August 1940. As invasion panic gripped Britain, a demonstration was arranged for Winston Churchill. The weapon on display looked like a medieval siege engine crossed with a drain pipe. It weighed over 360 lb. It had no barrel. Instead, a steel rod protruded upward from a heavy base, and a massive bomb nearly the size of a football sat waiting to be loaded over it.

 Everyone present knew Britain had a problem. After Dunkirk, the entire country possessed just 167 anti-tank guns. German panzas could roll across the beaches with almost nothing to stop them. And this, this primitive looking catapult was supposed to be the answer. The military establishment had rejected it three times.

 The ordinance board wanted nothing to do with it, but Churchill circle pushed it through. The prime minister overruled the objections and ordered it into immediate mass production. Within 2 years, over 22,000 of these weapons would be manufactured and imp placed across Britain. The question was whether any of them could actually destroy a German tank.

 The answer is more complicated than anyone expected. And the real story of the Blacka Bombard is not about what it could do to tanks. It is about what it accidentally created. Two weapons that genuinely changed the war. To understand why Britain needed something as desperate as the Black Bombard, you have to understand the scale of the disaster at Dunkirk.

 Between May 26th and June 4th, 1940, the British Expeditionary Force evacuated from France. They saved the men. They lost almost everything else. 840 anti-tank guns were abandoned on the beaches and in the fields of France. Artillery pieces, vehicles, ammunition stocks, all left behind as the Vermack closed in. When the final counts came in, Britain retained just 167 anti-tank guns to defend the entire country. 167.

 Germany had thousands of tanks. The maths did not work. The situation on the ground was even worse than the numbers suggested. Those surviving guns were scattered across the country. Many without adequate ammunition supplies. Trained crews had been killed or captured. Replacement weapons were months away from factory floors.

 If the Germans launched Operation Sea Lion in the autumn of 1940, British infantry would face Panza divisions with almost nothing capable of stopping them. The boy’s anti-tank rifle, the standard infantry weapon against armor, could penetrate roughly 20 mm of steel, but only at dangerously short range. German tanks in 1940 typically carried 30 to 50 mm of frontal armor, and that protection was increasing with every new variant.

 By the time later, marks of the Panza 3 and 4 entered service, frontal armor had thickened to 60 or even 80 mm. The boys was already struggling, and the gap was only getting worse. British infantry had almost nothing that could reliably stop a determined panzer assault. This was not a theoretical problem.

 In the summer of 1940, German invasion appeared imminent. Barges were gathering in French and Belgian ports. Luftvafa bombers were striking British airfields daily. The Home Guard, nearly 1 and a half million strong, stood ready to defend crossroads and beaches with whatever they could find. Many had no weapons at all.

 Those who did often carried sporting shotguns, obsolete rifles from the previous war, or improvised pikes fashioned from farm equipment. Against panzas, they might as well have been throwing rocks. The British military needed an anti-tank weapon that could be manufactured quickly, cheaply, and in enormous quantities.

 It needed to work without precision engineering because precision machine tools were already committed to aircraft production. It needed to be simple enough for hastily trained civilians to operate and it needed to be ready immediately, not in 6 months or a year. Enter Latutenant Colonel Laam Valentine Stewart Blacker. Blacker was not your typical weapons designer.

 Born in 1887, he served in the Indian Army, saw combat in Afghanistan and Turkstan and Russia. Earned his pilot license in 1911 when aviation was barely a decade old and served as chief observer on the first flight over Mount Everest in 1933. After retiring as a major in 1932, he did something unusual.

 He privately funded his own weapons research, spending his own money to develop concepts the military had rejected. His concept was the spigot mortar. Unlike conventional mortars where a projectile drops into a tube and fires out the open end, Blacker inverted the entire arrangement. A fixed steel rod, the spigot, protruded upward from the base.

The bomb with a hollow tail containing propellant slid down over this rod until it rested on a firing mechanism. When triggered, a firing pin running through the length of the spigot struck a primer inside the bomb, igniting 270 grains of cordite and blasting the projectile into the air.

 The advantage was manufacturing simplicity. Conventional artillery required precision machined barrels, the most expensive and time-conuming component of any gun. A barrel must be bored to exact tolerances, rifled with absolute precision, and heat treated to withstand repeated firing. The spigot design eliminated this entirely. The rod was simple steel, easy to manufacture in any machine shop.

 The bombs could theoretically be any diameter, limited only by the propellant charge. Production could be scaled rapidly using basic industrial equipment that was not already committed to aircraft or tank manufacturer. The military establishment hated it. The ordinance board rejected the spigot mortar concept in 1910 when it was first proposed by another inventor.

 They rejected Black’s patent application in 1930. They rejected it again in 1939 when Major Milis Jeffus submitted it through military intelligence research. A senior ordinance board member reportedly declared that even if God Almighty himself sponsored the spigot mortar, it would still be turned down by the ordinance board.

 The rejection was not entirely unreasonable. Spigot mortars had genuine drawbacks. Without rifling, accuracy depended entirely on the quality of the mounting and the consistency of the propellant charge. The projectile followed a high arcing trajectory that made engaging moving targets extremely difficult and the entire concept seemed to professional artillery officers fundamentally amateur-ish.

 Then came Dunkerk and suddenly unconventional solutions looked a lot more attractive. Blacker was introduced to military intelligence research, later designated MD1 and nicknamed Churchill’s Toy Shop. This was a secret weapons development unit operating outside normal military channels answerable directly to the prime minister.

 They developed sabotage devices, booby traps, and irregular weapons that the Orthodox military establishment would never approve. Major Jeffris, head of the unit, saw potential in the spigot design and sent Black to Coat’s castle to develop a working prototype. On August 18th, 1940, Churchill personally attended a demonstration.

 The director of artillery objected. Government officials objected. Churchill overruled them all. As prime minister, Minister of Defense, and First Lord of the Treasury, he controlled both military channels and Treasury funding. The weapon that had been rejected for 30 years went into immediate mass production. The 29 mm designation confuses people because it refers not to the projectile size, but to the diameter of the steel spigot rod.

 The actual bomb measured 6 in 152 mm across. This was a substantial weapon system. The launcher alone weighed 112 lb with the crucifform mounting required for stable operation. Total weight reached 360 to 407 lb. Moving it required 5 to six men carrying the launcher, the mount, ammunition, and tools.

 The anti-tank bomb weighed 19 12 lb and contained 8 and 3/4 lb of Nobel’s number 808 explosive in a hollow charge configuration. Maximum range was 450 y. But here is where the problems began. Effective range was just 75 to 100 yd and muzzle velocity was only 245 ft pers, roughly 75 m/s. For comparison, the boy’s anti-tank rifle achieved 2,450 to 2,900 ft pers.

 A professional fast bowler in cricket delivers the ball at around 90 mph, approximately 130 ft pers. The blacker bombard’s projectile was barely twice that speed. This created serious problems for practical use. Shaped charge warheads do not actually require high velocity to work. The armor-piercing jet forms from the explosive detonation and line of geometry, not impact speed.

 The real issues were different. The bombard’s fusing was unreliable. The bomb’s impact angle and standoff distance were inconsistent when lobbed in a high arc onto a moving target, and the shaped charge design itself was early generation, nowhere near as refined as later warheads. According to weapons historian Ian Hog, the Blacker Bombard’s anti-tank bomb could inflict significant damage on a tank, but was unlikely to actually pierce the vehicle’s armor.

Now, before we get into what this meant for the men who had to use it, if you’re finding this deep dive into British engineering interesting, consider subscribing. It takes a second, costs nothing, and helps the channel grow. Right back to the bombard. Later in the war, other armies solved the infantry anti-tank problem more elegantly.

 The Germans had the Panzer Foust, a disposable one-man weapon weighing under 7 kg that achieved 200 mm of armor penetration at 60 m. A single soldier could carry three of them and engage tanks alone. The Americans had the M1 bazooka at 6 kg, delivering 89 to 102 mm of penetration with a twoman crew. But in 1940, Britain did not have these options.

 What they had was the Blacker Bombard, weighing over 180 kg with tools, requiring five men plus a fixed concrete imp placement, and offering no reliable ability to pierce tank armor. Production proceeded anyway. By September 1941, the first allocation of 1,430 weapons went to Southern Command. Orders escalated to 16,000, then 28,000. By September 1942, homeg guard inventory peaked at 17,954 bombards.

 Ammunition production reached approximately 1.4 million anti-tank rounds and 729,000 anti-personnel rounds. Allocation scales reveal the intended deployment density, 24 weapons per anti-tank regiment, 12 per aer drrome defense unit, eight per brigade, two per home guard company. Royal engineers pre-cast concrete pedestals and imp placed them at strategic locations across southern England.

 Thousands of these fixed positions were installed along predicted invasion routes. Each mortar was allocated four mounting positions for alternative firing locations. Today, a few hundred of these concrete bases survive. The Defense of Britain project documented 351 in the late 1990s. You can still find them beside country roads and canal bridges, silent monuments to an invasion that never came.

 But contemporary users knew something was wrong. Lieutenant Colonel Herbert of the Third Battalion, Wiltshire Home Guard, wrote in November 1941 that the weapon was apparently only for use against moving targets up to 75 to 100 yd. He described this as charming for the Home Guard, who have to load it from the front in full view of the enemy 100 yard away.

 He declared that 50 of these weapons were being issued to his battalion, but he had no possible use for them. They would merely add to the dumps of scrap iron already lying about in Wiltshire villages. HQ Salsbury Plane District formally reported the weapon as highly unpopular. Some units attempted to trade their bombards for Thompson submachine guns, preferring close quarters firepower over a dubious anti-tank capability.

 RAF personnel were explicitly forbidden from handling it, a restriction suggesting lack of confidence at command level. By November 1941, barely weeks after mass distribution began, official concerns emerged about suitability. Issues ceased in southern command by July 1942, giving the weapon roughly 8 months of active deployment priority.

 The Blacker Bombard saw little meaningful combat use as an anti-tank weapon. It deployed in limited numbers during the Western Desert campaign, but exclusively in an anti-personnel role. Its weight made it impractical for mobile warfare. Confirmed tank kills are elusive at best. The weapon never fired a shot in the home guard role for which it was designed because the German invasion never came.

 Testing at Bisley in April 1941 led GHQ home forces to conclude the weapon fully justified its adoption. Hit probability reached 50 to 60% at 100 yards under optimal conditions. But hitting a tank and destroying one are entirely different propositions. The insensitive fuses meant rounds sometimes passed through unarmored targets without detonating.

 When bombs did explode, fragments were thrown back toward the crew position. One verified training fatality occurred. Sergeant Arthur Hanland of the Tukesbury Home Guard was killed on November 19th, 1942 during indoor practice at Healings Mill. Thomas Room in an Imperial War Museum oral history described the bombard as a fearful homemade weapon with frequent misfires.

 The comedic dad’s army image misrepresents both the men and their situation. The average home guard age was approximately 35 years, not elderly pensioners fumbling with unfamiliar equipment. 40% had served in the First World War. These were experienced soldiers facing genuine invasion threat with inadequate equipment. Historian SP McKenzie argues the bombard functioned primarily as a public relations success, demonstrating government commitment while providing visible anti-tank capability to otherwise unarmed units.

But here is where the story turns. The Blacker Bombard failed as an anti-tank weapon. Its legacy succeeded beyond anything its creators imagined. After creating the bombard, Blacker developed what he called the baby bombard, a portable version for infantry use. It failed trials in June 1941 due to a flimsy casing and unreliable spigot.

When Blacker was posted to other duties, Major Milis Jeffris took the prototype apart on the floor of his MD1 office and rebuilt it from scratch. Jeffris combined the rebuilt spigot mechanism with improved shaped charge technology to create the Jeffris shoulder gun. It entered production in August 1942 as the Pat, the Projector Infantry Anti-tank.

Weighing just 15 kg versus the Bombard’s 50 plus, the Piet achieved 75 to 100 mm of armor penetration, enough to defeat Panza 3 and Panza 4 side armor at combat ranges. The weapon was awkward to requiring soldiers to brace it with their feet and haul back a powerful spring with their entire body weight. But it worked.

 At Arnham, at Normandy, in the hedge and urban ruins of the European campaign, British infantry finally had something that could kill tanks. Six Victoria crosses were awarded for actions involving the Pat. Major Robert Henry Kaine earned his at Arnham, single-handedly destroying or disabling six German tanks and self-propelled guns over nine days of fighting.

 Production reached 115,000 units. It became the most effective manportable anti-tank weapon in British service throughout the war. The Spigot principle also transferred to naval warfare. The hedgehog anti-ubmarine weapon fired 24 spigot launched projectiles ahead of attacking ships in a spreading pattern. Unlike depth charges, which detonated at preset depths and gave submarines time to escape during the approach, hedgehog bombs only exploded on direct contact with the target hull.

 This meant attacking ships could maintain sonar contact throughout the engagement, adjusting their approach based on the submarine’s evasive maneuvers. Its effectiveness was dramatic. Postwar analysis suggested hedgehog attacks achieved kill rates roughly 10 times better than conventional depth charge runs.

 USS England demonstrated the systems potential by sinking six Japanese submarines in just 12 days. The Battle of the Atlantic, which Churchill called the only thing that ever really frightened him during the war, turned in part on this technology. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Blacker received £75,000 from the Royal Commission on awards to inventors, equivalent to approximately 1 million pounds today for his contributions to the Bombard, Pat, Hedgehog, and Patard spigot mortar mounted on Churchill of VRE tanks used on D-Day. Could the Blacker Bombard stop

a German tank? Sometimes it might  one. A direct hit could damage tracks, destroy road wheels, smash periscopes and vision blocks. It could wound crews through concussion. A lucky shot might achieve a mobility kill, but reliably destroy a Panza 3 or four. That was the problem. The shaped charge simply was not up to the task.

 The men assigned to use it sensed this. Their commanders knew it. The weapons they traded bombards to avoid using tell you everything about what the soldiers themselves thought. Yet, the unconventional thinking that produced this flawed weapon enabled genuine battlefield successes. The Piet gave British infantry their most effective anti-tank capability of the war.

 The Hedgehog helped win the Battle of the Atlantic. Both traced directly to Stuart Black’s spigot principle and MD1’s willingness to pursue ideas the establishment rejected. A few hundred concrete pedestals still stand across Britain. They mark positions where homeg guard soldiers, average age 35, 40% veterans of the trenches, waited with a weapon they knew was inadequate to fight tanks they hoped would never come.

 The invasion never materialized. The bombards were never fired in anger on British soil. They were withdrawn and disposed of in large numbers after the home guards stood down in December 1944. But the technology born from desperation lived on. In the hands of infantry storming Normandy beaches on the decks of destroyers hunting submarines in the Atlantic, the primitive catapult that could not kill tanks helped create the weapons that could and did.

 That is British engineering under pressure. Not every idea works, but sometimes the failures point the