Churchill's Exploding Rat

[Gil Boyd]

"Ratatouiloe! at its finest Monsieur and highly effective. Lewes bombs were from the same ingenious stable of highly bright and motivated men with a Special Task to complete!!

[imntxs554]

A combination of a Willy MB Jeep, a rotaplane, and some creative design, the Rotabuggy was assembled by helicopter pioneer Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz Buggy by Hafner, it was an experimental aircraft that evolved from the other “Rota concepts” (the Rota Tank and the Rotachute). Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy successfully went airborne, reaching gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial, in 1943. It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944. It was also surprisingly sturdy, withstanding falls from 7 ft. without experiencing damage. Despite being an engineering success and deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased out by the introduction of the more sensible Waco Hadrian glider. A replica can be found in the Museum of Army Flying, in Stockbridge.

[Paul S.]

Regarding the film The Guns of Naverone, I believe that the idea of leaving the rat bomb and other explosives on the guns and carriage, in obvious positions that were easy to spot, was in order to give the Germans "something to find". The actual explosive device that did the damage was hidden on the elevator rails which led down to the magazines for the shells and charges if separate to the shells.

Right you are. The idea is to leave several obvious (incompetent-looking) attempts so that the enemy, the Germans in this case, are lulled into believing they are dealing with idiots and don't look too closely for the real thing. It's basic "spy school" tradecraft stuff.

[TDH]

Regarding the film The Guns of Naverone, I believe that the idea of leaving the rat bomb and other explosives on the guns and carriage, in obvious positions that were easy to spot, was in order to give the Germans "something to find". The actual explosive device that did the damage was hidden on the elevator rails which led down to the magazines for the shells and charges if separate to the shells.

We used the same philosophy when I was building structural steel. When the inspector came in to go over the beams and columns we always left one or two small flaws that didn't matter they could find. That seemed to make them happy that we weren't polished to perfection. I asked about it one day when my foreman (Guadalcanal vet/ first wave) told me not to polish that small flaw and why. It worked.