In a previous blog I detailed the French C-IED facility that existed at the Municipal Laboratory in Port de Vincennes, Paris. This facility started around 1880, and my earlier post detailed its operations in 1911.
A sister facility existed in the French suburb of Villejuif in 1938. At that time there was a terrorist campaign of bombings by an anti-communist fascist group called the “Cagoulards”, some of them “false flag” attempts to blame communist groups. The French authorities mounted a series of security operations. In 1938 large quantities of improvised grenades were recovered in one such operation. As was the normal drill these were recovered to a laboratory for examination, some 3000 in all (some sources say 5000). The large quantity resulted in the need to move them to a larger storage facility in Versailles The French military were tasked to assist the police in the loading of these grenades onto appropriate transport (two military trucks) at the Pyrotechnical Laboratory in Villejuif. For reasons not understood, (but probably caused by someone dropping one of the delicate improvised grenades into a box of others) there was a large explosion and 14 people were killed including the M. Schmitz the head of the explosives investigations unit at the laboratory. Three of the five explosive laboratory buildings were destroyed.
Here’s a video of the aftermath.