I wrote recently about trains or carriages on railways full of explosives sent towards each other by both sides (the British and the Boers) at the Siege of Mafeking in South Africa in 1899/1901, and I’ve just uncovered another from the following year.
In 1902 a small British Garrison at Okiep in the Northern Cape region was surrounded by Boer forces. On 1 May 1902, the Boer commandos launched a VBIED attack on Okiep, using the commandeered locomotive “Pioneer” of Concordia’s Namaqua United Copper Company to propel a an IED in the form of a wagon-load of dynamite into the besieged town.
Two tons of dynamite were loaded onto carriages behind the “Pioneer”. The train driver was Field Cornet Jan van Brummelen, and he was to be accompanied by two “Irish explosive experts”. The men were to leap off the train before it arrived at the target. I’m pretty certain the device would be initiated by a timed burning fuze.
What followed is a little uncertain, as is often the case. Some reports suggest the protective defences at Okiep consisted of a barbed wire fence, which was erected across the railway line at Braakpits Junction, just north of the town. The points at the junction were rigged in some way to the fence, with the result that when the dynamite laden wagon breached the fence, it derailed at the points and spilled its load of dynamite on the ground, where it “burned out harmlessly without exploding”. Other reports suggest that the local station master, Albert Gyngell, heroically turned the points to direct the train away from the town centre, and it subsequently derailed. Here’s a pic of the train after the dynamite had burned away:
So, yet another in the long list of vehicle-borne IEDs that occurred (or in this case attempted) in history. The “remote delivery” mechanism for this vehicle-borne IED failed but the intent was clear.
I am uncovering many more IED attacks in this conflict than I had realised (thousands!) and will be blogging more about the comprehensive attacks the Boers made on the strategically crucial railways over a couple of years. There’s a fascinating story to be told – and it also involves the British Royal Engineers undertaken some remarkable bridging and other “counter-terrorist” or “counter-insurgent” responses to this comprehensive IED campaign against the key transport system in Such Africa. In some ways its presages there Russian sabotage campaign against the Nazi railway system in WW2 and the Iraqi insurgent campaign against US and UK road traffic in the early part of this century. Same techniques…