Hello and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast episode top secret the

strange inventions of World War II take your pick ladies and, between the two following sayings.

Necessity is the mother of invention, or desperate times call for desperate measures.

Either way, once and before the war broke out in Europe, both sides sought to use technology

to give them an edge.

Let's see how that went.

First, there's the solid actual war-changing creations or improvements of things like the Soviet T-34

tank, the British Spitfire or hurricane or the Americans B-17 Flying Fortress, yet all of these were outdone by the creation of the atomic

bomb. But before going on to the items that bombed all on their own, it's worth mentioning that the war also created the need for things

like synthetic rubber, the jeep, and the item that never fails, it never lets you down, duct tape. And then we get to those ideas, those inspirations, that

leaves the rest of us scratching our heads, because someone somewhere, a second person, heard one of these ideas and said yeah

let's do that that's the ticket let's see how that went the first item was to be

the answer to breaking literally Hitler's Atlantic Wall, built to keep the Allies out of mainland Europe.

The required specification said the device had to penetrate a 10-foot or 3-meter-thick concrete wall or

structure and it had to be launched from landing craft along the beach.

Enter the DM-M-W-D or the Admiralty's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development.

Perhaps the name should have been D-U-M-P instead. After a sub-Lieble Shoot revealed the pan-Gandrum. Think of two large

carriage wheels attached by a metal drum turned on its side, the drum would be filled with

explosives to go off after making contact with the intended wall.

As for getting the panjandrum from the beach to the wall, the two wheels would have a set of

cordite rockets attached to them. They would go off, obviously pointing all in the same direction, and the wheels would start to turn.

As it was expected to get up to 60 miles per hour, no steering device was possible.

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