The construction of the French Maginot and German Siegfried Lines during the inter-war years led to a false assumption that any future conflict would again involve trench warfare. Reminded of the appalling loss of life in the trenches of 1914-18, Churchill wanted to find a way of allowing British troops and supplies to advance in relative safety and quickly break through the German front line. He came up with the idea of machines which would dig large trenches through No Man's Land under cover of darkness and the noise of an artillery barrage. Troops and tanks would follow in these trenches, coming to the surface at or behind the German front line. The mechanical 'mole' designated NLE, standing for Naval Land Equipment, came to be known as 'Nellie' or in Paxman's Drawing Office as 'No man's Land Excavator' - a fitting description. It was also known as the Cultivator 6 or White Rabbit 6 to disguise its real military purpose. The original planned production rate was 20 machines (requiring 40 engines) per week. In her final form “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". The spoil was carried away by conveyors to the top of each side of the trench to create 3' parapets. “Nellie” could move at just over .50 mph, removing some 8,000 tons of spoil in the process. When she reached the German’s front line she would stop and act as a ramp for following tracked vehicles to climb up out of the trench onto open ground. Originally she was to be powered by a single 1,000 hp marine version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Apart from the fire risks inherent in a petrol engine, it was soon pointed out this engine could only be expected to produce 800 hp under continuous load, less than was required for the task. Shortly after, all Merlin engines were urgently needed by the RAF and Sir Harry Ricardo's advice was sought on a suitable alternative. He recommended using two Paxman-Ricardo engines of the type already in service with the Royal Navy and of a proven design. The decision was made to use two 600 hp Paxman 12TPs, necessitating a complete redesign of Nellie. One engine was to drive the cutter and conveyors at the front and the other used to propel the machine itself. But after Dunkirk and the fall of France, the Nellie project collapsed. Large scale production of TPs for Nellie was abandoned and the engine capacity was turned over to the Admiralty. (Field trials of the pilot machine commenced in June 1941 and were not completed until about January 1942.) The entire project was cancelled in 1943. Only five of the small versions of Nellie were actually completed. Four were scrapped at the end of the war and the fifth, believed to have been the pilot machine, was scrapped in the early 1950s

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