Last night, I finished reading A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute. I browsed around on the Internet to see if the book was made into a movie. (It was — two movies, actually.) Anyway, that lead me to this page where Nevil Shute explains how he came up with the plot for the novel. Finding myself on a Nevil Shute site, I wandered about and found this page.
It turns out that during World War II, Shute worked for the Navy’s Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development. (I thought the concept of miscellaneous weapons was pretty funny, as though they were just laying about at random. But what do you expect from a country that has a government official called Minister without Portfolio?) Anyway, Shute was given the task of finding a way to smash through the Atlantic Wall, the huge concrete barrier the Germans had constructed along the French coast.
Shute came up with The Great Panjandrum, a pair of wheels that carried a large supply of explosives. The wheels were powered by a series of rockets. The whole thing was set off from a boat and was supposed to roll up the beach and explode on contact with the wall. Naturally, it was supposed to be a big secret, but somehow word got out and large crowds gathered to watch the test on an English beach. Things started out OK, but soon the wheels veered off to the side. Three more tests were no more successful — the rockets tended to go off in odd directions and the spectators had to scramble. Finally, the whole idea was given up. Or was it? Some people think it was all a fake to begin with (explaining how word got out), intended to distract the Germans from the D-Day landings.
And the name? Check out my next post.