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generals it is said always ready to fight the last war never has this adage been more true than in
the years 1939-1941 when the nazi blitzkrieg swept its way across europe german divisions spearheaded
by tanks and supported by ground attack aircraft either steam rolled over or bypassed entirely the
french maginot line and other fortifications built to keep them out rendering 30 years of
military thought and planning obsolete overnight yet despite this rude awakening many remained
firmly wedded to old ways of thinking among these was british prime minister winston churchill for
three years obsessively pursued the development of an enormous machine designed to dig trenches up to
the enemy lines a machine that was obsolete the moment it was conceived and ultimately proved a
costly and useless white elephant this is the curious story of cultivator number six
winston churchill witnessed the horrors of trench warfare first hand following the failure of his
dardanelle campaign in 1915 churchill resigned his position as first lord of the admiralty and joined
the british army as a lieutenant colonel serving with the second grenadier cards in belgium from
january to may 1916. he had also established the admiral's landship committee the year before to
investigate the use of armored tractors to break the deadlock on the western front the committee's
work eventually resulted in development of the tank which first saw combat during the battle
of the somme in 1916. thus when the nazis invaded poland in september 1939 the problem of avoiding
the attritional slogging match of trench warfare was very much at the forefront of churchill's mind
following britain's declaration of war on september 3 390 000 men of the british
expeditionary force were deployed to france and many feared the german luftwaffe would immediately
commence aerial bombardment of the british isles however the germans still hoping to broke a piece
with the british did not attack seemingly content to consolidate their gains in poland what followed
was an eight-month period of military inactivity which became known as the phony war churchill
however was not fooled and he knew that it was only a matter of time before hitler launched an
invasion of france and the low countries though he was at the time once more first lord the admiralty
churchill cast his mind beyond purely naval matters and came up with a variety of ideas for
bringing the fight to the enemy when the time came one such idea was operation royal marine a plan to
float large numbers of naval mines down the german rivers to destroy bridges and other infrastructure
another was a scheme that he had first conceived during the first world war for a device capable
of penetrating the sea creed line or west wall the chain of bunkers trenches and other
fortifications protecting germany's border with france as churchill later wrote in his book the
gathering storm during these months of suspense and paralysis i gave much thought and compelled
much effort to the development of an idea which i thought might be helpful to the great battle
when it began it was a method of imparting to our army's means of advance up to and through
the hostile lines without undue or prohibitive casualties i believe that a machine could be made
which would cut a groove in the earth sufficiently deep and broad through which assaulting infantry
and presently assaulting tanks could advance in comparative safety across no man's land and wire
entanglements and come to grips with the enemy in his defenses on equal terms and in superior
strength it was necessary that the machine cutting this trench should advance at sufficient speed to
cross the distance between the two front lines during the hours of darkness i hoped for a speed
of three or four miles per hour but even half a mile would be enough the idea of tunneling towards
enemy lines was nothing new with such attacking trenches being traditionally known as saps and
the specialized troops tasked with digging them sappers this was a term that was later
applied to all military engineers this process however had never been mechanized in the manner
that winston churchill envisioned churchill first pitched his idea to the army but when they proved
uninterested he instead turned to sir stanley goodall the director of label construction goodall
in turn passed the project onto his assistant j.h hopkins an accomplished ship designer who
assembled a top secret team of designers known as the department of naval land equipment initially
the project was codenamed white rabbit number six variously described as a reference to
alice in wonderland or churchill's ability to pull ideas out of a hat but it would soon change
the more mundane sounding cultivator number six for reasons of secrecy churchill also referred to
the devices as the mechanical mole or simply the mole work on the cultivator began in october 1939
in the grand pump room hotel in bath temporary home of the naval construction department under
the direction of engineer frank spanner the challenge facing spanner was formidable while
on paper the cultivator's task was simple to cut a trench seven feet wide and five
feet deep but aside from an experimental world war one german vehicle called the a7v something
extremely unpronounceable and long in german lmg nothing like it had ever been built before and
even then the german device had no armor and operated almost entirely on the surface and could
thus only be used to dig trenches far behind the front lines for three months spanner experimented
with a variety of digging mechanisms including a chain and bucket system like that used on the
a7v and german operate coal mining machines and a large cylindrical cutter similar to modern tunnel
boring machines until he finally homed in on the most efficient configuration his final design was
driven forward on caterpillar tracks like a tank and used a land wedge-shaped plow to remove the
upper two and a half feet of soil and a horizontal rotating drum cutter to excavate the lower two and
a half feet the profile of the trench was squared off by a number of fixed blades on the machine's
sides while the soil was deposited on either side of the trench increasing the height of the walls
by about three feet spanner estimated that the power requirement was around a thousand horsepower
half of the digging and half for driving the machine forward in december 1939 the stanley
goodall presented a scale model of the spanners designed to churchill who immediately released a
million pounds in funds towards the construction of a prototype the work was contracted
out to lincoln-based excavating equipment manufacturer ruston bacharach ltd who claimed
they could produce 200 machines by march 1941. they also proposed a larger version nicknamed
the officer model that could dig a trench wide enough for tanks to drive through meanwhile a
four foot long working scale model was built by engineering firm bassett low and transported
by train to london the packing case used to transport the model resembled a child's coffin and
reportedly several onlookers respectfully bowed their heads as it was carried off the train
the model was demonstrated to churchill on december 12th easily digging its way through
a block of simulated soil made of plasticine and sawdust church was so impressed that according
to an onlooker quote his smile of pleasure almost dislodged his cigar another demonstration
followed that evening in the presence of prime minister neville chamberlain chancellor of the
exchequer sir john simon and chief of the imperial general staffs at edmond side who
later recalled at 7 pm i went over to see winston churchill at the admiralty he told me that he
wanted to show me his cultivator i found that he had invented and reduced to a model a machine
that would go through the earth at a good pace i thought that we could make a great deal of
these machines and they present the first of any possible offensive idea while the french were more
skeptical churchill eventually persuaded them to go along with the scheme and on january 22nd 1940
an official order was placed with ruston buckrus for 200 regular and 40 officer model machines
as construction of the first prototype got underway french soldiers began taking soil samples
along the secret line to determine the best places for the anticipated machines to break through
however the project immediately ran into trouble in order to provide the necessary 1000 horsepower
frank spanner had intended to use the royal air force's new state-of-the-art rolls-royce merlin
v12 engines unfortunately the raf had earmarked all merlins for use in aircraft leaving none
available for the cultivator project the next best alternative was the 12tp a lightweight 12-cylinder
diesel engine built by colchester-based firm davey paxman and co as this engine only put out
600 horsepower two would be needed to drive the cultivator requiring extensive modifications to
the design however this new configuration did have certain advantages for example one engine could
now be used to dig the trench and the other to drive the machine forward eliminating the complex
gearbox previously needed to divide the power of a single engine diesel fuel was also significantly
less flammable than the aviation grade petrol used by merlin increasing the vehicle's survivability
the prototype cultivator nicknamed nelly after the initials of the naval land equipment division
was a true behemoth measuring 77 feet long seven feet wide eight feet tall and weighing 130 tons
the machine can be broken into three sections for transport while the front excavator section could
be raised and lowered hydraulically to allow the machine to ascend and descend while digging
while designed to dig in a straight line the machine could be steered to a limited extent
using hydraulically powered flaps on its flanks an internal conveyor belt carried sole from the
lower drum cutter to the top of the machine where it was deposited on either side of the trench
a separate conveyor also deposited a variable amount of soil under the machine's tracks to
keep the whole device straight and level in april 1940 just as nelly was nearing completion a new
problem presented itself another inventor had come up with a radically different method for digging
trenches that was in many ways far superior to frank's banner's design the inventor in question
was cecil vanderpier clarke who would later become famous for inventing the magnetic limpet mine for
use in naval sabotage and for more on that please check out our previous video that time the british
fought the nazis using canoes clark's scheme which he had laid out in a top-secret report for royal
engineers envisioned an armored vehicle equipped with hydraulic rams to push explosive charges into
the soil ahead of it the charges would then be detonated blasting a crater into which the vehicle
could then be driven the scheme and the advantage of simplicity requiring far less engine power and
mechanical complexity than nelly it could also blast its way through minefields bunkers and
other obstacles without having to stop however clark's machine would need to be more heavily
armored to survive the blast of its own explosions and likely would be far slower than nelly it was
estimated it could only go about 250 yards per hour furthermore nelly had been designed to
advance stealthily under the cover of darkness and the noise of an artillery barrage whereas there
was nothing stealthy about a vehicle detonating a large explosive every few minutes nonetheless
when user clark's scheme reached the admiralty it was sufficiently impressed as to hire clark on as
assistant director of the nle with a salary of a thousand pounds however at this point work was far
too far along on the original cultivated design and clark's ideas were completely ignored causing
him to resign in frustration just two months later meanwhile the project struck another serious blow
when on may 10 1940 the germans launched their long-anticipated invasion of france in the low
countries by swinging through belgium and the seemingly impenetrable ardan forest german panzer
divisions completely bypassed the formidable maginot line and succeeded in overrunning
france in only six weeks this stunning defeat confirmed to many in the british establishment
that the military doctrines which had underpinned the cultivator scheme were now entirely obsolete
and the cultivator itself was no longer needed furthermore with all the bef's tanks and equipment
left behind on the beaches of dunkirk and the nation facing the imminent threat of
nazi invasion every available resource was needed for the upcoming defense of britain yet churchill
stubborn as ever insisted that the cultivate project carry on albeit in a much reduced form
in may 1940 shortly after becoming prime minister churchill wrote to his chief military assistant
major general hastings ismae stating the change which has come over the war affects decisively
the usefulness of cultivator number six it may play its part in various operations defensive and
defensive but it can no longer be considered the only method of breaking a fortified line
i suggest that the minister of supply should today be instructed to reduce the scheme by
one half probably in a few days it will be one quarter the spare available capacity
should be turned over to tanks churchill's reasons for continuing the cultivator project in spite of
its obvious obsolescence are debated to this day historian john turner ascribes his dogged
persistence to his initial failure to get his mole idea approved during the first world war
whatever the reason developments of the nelly prototype now officially the nle trenching
machine mark 1 carried on the machine finally being completed in april 1941. in may nelly was
transported to clumber bark nottinghamshire for testing by the 769th company royal engineers the
abandoned former estates of the duke of newcastle klumber park was not only far from prying eyes but
had soil conditions similar to those of northern france to churchill's delight the machine
performed exactly as designed easily chewing its way through the soil at the speed of 3500 feet
or around three quarters of a mile per hour but the machine was far from perfect for one thing
the conditions inside the machine were unbearable the heat and fumes nearly caused the three-man
team to pass out after just a few minutes of digging the machine also proved extremely
difficult transport requiring the royal engineers to develop special heavy-duty tracked trailers to
move the three disassembled sections meanwhile doubts mounted as to the practical utility of
the machine with observers pointing out that the lumbering cultivate would be easy prey for german
dive bombers as a result the government order was reduced from 33 to only nine machines nonetheless
the nle team pressed on and while construction began on four more cultivators nelly was moved to
lilly who in hertfordshire for testing and heavier clay soil it was then that the war
office issued new requirements that the machine should be capable of digging a short perpendicular
trench every 100 yards something nelly with its half mile turning radius simply could not do
this requirement effectively killed the project though with churchill's dogged support it limped
on until 1943 before finally being cancelled stubborn to the end churchill insisted that five
cultivators be retained in case they were needed in combat holding out hope that one day they could
be used for their original purpose of penetrating the secret line the machines were thus placed
in storage at the long-mastered engineer stores depot and warwickshire there they remained until
1945 when the secret line was finally penetrated using conventional infantry tactics by 1946 all
five cultivators had been dismantled and scrapped from beginning to end churchill's beloved mole
had been a costly and useless white elephant squandering valuable resources at a time when
britain desperately needed them yet of his role in the debacle churchill would nonchalantly admit
i am responsible but impotent however some good did come out of the project
the massive track trailer designed to carry the sections of the cultivator later became the 45-ton
tract recovery vehicle extensively used by the royal engineers to recover damaged tanks
from the battlefield the paxman 12tp diesel engine developed for the cultivator was also
used to power british landing craft with over 2 500 units being manufactured during the war
yet more than anything the strange saga of cultivator number six serves as
an important lesson for future military planners of the dangers of clinging to outdated ideas and
the fact that dogged persistence when divorced from good judgment can easily
lead one astray so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please do
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