In 1939, with the start of World War Two, Churchill again advanced the idea that a fleet of his “moles”, as he called them would be able to advance from their base digging a wide trench as they went to allow the infantry to advance behind them. The noise that they would make was extremely loud but it was envisaged that a simultaneous heavy artillery barrage would drown the machinery noise and allow the ”moles” to advance and surprise the enemy lines. Churchill summoned the Director of Construction with the orders to put the idea into reality. Like the tank in the First World War such a machine had never been constructed or even designed and in 1939 the Naval engineers went to Lincoln to work with engineers from Ruston Bucyrus who were the principal manufacturers of earth moving machinery, manufacturing various sizes of excavators. They produced a working model some 4ft long and if given the go ahead said they could produce some 200 of the machines by March 1941. Churchill showed the model, code named “White Rabbit No 6 “, to Chief of the General Staff General Sir Edmund Ironside and other military chiefs who thought it had merit and offered “endless possibilities. The manufacturer of a prototype was commissioned and at this stage the responsibility was transferred from the navy to the Ministry of Supply which created a special branch called the Department of Naval Land Equipment. Why a seafaring service should have its name in the title seems a mystery. The prototype was code named “NLE Tractors” which soon came to be known as “Nellie”. Gargantuan “Nellie” was truly gargantuan and in action resembled what one supposes was the naval connection when it was described as a ship ploughing through dirt instead of water. To design, produce and test a machine of such immense proportions took nearly two years. In great secrecy the test of the prototype was held in a remote corner of Clumber Park on July 25th, 1941, and again in August for the Army General Staff. In November 6th, 1941. Churchill travelled from London by train and car but had to walk the last few hundred yards through boggy ground to the site of the test. Churchill had refused the Wellington boots set aside for him and arrived, with mud caked shoes and dirt on his trousers, a cigar clamped firmly in his mouth and in a thoroughly irritable mood, for his first glimpse of the great “mole” machine upon which he had pinned so much hope. “Nellie” was 77' long, 6' 6" wide, 8' high and made in two sections. The main section, driven on caterpillar tracks, looked like a greatly elongated tank and weighed 100 tons. The front section, weighing another 30 tons, was capable of digging a trench 5' deep and 7' 6" wide. It comprised a plough which cut the top 2' 6" of the trench, and 'pick and shovel' cutting cylinders which excavated the bottom 2' 6". Conveyors carried the spoil to the top of each side of the trench to create 3' parapets. Nellie could move at just over half a mile an hour, removing some 8,000 tons of spoil in the process. The machine performed adequately and, as was his habit, Churchill inspected everything in sight but was unusually quiet during the demonstration. Like a giant scythe, Nellie dug her enormous trench. Afterwards, he walked along the inside of the trench while above him someone carried a ladder for him to climb up. Ignoring the ladder, Churchill walked to the end of the trench, climbed out and, saying little, went on his way. Although the test showed that such a machine would work, in reality it became almost a “Star Wars” fantasy. One of the problems it faced was that, as it passed the pieces it had trenched, the walls were susceptible to collapse and this would hinder the troops following it. Also the machine itself filled with fumes and Eric Browne, who had ridden inside one during the trials described the heat, noise and fumes as so intense they could well overcome the crew if they were inside for any great length of time. Its sheer weight also made it impossible to ford rivers, circumnavigate obstacles or even climb hills. Project cancelled In May 1943, the War Office officially cancelled the project, thus ending the strange saga of Nellie. “I am responsible but impenitent,” Winston Churchill later declared. Many of the Clumber Park detachment of Royal Engineers, including Bill Saunders, went on to serve in Burma and Eric Browne returned to Ruston Bucyrus who were busily building hundreds of tanks (some 60% of their war time production). As a young boy in Lincoln I used to witness with other boys, what to us was the excitement of seeing these monsters of war being loaded on to flat railway trucks outside their factory and off to the war effort. Despite the presence of factories engaged in the war effort in both of those wars, Lincoln received very little in the way of bombing. Perhaps the landmark Lincoln Cathedral was too good a landmark and the location within the county of so many RAF airfields #army #didyouknow ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0JrSzt0XEg