from Hacker News

Panjandrum: The ‘giant firework’ built to break Hitler's Atlantic Wall

by rmason on 6/5/25, 2:21 AM with 168 comments

• by kjellsbells on 6/8/25, 8:10 PM

  As the ww2 generation passes on, it's easy to forget the degree of utter, total mobilization that went on in the British Isles during the war. I'm always struck by how easy it is to hike into some remote part of the UK and learn that the parish school was a training ground for Italian resistance fighters or that some park in remote scotland was where they trained commandos. Perhaps its because the country is quite small, and they had to use every inch, but it always seems remarkable.

  I think the notion of odd, but brilliant, boffin is deeply embedded in British culture. Or was, until at least the 2000s. The Great Egg Race on TV being a fine example.

• by icameron on 6/8/25, 9:04 PM

  There’s good footage of actual tests about 40 seconds into this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQqXXENYsI

• by helsinkiandrew on 6/9/25, 6:41 AM

  There's an episode of the 1970s BBC documentary series "The Secret War" about the miscellaneous technology projects that sound obviously crazy now, or may have been cancelled to soon:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJCF-Ufapu8&t=8883s

  The whole series is worth a watch, including episodes on radio location finding, radar and radar jamming, Jet engines, the V1/V2 rockets, and Ultra/Enigma etc. Many of the participants (both British and German) are interviewed - including Albert Speer.

• by the__alchemist on 6/8/25, 7:37 PM

  Panjandrum: Fraa Orolo’s pejorative term for a high-ranking official of the Sæcular Power.

• by j00pY on 6/9/25, 9:00 AM

  Near to where I live, there are the remnants of test concrete walls that were used to assess the best way to blow them up. Apparently people snuck over, took some samples of the concrete to recreate how it was made, and then constructed lots of sections of this wall—which they would then use to test their explosives against.

  https://surreyhills.org/places-to-see/atlantic-wall/

• by sevensor on 6/8/25, 9:40 PM

  Nevil Shute is worth a read. Best known for On The Beach, probably, but I enjoyed Round the Bend more.

• by KineticLensman on 6/8/25, 7:55 PM

  There's a recreation of a Panjandrum in the iconic UK WW2-set comedy 'Dad's Army' [0] which captures the essential nuttiness of the real device

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_and_Round_Went_the_Great...

• by hermitcrab on 6/9/25, 1:51 PM

  The USA also had it's own mad weapons:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

• by thenthenthen on 6/9/25, 3:58 PM

  I am quite curious about the etymology behind the name ‘Panjandrum’, It is not explained in the article IIRC. Furthermore, the article writes about the improbability of homing/self-stearing devices, again IIRC flight navigation around this time already made use of known radio broadcasts for direction finding before the war (Amelia Earhart), did they research this or was it to unreliable.. because said war (jamming etc)?

• by hoseja on 6/9/25, 7:38 AM

  What a silly gadget.

  Also by the way the Normandy beaches were NOT fortified with bunkers very much at all (unlike what you might have seen in Saving Private Ryan), just trenches and sandbags. A large portion of Omaha beach casualties were inflicted by a single machine gun nest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh

• by anentropic on 6/9/25, 1:27 PM

  I am sympathetic to the idea that this was intended as a misdirection

  The flaws in the design seem reasonably obvious - any imbalance in the thrust of the multiple rockets on each wheel causing an unwanted steering effect. Also the high centre of gravity and narrow track width seem poorly chosen when stability would surely be desirable.

  A mobile Catherine Wheel seems more designed to attract as much attention as possible...

• by daverol on 6/8/25, 7:51 PM

  I always preferred the thinking behind the 'Conundrum' used in Operation Pluto. No big bangs but excellent logistics - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pluto

• by arandomusername on 6/8/25, 10:11 PM

  [flagged]