9 ms·
Panjandrum: The ‘giant firework’ built to break Hitler's Atlantic Wall
- the__alchemist 1y agoPanjandrum: Fraa Orolo’s pejorative term for a high-ranking official of the Sæcular Power.
- lelandfe 1y agoStephenson enjoys the word. He also used it in Cryptonomicon. I keep a running list of new words I encounter and share them online occasionally. Someone once recognized I was reading Cryptonomicon just from a string of those new words, lol.
- KineticLensman 1y agoIf you enjoy encountering new words and phrases such as 'theurgic vermin' then you might like China Miéville’s Kraken. I had to read it with a copy of the OED and Wikipedia to get the most from it.
- almostkindatech 1y agoOr read anything by Will Self
- Rebelgecko 1y agoI had a pretty good list for Polostan
- ben_ja_min 1y agoThank you for this. I was going nuts trying to figure out where I had read this before. Peace and love! For the uninitiated, the Neil Stephenson novel, "Anathem", is brilliant and extremely entertaining.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 1y agoAnd if you enjoyed that you'd possibly enjoy The Glass Bead Game
- daverol 1y agoI 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pluto
- KineticLensman 1y agoThere'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_Big_Wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_and_Round_Went_the_Great...
- kjellsbells 1y agoAs 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.
- nocoiner 1y agoYou would probably enjoy the book “Backroom Boys” by Francis Spufford.
- FridayoLeary 1y agoWhat i find even more remarkable is how every town, village, school and institution have memorials for those who lost their lives in the Great War. Usually there is another plaque attached in memory of WW2. It's hard to imagine the scale of deaths. The tragedy is how little was accomplished by the sacrifices of ww1. It had none of the moral clarity of ww2 nor did most of the deaths achieve any strategic purpose. On the other hand i knew an old scientist who had quite a few interesting and amusing stories to share about his efforts in WW2. One of them was about his attempts to perfect a formala. Several factories exploded before they succeeded.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoIt's worth pointing out explicitly that WW2 didn't have the moral clarity that it does today either. The vast majority of the western world was perfectly content to let Hitler run Europe and Japan to run Asia.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoWhat do you define as the vast majority of the western world? Just the US?
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- closewith 1y ago[flagged]
- codeduck 1y agoGood Lord, how can you function with that massive chip on your shoulder?
- MangoToupe 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cperciva 1y agoNo nation is exclusively good, but I would challenge you to name a nation which did both more good and less evil.
- closewith 1y agoThan the United Kingdom? The obvious answer in line with my comment is Ireland.
- MangoToupe 1y ago[flagged]
- icameron 1y agoThere’s good footage of actual tests about 40 seconds into this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQqXXENYsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJQqXXENYsI
- sevensor 1y agoNevil Shute is worth a read. Best known for On The Beach, probably, but I enjoyed Round the Bend more.
- emmelaich 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Shute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Shute A Town Like Alice is probably the most popular in Australia, where he resided after the war. Also made into a good movie.
- arandomusername 1y ago[flagged]
- mhh__ 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- OJFord 1y agoSurely you have also to act on it in some way? I don't agree with the 'ideology' but I don't find it totally unreasonable or objectionable. And surely even 'everyone who doesn't worship X and abstain from Y and live according to text Z is living in sin' is... That's just an ideology, that's fine, it's not terrorist until you do some sort of destructive act in its name or try to enforce it somehow? Some context lost in the linked article I think, not having read into it.
- mhh__ 1y ago[flagged]
- typewithrhythm 1y agoThe context is that the UK government has extremely wide reaching powers to fine or imprison based on online speech, with much of the wording of these laws being contrived as anti terror. So by classifying a position as terrorist ideology, they can apply these laws and chill opposition.
- elephant81 1y agohttps://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?utm_medium=ios https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?utm_medium=ios Tyler Cowen posted this last week, I was completely shocked by it. Worth reading on the state of the UK in general.
- 1y ago
- fuckyah 1y ago[dead]
- helsinkiandrew 1y agoThere'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 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.
- hermitcrab 1y agoIt is interesting how the Germans made all these spectacular high tech weapons (V1, V2, rocket planes etc) and yet it was the less flashy Allied tech advances that made the difference (cavity magnetron, early computers, proximity fuses etc).
- PaulHoule 1y agoElectronic warfare in WWII was a competition and it looks like the US/UK had the upper hand because, in retrospect, they won the war. Germans were ahead in some areas, not least magnetic tape https://historictech.com/a-secret-ww2-american-hi-fi-tape-recorder/ https://historictech.com/a-secret-ww2-american-hi-fi-tape-re...
- hermitcrab 1y agoGermany had a lot of top scientists and engineers. But I'm not sure I can see how mag tape would be a war winning weapon in the way that radar, early computers or proximity fuses were. Of course, Germany booted out loads of Jewish scientists. Many of whom ended up doing important work for the Allies - not least on the atom bomb.
- hoseja 1y agoWhat 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh
- dwroberts 1y ago> Severloh's claim is not viewed as credible by either US or German historians
- helsinkiandrew 1y ago> Also by the way the Normandy beaches were NOT fortified with bunkers very much at all I'm not sure if you mean there were not many bunkers or they weren't very good fortifications, but there are quite a few bunkers, for example: https://www.normandybunkers.com/bunker-sites https://www.normandybunkers.com/bunker-sites
- cobbzilla 1y agoThe article mentions speculation that the whole project may have been part of a larger ruse that the landing would be in a more fortified place.
- j00pY 1y agoNear 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/ https://surreyhills.org/places-to-see/atlantic-wall/
- robin_reala 1y agoHuh, that’s really not far from where I grew up, and I had no idea it existed.
- anentropic 1y agoI 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...
- hermitcrab 1y agoThe USA also had it's own mad weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
- thenthenthen 1y agoI 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)?