June 1940. Britain stands alone. The army has just escaped Dunkirk, but they left everything behind. Tanks, artillery, machine guns, and critically anti-tank weapons. According to War Office records, Britain now possesses exactly 167 anti-tank guns to defend the entire country. 167 against an invasion plan backed by armored formations that had just conquered France in 6 weeks.

 Into this crisis walks a 57-year-old gunsmith named Major Harry Norththover. He has designed something that looks like a drain pipe mounted on four iron legs. Military professionals take one look and dismiss it as pathetic. But Northover does something remarkable. He bypasses the entire military establishment and writes directly to Winston Churchill.

The prime minister attends a personal demonstration in October 1940. He watches this crude device launch glass bottles filled with burning phosphorus and he orders immediate mass production. Within months, nearly 19,000 of these pathetic drain pipes will arm homeguard units across Britain. They cost under £10 each.

 They use black powder propellant, the same technology as Victorian musketss. German propaganda would later threaten harsh treatment for irregular fighters armed with such weapons. Because Britain was preparing for the kind of close ugly resistance that would make any invasion bloody. This is the north over projector. And this is why the most pathetic looking weapon in British history became a symbol of the resistance an invasion would face.

 To understand why Britain needed something as desperate as the north over projector, you need to understand what Dunkirk actually cost. Yes, 338,000 men escaped. That was the miracle. But everything else stayed behind on those French beaches. The numbers are staggering. 840 anti-tank guns abandoned, including 592 pounders, representing 60% of total anti-tank gun strength.

 880 field guns, 310 pieces of heavy artillery, approximately 700 tanks, half the entire British stock, 11,000 machine guns, 6,400 anti-tank rifles, over 76,000 tons of ammunition. After the evacuation completed, the British army possessed equipment sufficient to out just two divisions, two against a German military machine that had just conquered France in 6 weeks.

 But here is where the situation becomes truly terrifying. By late July 1940, some 1.5 million men had volunteered for the Home Guard. Originally called the local defense volunteers, these were the men who would defend Britain’s beaches, roads, and villages when the panzas came rolling ashore. Yet, according to cabinet records, by early June, with 300,000 enrolled, only 94,000 rifles had been issued.

 The War Office acknowledged in official meetings that the Home Guard was largely a broomstick army. That phrase was not metaphorical. Some units genuinely drilled with broomsticks. Others used golf clubs, knives taped to poles. By late 1940, 739,000 homeg guard members remained completely unarmed. Now consider the threat they faced.

 German tank armor and tactics were already outrunning improvised infantry anti-tank ideas. The standard British Boy’s anti-tank rifle, firing a.55 caliber round, could penetrate only 23 mm at 100 yd. It quickly became notorious for pinging off anything but the lightest armor. One sergeant described the experience of hitting a Panza with a boy’s round.

 All it had done was just about knock the paintwork off. It made a noise like a ping-pong ball. The two pounder anti-tank gun could penetrate German armor, but Britain had only 167 of them. Ammunition was so scarce that regulations forbade even a single round being used for training. The newly formed home guard received none of these precious weapons.

They went to regular army units that would form the mobile reserve if invasion came. Meanwhile, across the channel, German forces assembled barges and landing craft. On the 7th of September 1940, British intelligence issued code word Cromwell. Invasion considered imminent. Homeg guard units across the country manned their positions. Many had rifles.

 Some had shotguns. Thousands had nothing at all. They waited through the night for panzas that never came. Britain needed something that could stop tanks. They had almost nothing that could, and German invasion barges were assembling across the channel. Major Harry Robert Northover was born on the 31st of December 1882.

 He worked as a professional gunsmith with genuine expertise, evidenced by a 1917 United States patent for an improved gas cylinder for cult type machine guns. By 1940, he held the rank of major in the Home Guard and had designed what he believed could be Britain’s answer to the Panza threat. His solution was radical in its simplicity.

 Take a smooth boore steel barrel measuring 2 1/2 in in caliber, roughly 63 mm. Mount it on a cast iron four-legged tripod. Use black powder propellant ignited by percussion caps, identical to those in Victorian era musketss, fireglass bottles filled with white phosphorus. The technical specifications tell the story of deliberate primitivism.

 The barrel measured 3 ft 10 in in length. Total weight with tripod reached approximately 134 lb. Muzzle velocity achieved just 60 m/s, roughly the speed of a cricket ball. Effective range extended to only 100 to 150 yd. Iron sights were graduated from 50 to 200 yd in 25 yd increments. This was not sophisticated engineering.

 This was a weapon designed to be manufactured by small companies like the Bisley Clay Target Company using simple casting and tube work. It required only 16 parts including tripod legs and spade blades. Semi-skilled workers could build it and crucially it cost under £10 per unit roughly 160th the cost of a proper two pounder anti-tank gun.

 The ammunition was the key. The primary round was the number 76 special incendry grenade known as the SIP grenade. Each halfpint glass bottle contained white phosphorus mixed with benzene and a strip of rubber dissolved to create sticky adhesive burning. Effective at making fire, not at punching steel. When the glass shattered on impact, phosphorus spontaneously ignited on contact with air.

 The resulting fire burned at extreme temperatures and produced choking clouds of toxic fumes. Two color-coded variants existed. Redcapped grenades were for hand throwing only with a range of about 30 yards. Green capped versions featured stronger glass construction designed to survive the stresses of projectile launch. Mixing them up could be fatal.

 A red cap grenade fired from a north over would likely shatter inside the barrel, turning the weapon into a flamethrower pointed at the crew. Over 6 million number 76 grenades were manufactured by August 1941. They were dangerous to store and dangerous to handle. Phosphorus has a tendency to self-ignite if containers crack.

 Homeg guard units were warned never to store them in buildings where civilians lived. For actual armor penetration, the north over could fire the number 68 rifle grenade. This was Britain’s first shaped charge anti-tank weapon using the Monroe effect to focus explosive energy into a penetrating jet. In ideal conditions with perpendicular impact, it could pierce around 50 mm of armor.

 But shape charge performance depends heavily on impact angle. Hit a tank at anything but 90° and penetration dropped severely against moving targets at 100 yd. Achieving that perfect angle was largely luck. The weapon could also fire the number 36 Mills bomb fragmentation grenade for use against infantry and theoretically Molotov cocktails and commercial bottles.

 This versatility earned it the nickname bottle mortar among homeg guard units. Loading involved opening the brereech, inserting the grenade, closing the brereech, fitting a prepackaged propellant charge with percussion cap, pulling back the cocking handle, aiming through the graduated iron sights, and pulling the L-shaped trigger at rear.

 A lanyard firing option allowed crews to operate from cover, standing several feet away when they pulled the cord. Given the weapon’s tendency to malfunction, this was often the preferred method. Major Northover understood that submitting his design through normal military channels would take months, possibly years.

 He did not have months. German invasion could come any day. So he wrote directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill attended a personal demonstration in October 1940. What he saw convinced him. Here was something, anything that could arm the hundreds of thousands of volunteers currently drilling with broomsticks.

 He ordered immediate mass production at a scale of one per home guard platoon nationwide. This direct intervention bypassed the War Office establishment. According to historical accounts, some military professionals never accepted that it could be useful. But Churchill understood something they did not. In a crisis, something is better than nothing.

 A weapon that might work is infinitely preferable to no weapon at all. Now, before we see how this weapon would have actually performed against panzas, if you are enjoying this deep dive into British wartime improvisation, hit subscribe. It takes a second, costs nothing, and helps the channel grow. All right, let us get into what trials actually revealed.

 Here is the honest truth about the Northover projector’s combat effectiveness. It was probably useless against tanks. Weapon designer Stuart McCrae witnessed trials of SIP grenades at Farra airfield. His assessment was damning. Tank crews watching the demonstration said they would be happy to take a chance against phosphorus bottles.

 Subsequent tests on modern British tanks confirmed that Molotov and SIP grenades caused occupants no inconvenience whatsoever. The physics simply did not work. Even if a Homeguard crew managed to hit a Panzer at 100 yard, even if the glass bottle did not break inside the barrel during firing, which happened frequently, even if the phosphorus ignited properly on the tank’s surface, the flames would not penetrate armored steel.

 Crews might experience some discomfort from fumes entering through ventilation, but they would not be disabled. They would, however, know exactly where the attack came from because the black powder discharge produced a smoke cloud that took up to 1 minute to clear. The number 68 shaped charge grenade offered better penetration on paper, but effective behind armor damage required perpendicular impact, and penetration dropped severely at any angle beyond 15°.

 against moving tanks at 100 yd distance. Achieving that perfect angle was largely luck. Military historian Chris Bishop concluded that the Northover’s anti-tank abilities would have been doubtful. SP McKenzie’s academic study noted the Northover was eventually replaced by only marginally less ineffective weapons. Malcolm Atkin in his book To the Last Man provides perhaps the most honest assessment.

Weapons like the Northover were regarded by the regular army as largely ineffective, unreliable, or downright dangerous. He concludes that the Home Guard’s role was essentially sacrificial in order to buy a few hours for the field army to concentrate its meager forces. So why does any of this matter? Why would a weapon that probably could not stop tanks matter at all? Because the North Over was never really about killing panzas.

 It was about something else entirely. Morale, deterrence. the message that Britain would fight in every village at every crossroads with whatever it had. Production of the North Over reached 18,919 units by early 1943. The first 277 reached London district in June 1941 with over 8,000 distributed by August. Units documented as receiving north overs included the first glershair chelinham battalion, Sussex Home Guard, Saxundum Homeguard, and the 24th battalion Sussex Homeguard at Beexill.

Training was conducted at facilities including number one homeg guard training school at Dorking and various command weapon training schools across the country. Training manuals included tank hunting and destruction, military training manual number 42 published in December 1940, and the official handbook for the projectors 2 and 1/2 in marks 1 and two published in September 1941.

 A standard crew numbered three men, fireer, loader, and spotter, who also served as commander, combined with the blacker bombard spigot mortar, over 22,000 produced, the Smith gun smooth boore artillery piece, and millions of SIP grenades and Molotov cocktails. The Home Guard transformed from a broomstick army into something that could at least fight back.

 The other improvised weapons had their own problems. The Smith gun weighed four times as much as the North Over and earned the grim reputation that the only thing it killed was its operators because ammunition sometimes detonated in the tube. The Blacker Bombard required fixed concrete imp placements or heavy crucififor platforms and suffered from a temperamental fuse that caused rounds to bounce off targets without exploding.

 The North Over was the lightest, cheapest, and most widely distributed of Britain’s desperate improvisations. The tactical doctrine was clear. static defense at roadblocks and choke points. Unfloodled fire positions along likely tank approaches. Ambush sites where vehicles would be forced to slow or stop. Yes, the recommended engagement distance of 100 to 150 yd meant near suicidal proximity to targets.

 Yes, crews would likely die before firing a second shot, but they would fire that first shot and the next position would fire and the next. German propaganda threatened harsh treatment for irregular fighters. The Home Guard was clearly preparing for nasty close-range resistance. This added to the picture German planners could not ignore.

 Britain was arming everyone with anything. Consider the German perspective. Landing troops on British beaches would be difficult enough against the Royal Navy and RAF. But then those troops would advance inland against a civilian population armed with weapons specifically designed to set tanks on fire, spray them with burning phosphorus, and detonate shaped charges at point blank range.

 Every village could be defended. Every crossroads could be an ambush. Every hedge could conceal men ready to die throwing bottles of fire at Panzer engine decks. On the 17th of September 1940, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. The decisive factors were clear. The RAF’s victory in the Battle of Britain denied air superiority.

 The Royal Navy’s continued dominance made Channel Crossing nearly impossible. Logistical challenges that German planners never solved. The North Over was not the reason Sea Lion died, but a country arming 1.7 million volunteers with improvised weapons showed how ugly any occupation would be. The Northover projector was not a brilliant weapon.

 It was barely a functional one. Tests proved it would likely fail against panzas. Glass grenades broke in barrels. Smoke revealed positions. Range required suicidal proximity. Professional German troops would have slaughtered crews before they could reload. But it represented something that mattered more than technical specifications.

 It represented a nation that would not surrender. A country that armed shopkeepers and farmers and factory workers with 10 lb drain pipes and bottles of burning phosphorus and told them to stop the most formidable military machine in history. A people who decided that dying fighting was preferable to living conquered.

Churchill understood this when he approved production after watching Northover’s demonstration. His memo on the similar sticky bomb read simply, “Sticky bomb, make 1 million.” He told the war office that every man must have a weapon of some sort, be it only a mace or a pike. The North Over was Britain’s pike.

 Primitive, probably ineffective, but something to fight with. Summer 1940. Britain possessed 167 anti-tank guns. One gunsmith with a drainpipe design wrote to the prime minister, “Within months, 19,000 weapons armed the Home Guard. They were pathetic by any professional military standard. They would probably have failed against panzas.

 But Hitler looked across the channel at a country that would not accept defeat. A country arming civilians with improvised weapons and training them to die at roadblocks. A country that had transformed desperation into determination. He never invaded. The north over projector did not win the war. It never fired a shot in anger. When it was declared obsolete via Homeg Guard information circular number 53 in August 1944, no one mourned its passing.

The weapon was removed from service by 1945, and surviving examples eventually found their way to museums and private collections as curiosities of a desperate time. But in the summer of 1940, when invasion seemed certain and Britain had almost nothing to fight with, Major Harry Northover’s pathetic drain pipe became part of a nation’s determination to resist.

 Not because it could reliably kill tanks, because it showed Britain would fight dirty, close, and everywhere. The weapon that came next, the Piet, did not enter service until 1943, too late for the invasion crisis, but it proved what Britain could achieve when given time. The Pietshaped charge warhead penetrated 75 to 100 mm of armor.

 In Normandy, it became a serious close-range threat, especially in Bokage ambushes. It earned six Victoria Crosses. That was British engineering at its finest. The north over was British engineering at its most desperate. Not brilliant design, but brutal pragmatism. A nation that refused to wait for better weapons before it started arming its defenders.

 Sometimes the weapons