'Nellie': The History of Churchill's Lincoln-Built Trenching Machine (review)

Winston Churchill's eager pursuit of novel weapons is recalled in this absorbing account of a literally ground-breaking example. John Turner relates the origins, brief life and lingering death of gigantic semitracked trench-diggers which Churchill himself conceived in 1939 for offensive use. His Wellsian approach to battlefield innovations was evident in the First World War. Turner makes the connection, citing Churchill's sponsorship whilst First Lord of the Admiralty of the programme which led to the world's first tanks in 1916.

There are remarkable parallels. Churchill was again First Lord in 1939. On both occasions he ordered his Director of Naval Construction to produce fleets of super-machines to cross broken fireswept ground against an entrenched enemy. In February 1915 he had sanctioned the design of a huge—unbuildable—armoured fighting vehicle for 80-100 assault troops. These "Landships" were required to straddle enemy trenches as sitting ducks, enfilade them, then release the men to secure them. (Churchill later revealed that his greatest concern had been to conceal the project from the War Office, which would have demanded its cancellation long before his team evolved the tank.)

In 1939 Churchill viewed the Siegfried Line with deepening concern, fearing the consequences of "hurling the remaining manhood of France against this wall of fire and concrete." He won Treasury approval for the Admiralty to build 240 trenching machines. They were to advance at night from the Maginot Line, burying themselves to the roof as each cut a broad ditch up to Germany's West Wall. The sunken lanes would become rivers of tanks and troops in a dawn assault, the abandoned diggers adapting as exit ramps. Turner reminds us that Churchill had promoted similar combat diggers in 1916.

The first tank and the pilot trench-digger were built in Turner's home town of Lincoln. He has drawn on the records of Ruston-Bucyrus, the digger's constructors, and interviewed many personnel, including Frank Spanner, its designer. When the Ministry of Supply took it over in 1940 the machine was christened "Nellie" after N.L.E., the specially formed Department of Naval Land Equipments. Two types of plough-cum-excavator were built. The first cut a 7-foot 6-inch-wide trench for infantry use, whilst an even bigger 160-ton version nearly 100 feet long carved a 10-foot-wide trench for vehicles. Both could excavate many hundreds of tons of earth per hour, but were almost unsteerable and needed fairly light soils.

As an engineering solution to a set problem Spanner's machines were an outstanding achievement, but the panzer blitzkrieg across France heralded a war of mobility and the digger's decline. Churchill, now Prime Minister, believed it still had uses and ordered the NLE team to "press on." By the fall of 1940 priorities had slipped and only thirty-three were under construction.

The War Office file on the "NLE Tractor" (National Archives, London, WO32/9938) was released just too late for Turner's appraisal. It adds little to his very full account, but records that in September 1940 Churchill was urged by the Minister of Supply to brief the General Staff on "Nellie." The Minister doubtless expected them to demand its cancellation and the design team's transfer to tank work. Churchill ignored the Staff pending a trenching demonstration in August 1941. General McReady, Assistant Chief of Staff, ruled the machine unacceptable unless its above-ground turning circle of one mile was greatly reduced, and until it could defilade its trench every hundred yards. The Army dropped the project in May 1943. Sadly, the last example was scrapped in the 1950s. Turner wryly concludes that too many people just wanted to...