I have built an exceptional trove of IED attacks on railways, which I’ll blog further about in coming days and weeks. These include:
1. A fascinating and unsolved IED attack on a railway line near Watford, in 1880, using an unusual booby trap switch.
2. A further campaign against the Ottoman train system in Salonika in the early 1900s. So the Ottoman train system was subject to IED attacks in Salonika (now Greece) in the 1900s, in Arabia in WW1 (Lawrence etc) and in the Dardanelles campaign, WW1 (from submarines).
3. Attacks on the railway system in the Arab revolt in Palestine, pre WW2. Of interest the British forces in Palestine applied an unusual,and in today’s terms, immoral technique for preventing booby trapped rail IEDs -see the photo below, which shows an improvised armoured rail car behind two Arab hostages.
Also from Palestine, but this immediately post WW2, and prior to the establishment of Israel. the railway lines were attacked extensively by the Irgun/Stern gang. These groups posed a significant IED problem for the British Forces, which I’ll write about in coming days – a largely forgotten story, with some challenging EOD situations and challenging IEDs. This device below uses a bell push which is depressed by a bracket fastened to a sleeper. I found this image in an official British Royal Engineer publication from 1946 describing Irgun devices. Note that the device contained a hidden anti-handling switch in addition to the bell push. (Details of that not shown, for security reasons).
