing that you will know very
well if you are a long time listener of ridiculous
history or stuff they don't want you to know, is
that the success rate for unorthodox ideas is very, very low.

(02:30):
For every nuclear bomb, every working plane, let us assure you, folks,
there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other ideas that
should have never left the drawing board. Yeah, you're talking
about innovation and war yielding such incredible technological advancements and

(02:50):
like the triumph of the human spirit and problem solving
and creating new paths to you know, cultural and dominance
as a species. Well, this ain't one of them. The panjandrum,
it's not. It basically looks like a giant industrial spool
like you might see like wire attached to or perhaps
like you know, rigged up to a giant crane or

(03:13):
something like that. Uh. What it essentially is is a
rolling bomb, right Uh. And and like when we say
rolling bomb, that doesn't mean it wasn't like it wouldn't
explode as I mean it would. I guess each like
step on the wheel had a rocket that would shoot
as it rolled, and I'm assuming that would also propel

(03:36):
it and make it go faster. But also like in
a line, it reminds me of that circle shaped ship
in uh Prometheus that everyone ragged on it because like
the woman just running in a straight line from a
circle shaped ship that's coming after, She's gonna just sidestep
one way or the other and been totally fine. But
you know, it would have robbed us of all that
amazing drama. But yeah, how did the Panjandrum project come

(04:00):
to be in the first place for this like rolling
rocket bomb? Yeah? Yes, the rockets were meant to propel
the wheels and they could make it go pretty fast,
but there were there were some basic problems of physics,
similar to that boat we talked about that would just
fire off and then send itself spinning exactly exactly. So, yeah,

(04:24):
this this gave about due to desperation and fear. We'll
talk a little more in detail about this, but essentially,
during World War Two, the Nazi Party and Hitler, they
were creating this gigantic wall, this barrier that would prevent
Allied forces from moving further into Europe. So the eggheads

(04:50):
got together then the British scientists and military minds of
the day, and they said, we need something to break
through this thing, this concrete Atlantic Wall, and we need
it to make a large enough break in the wall
such that tanks can drive through. So you know, we've
articulated the problem, they said, So now we know what

(05:11):
we need to try to solve, and that's how the
Great pan Jan Drum came to be. They said, we
can use machinery instead of just throwing young British men
at the problem and you know, racking up a butcher's bill.
So their their intentions were good, which is very important
for you to know as we get into just what

(05:34):
a dumb idea this was. So let's say it's a
little after nineteen forties, Adolph Hitler and co. Have overrun
France and several other Western European countries, and Hitler, or
more likely one of his uh one of his handlers,

(05:57):
knows that the Allies are going to try to invade
the European continent, attack through those occupied countries, destroy the
Nazi regime. They just didn't know when this would happen.
I don't know where this would happen. And there was
a huge battle of spycraft to give fake communication and

(06:18):
mislead the other side. So that's why Hitler said, you
know what, China had it right. We're going to build
a wall, and they ended up building the world second.
I believe it is the second largest fortified barrier. That's right,
second only, of course to the Great Wall of China,
which is miles long. Have you ever been visited the

(06:41):
Great Wall of China been? I know you've traveled in
Asia plenty. I have not yet visited. It's on my list.
Although our friend of the show and co host of
Stuff Mom never told you in Savor, Andy Reese has
visited China, has seen the Great Wall that has some
fantastic stories about it. Isn't it true that you can
see it from satellite imagery because it's such a it
creates like a pattern because it's so large. Yeah, you

(07:03):
made an important distinction there. Role there. There's a myth
that says you can see the Great Wall of China
from space, and that is true, that you can see
it from a satellite, but if you're an astronaut, you
probably won't be able to see it without technological aid.
If you squint a little bit, that fuzzy thing down there,
maybe it's the Great Wall. No, it's true. Yeah, you

(07:24):
can even look it up on Google Earth and see it.
Pretty impressive stuff. This German Atlantic Barrier was not nearly
as impressive, but it still had its charms and that
it was made of seven foot thick concrete and it
spanned the entire European coastline, or at least a pretty

(07:45):
large portion of it. And Britain's navy was looking for,
like we said, a way of crashing through this thing
and and being able to let the troops through and
and you know, with all the Kucherman that goes along
with that, including tanks and weaponry. And to do this
they developed this thing called the Great pan Jan Drum, which,

(08:06):
just to be a little more specific, if you don't
every already have a good mental image of it. It's
to ten foot tall wheels. They're linked by like a
fulcrum kind of situation. But again, like I think a
spool is the best way of referring to it, or
like a double sided wheel, and it's linked by this
drum that carried four thousand pounds of explosives. So the
rockets were exclusively for propulsion to make it just blast

(08:26):
forward at a breakneck speed. And then I'm assuming Ben
that the impact is what would cause the detonation. Yeah,
once it hits that barrier, that would cause the explosion.
In their defense, the rockets did actually propel this contraption
that would call the contraption at highway speed, and everybody

(08:48):
was on board with this. Everybody said we should at
least build it and test it out because this could
be a quick, efficient way to storm the beach. We
can save people's lives. This idea come from a British
wing commander named C. R. Finch Noise, the name I
quite like he had already earned some stripes as a

(09:09):
designer because he created the damn Buster bouncing bombs that
the Royal Air Force used to wreck to German Damn's
in ninety three when they started building the pan Jan
drum Finch noise was inspired by a nonsensical piece of

(09:31):
prose from an eighteenth century dramatist named Samuel Foote foot
with an e, and he was like kind of a
Lewis Carrol Edward Lear sort of dude. He wrote the
following passage, which we are going to edit a little because,
as the Internet says, it aged like milk. And here's
what we did. We're doing whimsical voices too. So as

(09:52):
she went to the garden to cut the cabbage leaf
to make an apple pie, at the same time a
great chebag coming up the street, Pops said into the shop,
what so? So he died, and she very imprudently married
the barber, and they were present the plank lead it
that word the job lilies, and they got ruelies and
the great panjandrum himself with the little round button at top,

(10:15):
and they all failed to play in the game of
catches catch can to the gunpowder ran out at the
heels of their boots. What such whimsy and low key
racism with that word he took out, people can probably
it kind of sounds like picnic. Let's just put it
that way, if you're looking for what that word might
be a weird one, to be sure, but but sort

(10:36):
of jumbled in with all these nonsense words. Actually, it's
funny that you said, Louis Carroll type figured Benny when
I said at the top of the show, this thing
sounds like something out of a a Dr. Seuss book.
It also kind of sounds like something they could have
been in, like the Jabberwalkee, you know, like, yeah, for sure,
the great Panjandrum himself. But it's literally sounds like they're describing,

(10:58):
or he's describing sort of would ended up being the
kind of mechanic behind the thing, right until the gunpowder
ran out of the heels of their boots, which makes
me think of like, you know, having rocket boots or
something like that, right, yeah, exactly. This word is described
by the O. E. D. The Oxford English Dictionary as
something that was coined in seventeen fifty four or fifty

(11:21):
five by Foot to test the memory of one of
his fellow actors, a guy named Charles Macklin. Macklin had
bragged that he could repeat absolutely anything after only hearing
it once, and so the story goes Foot made this
up to test him and say like, well, how do
you do with nonsense words, my pal? And eventually Panjandrum,

(11:46):
which started as a joke a nonsense word, became a
household word, and now O E D has a kind
of tricky definition for it, because mockery is built into it,
like it's supposed to be a joke word, even the
it's a real word, which is kind of weird, right,
So the official definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is

(12:07):
a mock title for a mysterious, frequently imaginary personage of
great power or authority, a pompous or pretentious official, a
self important person in authority. Kind of reminds me of
like the Great Gazoo from from the Flintstones. Remember the
Great Gazoo. He was like an alien. He was like

(12:27):
a little green alien guy, and he hung out with
Fred flint Stone and could like tell the future and stuff.
And yeah, the Great Panjandrum probably hung out with a
great gazoo. It reminds me of Grand Puba that also
could be. Yeah, for sure, that was in the Royal
Order of the of the Water Buffalo. So then the
word kind of, as words do, grew to have its

(12:48):
own meeting from a complete nonsense word to you know,
official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, to now a
new meeting which was a ceremonial fuss or formality rigamarole affair.
I am definitely using this in my next work meeting.
I'll be like, you know, we've got a lot of
panjandrum going on, right seriously. Yeah, it's a real pandemic

(13:08):
of panjandrum. Um. It's like this has become a great panjandrum.
This meeting has devolved into a great panjandrum. I like it. No,
it's fun. We learned, we're learning stuff here in ridiculous history.
And then of course, you know it, it became this
weird weapon that looked like a giant like sewing spool,
you know, with dynamite inside of it and rockets to

(13:32):
propel it forward at a great speeds. So in nineteen
forty three, near the end of the year, the Directorate's
which is what has that done? That's like a formal
name for like leadership of the British Army, the Directorate
of Miscellaneous Weapons Development. I love that sounds. That's so

(13:54):
British sounding. They began to test out prototypes in London
and actually a haul day and a giant truck too.
What what is Westward Ho? Westward Ho is the actual
name of the village. That's amazing. It has an exclamation
mark in it. Yes, okay, sorry, I don't I wouldn't
have usually let that go through me sounding so confused,

(14:16):
but I think it actually works here because yeah, I
thought was that like the name of the trucking company
or something, you know what. No, yeah, Westward Ho exclamation mark.
I adore it. And it was a seaside village in
southern England, much like where the Allies stormed the beach
would go on to storm the beaches at Normandy. Yeah,

(14:39):
it makes sense to test it there because the geographical
conditions are similar at least so. The Panjantrum is a
big thing. It's not super easy to move if the
rockets aren't lit. It has those two wheels that were
mentioning there, each ten feet tall, and they're rimmed with
seventy cordyke rockets in These rockets are technically slow burning

(15:05):
so that they can propel the whole contraption. Gerald Powell,
in The Secret War Through writes about the Panjatrum in
depth and He says that thankfully for testing, the engineers
packed that drum that axel with sand instead of explosives,

(15:26):
and Powell also notes, quote this may be the smartest
thing anyone in the project ever did, because from the
very first test it was clear that they had some
other things they needed to think through. One of the
first things is that beaches and shorelines have sand, and

(15:48):
sand is famously difficult to get a good purchase on. Yeah,
it really is. It probably should have tested on like
tennis courts or something like that, because he really do
need a solid foundation for this thing to go. Otherwise,
I'm picturing it like a cartoon character running it rapid
speed on a beach and digging itself into the into
the grounds, you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. It

(16:09):
also makes me think of this is one of those
Internet famous clips, or it's even a category of clip
now where people are lighting fireworks and like a dog
wants to play, and so they grab one of the
fireworks in their mouths and they're running around like it's
a stick, but the fire was one of those that
shoots out the balls of fireworks. Yeah, Roman candle, that's
the one end uh, And then the rest of the

(16:31):
family is running away from this like insanely happy terrier
has become an agent of chaos. Uh in, yes, exactly
right in uh And we have a dog that plays
a role in the story today and this excellent article
I'm Wired from about just how poorly this gadget worked.
They call it the explosive equivalent of a loose garden

(16:54):
hose at full power if you don't account for that
sand So quickly they realize, you know, a giant two
wheel thing just flying around, shooting off rockets and exploding
uncontrollably would maybe not be a huge help. It might
actually make things worse because it would be as much
danger to the British troops as to the German forces

(17:16):
and the Atlantic Wall. So yeah, weapon you can't control,
it's not much of a weapon, uh you know. Or again,
it's like that circle ship with the cannons on all
sides that was absolutely useless. At least that one would
just take you for like a weird kind of theme
park type ride. This one could actually literally backfire on you. Yes, yeah,

(17:39):
it could literally backfire on you. The guy was the
lead of the project at the time, Nevill Shoot Norway
he may He said, something I thought was logical. He said,
why would just put a third wheel on it, you know,
more wheels will be more stability. That did not help.

(17:59):
So then they said, okay, let's try to steer it
with these ginormous cables. But that didn't help because uh
and being unfair. It helped a little bit, but it
couldn't make up for the problem of the rolling resistance
and how it changed on the beach, so one wheel
would always go faster than the other, which of course

(18:21):
would make the whole thing turn. And the rockets were
supposed to stay on the wheels. But the thing is,
when it reached full speed around sixty miles, those rockets
inevitably detached from the outer wheels, making them even more dangerous.
They were just flying off. This thing was coming apart
essentially as soon as you turned it on. Yeah. Yeah,

(18:44):
it was not a very pretty scene. Essentially, they realized
that they had created a monster, an unhinged, you know,
explosive bull in a China chop situation. They immediately lost
control over. They referred to Uh. There's a amazing article
on war history online dot com that refers to as

(19:05):
a giant two wheeled weapon flying around shooting off rockets uncontrollably.
That that's about about sums it up. It would post
easily as much danger to the Brits as as it
would to the enemy. So a second test was in order,
and you know, surprise, surprise, it didn't go particularly well either. Again,
the Directorate, in all and their infinite wisdom, made some adjustments,

(19:27):
and then in in the autumn and then again in January,
they decided to do another like big high profile test
to run in front of like the top leadership of
the military Pan the pan exactly the great Panjandrums indeed themselves.
So how that one go? Ben? Well, h we have

(19:49):
a couple of quotes. You may recognize this as something
that you might see in America's Funniest Home videos. Unfortunately,
the start the rockets blazing, and then, according to James
Moore and Paul Nero in Pigeon guided Missiles and other
ideas that never took off, quote, the Panjandrum hurtled from

(20:12):
the sea and wondrous speed sparks flying from its rockets.
But then old habits kicked in as the rockets dislodged,
the Panjandrum spun and shock replaced the confidence of those
attending generals fled for cover. The official cameraman was almost
mown down, and the Panjandrum rockets flailing wheels ablaze disintegrated.

(20:34):
I think there's an even there's another description that I
enjoy even more about this second test from an scene, Nold,
do you want to do the honors on this one? Oh,
I'd love to bend there. I mean, they really, like,
you know, pulled out all the stops for this demo.
They had a documentary film crew on hand, and an

(20:54):
onlooker gave this account 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.
It began to turn to starboard, careening toward the filmmaker,
who viewing events through a telescopic lens, misjudged the distance
and continued filming. Hearing the approaching roar, he looked up

(21:17):
from his viewfinder to see Panjandrum shedding live rockets in
all directions heading for him. Oh man, what a what
a moment of realization of like doom? Did did he
make it? Ben? The observer made it? H The humans
weren't harmed. But going back to my earlier reference of

(21:38):
dogs playing with fireworks, one army officer brought his pooch
with him and the dog saw one of these loose
rockets making its merry exclusive way down the beach, and
the dog chased it, and the panjandrum, of course, didn't
make it. This test was the end of the road

(21:59):
for that, But we still aren't completely sure what happened
to the dogs. Some people say the dog was almost
killed and narrowly escaped, and some people say the dog
may have been the unfortunate, one and only fatality of
the great pan Jan Drum. But here's the thing. Okay,

(22:22):
so first off this is we have to understand the context.
These people were serious. They were trying unorthodox, innovative solutions.
I applaud that. I think we all can. But this
is a hilariously bad idea, right, this is a quite
literally ridiculous idea. But still someone brought it back at

(22:43):
the Apple Door book Festival of all places, in two
thousand and nine. I love a good book festival. Then
the decatured as a really nice book festival that'll be
fun to go to after everyone's all nice and vaxed up.
I look forward to that. It's a nice summer events.
But yeah, the Apple Door book Festival. In two thousand nine,
to mark the sixty five anniversary of D Day, UH

(23:06):
fireworks company perfect Fit here Ben created a small a
scale model of the thing, fitted with fireworks instead of
explosed those obviously, and it was lit and deployed on
that same beach in Westward Ho and it went straight
for about fifty meters before it fizzled out short of

(23:30):
what where they were hoping to get it too, So
even in its smaller, more kind of level headed version,
it still didn't didn't really do the trick. No, no,
but you know it's a that I would argue is
a good way to liven up a book festival. Right.
So so there's that, And there's one little piece of epilogue.
You may not have heard of the Republic of Malassia,

(23:53):
which is completely surrounded by territory of the US to
only eleven point three acres. It's one of the small
stations under Earth. But it's called a micro nation, right
and never heard that term before. It's not recognized. It's
like the principality of ceilings. It's not recognized by the
UN or anything. But they've been working on a Panjandrum

(24:13):
for a number of years, so that might be what
turns the tide and gets the international recognition. I'm having
a hard time fiction. I don't think it's gonna I
don't think it's gonna happen for him. Uh, it seems
like a it's a weird one. They were, they not
paying attention to history, but they don't know what people
say about history repeating itself. Well, I say, god speed,

(24:34):
you know, more power to them. I hope, I hope
they get it right this time. But yeah, they were
working on that as recently as this year or last year.
Rather April eleven, the they tested the Great Panjandrum there
for a second time at a secret weapons facility deep
in the desert, and there was an original design flaw
that that had a weak axle that had been fixed

(24:55):
since the very first test, which was in and much
like this extra reminds me a lot. I remember that
that train collision race. You know, they had like a
public it was like a thing at a fair, like
a you know, World's fair kind of situation. I can't
remember exactly what the details were, but yeah, there was
an assembled crowd watching this test. And here's the thing
that makes the most sense about all this and why

(25:16):
this would be hard. You're launching it on the ground
and your calculations have to be really precise or else
it's gonna like go askew. That's exactly what it did.
It apparently barreled right into the crowd, and much like
that train situation when you know they collided and debris
and you know, just act like shrapnel, the sort of

(25:37):
shooting everywhere. People were leaping for safety and thankfully no
one was hurt, just as as was the case with
the original. But it does not seem to have gone
in the in the way they were hoping, And I'm
surprised they didn't just learn from the mistakes of the
British and realize, maybe this isn't the best use of
our time and resources. Well, perhaps they can try out

(25:58):
some other terrible ideas from mill It's erries of yester years,
such as the Iceberg Navy, the bat Bob, or the
nov Garov, which is that circular Russian vessel we were
talking about earlier. You can read more about all of
these in a great article by Mental Flaws called eight
other bizarre weapons that failed spectacularly. That is our gift

(26:19):
to you Navy of Molossia. Indeed, and hey, you know what,
and I I'm actually I'm gonna many a little crow here. Um.
It does turn out that the Molossian Navy did have
two successful launches of the Panjandrum, one during an evening
events that went well. The the article on Molossia dot org,

(26:41):
which you can find yourself and loss is pretty easy.
You're a Milossy dot org slash Navy slash Panjandrum dot html. Um.
So again this is you know, from the micro nation themselves.
But the way they describe it as very grand sounding
as is befitting the great Panjandrum a profound success. The
Panjandrum had one final test, a nighttime launch, this one

(27:01):
spectacularly as the mighty machine charged across the desert floor,
rockets blazing in the twilight. And I'd like to add
as a last word there, I am personally fascinated with
micro nations. I believe our colleagues and stuff you should know. Uh, Palas,
Josh and Chuck have a great episode on micro nations.

(27:22):
H if you want to reach out and just talk
with us about micro nations. I am super down. You
can find us to talk about micro nations any old
time you'd like, or weird military ideas of guests or
year on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so
much to Casey Pegram, our super producer. Thank you to

(27:42):
our guest producer Andrew Howard. Thank you to our own
great panjandrum and actual like uh unlike the great Panjandrum
our research associate Gabels actually works and is spectacular, So Gabe,
if you're hearing this, thanks to you, man. Huge thanks
to Alex Illiams, who composed our theme. Christopher hastiots here

(28:03):
in spirit. Congratulations on being a new dad for the
second time. How cool is that? Um? We miss you Christopher,
and now on your back up, we hope to have
you on the show Lickety Split. Um and man, thanks
to you, Ben. This has been a great couple episodes.
I hope everyone enjoyed them this week because I sure did.
And Jen drum Indeed, that's it. That's my contribution and

(28:24):
it's absolutely fitting. End. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app. Apple podcast or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.