well it is one of these, to mark the 65th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, Allied commanders hoped the original device - a 10ft-high drum packed with 400lb of high explosives - would storm across the Normandy beaches and blast a hole in the Nazis' Atlantic Wall defence, now comes the bad news, on paper great, but in fact it nearly took out more UK VIP's and top brass than the enemy! the problem being if just one rocket failed to fire all directional control was lost, so more than a few VIP's had it away on their toes when in one demonstration it all went dolaly flip,
but on to the beach for the celebration, fireworks company Skyburst constructed the device - a little smaller than the 1944 version at 6ft high and 3ft wide - with the help of film archive specialist Tony Koorlander, the man behind the recent discovery of footage of Allied troops rehearsing for D-Day on the North Devon beaches,
the downside to the demonstration was that no high explosives were used, evidently it may have taken out a few spectators! but it all went well for the first 50 meters of the intended 500 meter run, then it stopped and who invented this device that nearly killed more of us than the enemy?
aircraft engineer Nevil Shute Norway - more famous under the shortened name Nevil Shute as the author of bestselling novels including the post-war romance A Town Like Alice and the post-apocalyptic On The Beach, now how strange is this, only last week with no way of knowing that Nevil Shute was going to be on the blog I ordered via Mark the film On The Beach! spooky, now hum the theme tune to that science fiction TV series!
2 comments:
It's funny that they called it "The Great Panjandrum". It is named after the play called "The Great Panjandrum". The word "panjandrum" was invented by the play's author, a man named Foote, in 1755, as a nonsense word meaning "a pompus official." (link)
Dear Jil, I never thought to look it up, but I have seen the clip where one of these things goes out of control, and pretty frightening it looked to, I would not have been surprised if it was the stage name of a magician, best regards, Stan and Diana.
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