Standing Well Back
19th Century

The Felix Orsini Bomb

The Orsini bomb was a remarkable terrorist IED in the form of a hand grenade used in 1858 by Italian Felix Orsini in an assassination attempt on the French Emperor. The bomb or IED was originally designed by a Hungarian artillery officer.

 

The IED casing was made by English gun maker Joseph Taylor In Birmingham and tested in Sheffield and Devon. Taylor claimed he thought the the device a genuine piece of ordnance. The grenades were then smuggled into France as “gas machinery” components.

What is important in terms of IED design and explosive history is that the entire fill of the device was primary explosive, mercury fulminate.  The protuberances mounted crushable percussion caps, as used on small arms of the time.

In one of those peculiar coincidences of history, Orsini decided to attack the target as he went to the Opera. Readers of this blog will know the story of a previous IED attack on the “original” Napoleon in 1800, while he too was on his way to the opera, some 58 years earlier.

Three of the Orsini bombs were thrown, killing 8 people and wounding 142 (including Orsini himself).  But the Emperor Napoleon and his wife were both unhurt.  Here’s a description of the plan from a participant:

 

 

Here’s another odd thing – an Orsini grenade was dug up in a field in Arkansas in the 1950s  – discussed here, which includes a beautiful photo of one of the devices. I know a lot of improvised grenades were used in the American Civil War – perhaps Orsini’s designs were copied?

If you think that improvised grenades have advanced much, technologically, in the 150 years since Orsini, then I suggest you take a look at this from CJ Chivers excellent blog, showing some Syrian improvised grenades.

 

Update on Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 8:08PM by Roger Davies

There’s an interesting follow up to Orsini’s colleague, De Rudio. (De Rudio is quoted directly in the report above)  He was sentenced to jail, not execution. He then escaped, fled to Italy and thence to the US. Eventually he joined the US Army, fought in the Civil War, and then joined the 7th Cavalry under Custer. He fought and survived the battle of Little Big Horn,died in 1910 and is buried in the Praesidio in San Francisco. I kid you not.  Perhaps the Orsini grenade found in an Arkansas field in 1953 fell out of his pocket?  ; -)

Update on Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 8:19PM by Roger Davies

The William Tell Connection. In the assassination attempt outlined above, the target Emperor Napoleon III was en route to the opera with his wife, to see a performance of Rossini’s “William Tell”.

In Barcelona in 1893, some 35 years later, an anarchist called Santiago Salvador threw two “Orsini bombs” into the audience at the Liceu theater, killing 22 and wounding 30.  He threw the grenades during the second act of an Opera – and the name of the Opera was — Rossini’s “William Tell”.

19th Century

The Russian Jacobi Fuze – 1854

I’ve written before about the “Jacobi” fuze, used in Russian sea mines and early land mines in the Crimean War in the 1854s. Although called a “Jacobi” fuze, they were I think actually designed by Immanuel Nobel (father of Alfred Nobel).   I’ve found some clearer diagrams of the sea mine and the fusing mechanism.

1760-1770

Explosion kills 3000 people, and another 4000

Around about 1751, Benjamin Franklin became the first person to initiate explosives with electricity.  Franklin, as usual, was well ahead of other scientists around the world.  While one aspect of this research leads us to modern electrical initiation of explosives and munitions another leads us towards the hazards of lightning when associated with stored munitions, and Franklin became expert at lightning conductors for munition stores.

For the past few years I’ve been mentally filing interesting accidental explosions from history and I’m now being encouraged to gather my notes together, and indeed relay some of the intriguing aspects to these stories. Shortly you’ll see a new page on this blog dedicated to such events.

Here’s a great example:

In August 1769 lightning struck the tower of the Church of San Nazaro on Brescia, Italy.  In the vaults of the church over 200,000 pounds of explosive was stored. The resulting explosion killed 3000 people and destroyed a large part of the city.

For many centuries gunpowder was stored in churches – there seems to have been a belief that the church bells prevented lightning. Unfortunately I guess the opposite is true – the tall steeples and towers on a church actually encourage lightning strikes.  During thunder storms teams of men rang the bells in church towers in efforts to prevent thunderstorms.  During the period 1753 to 1786 lightning killed 103 French bell ringers. A triumph of belief over evidence surely.

Interestingly Franklin was extremely active in advising European governments after the Brescia event on the principles of lightning protection for munitions stores. At one stage there was a dispute over the best shaped lightning rods , with Franklin a proponent of sharp pointed rods on top of buildings and an Englishman, Benjamin Wilson urging the use of ball shaped terminals below the roof line. The argument became political, and George III decided he didn’t want American advice…. And Franklin’s conductors were replaced on several British munitions stores.  One of them in Sumatra subsequently disappeared with a bang during a  thunderstorm.

As late as 1856 gunpowder stored in a church in Rhodes was hit by lightning and it exploded killing , allegedly, 4000 people.

19th Century

US Technical Intelligence on IEDs – 1856

This history of looking at IEDs and IED incidents for technical intelligence is interesting and goes back quite a way – certainly as far as the late 1500’s when Elizabethan spy master Francis Walsingham engaged Giambelli, the IED maker who made the Hellburner hoop – (Walsingham calls him “Jenibell” but there is no doubting it is the same person)

Stories of the British  WTI investigations of Russian sea mine IEDs  are here, and I have a stack of stuff on Colonel Majendie’s quite excellent WIT reports from the 1880s to discuss in future blogs.  For now though, here’s a very early US WIT report from 1860, by Major Richard Delafield. He is reporting on a Russian IED encountered by the British four years earlier in 1856.

As the British and French fought the Russians in Crimea, there was significant interest in the US military about how warfare was developing given the technological advances in weapons and tactics used by both sides in the Crimea.  In 1855 Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, created a team called “The Military Commission to the Theater of War in Europe”.  The team consisted of three officers – Major Richard Delafield, (engineering), Major Alfred Mordecai (ordnance) and Captain George B McClellan of later civil war fame.  McClellan resigned in 1857 and the report was published in 1860. It is wonderfully detailed and I’d recommend it to any students of military history – it covers just about all aspects of European military developments, from defensive positions, artillery to mobile automated bakeries aboard ship, ambulance design, hospital design and French military cooking techniques.

In the Crimean War the Russians protected their elaborately engineered defences with  “fougasse” explosive charges – nothing new there, because as a tactic this is as old as gunpowder itself.  Until the Crimea these fougasses had to be initiated by an observer, i.e. command detonated by burning fuze or the newly invented concept of electrical initiation.  However the Russians had a new technique to deploy. Immanuel Nobel (father of Alfred Nobel) had been engaged by a Russian military engineer,  Professor Jacobi  to develop submarine charges and a contact fuzing system. These “Jacobi” fuzes consisted of a pencil sized glass tube filled with sulphuric acid fastened over a chemical mix.  Some reference history books say the chemical mix was potassium and sugar but I think that’s probably a misunderstanding – I would suspect the mix was actually either potassium permanganate and sugar or potassium chlorate and sugar, as in Delafield’s report below.  This explodes initiating a gunpowder charge sealed in a zinc box.  One might have expected Mordecai to take an interest in the IEDs but it was Delafield who took particular interest and heartily recommended the use of such things by the US military. Here is an extract from Delafield’s “WIT” report from the device recovered to the British “CEXC:”:

They consisted of a box of powder eight inches cube (a), contained within another box, leaving a space of two inches between the, filled with pitch, rendering the inner box secure from wet and moisture, when buried under ground. The top of the exterior box was placed about eight inches below the surface, and upon it rested a piece of board of six inches wide, twelve inches long and one inch thick, resting on four legs of thin sheet iron (o), apparently pieces of old hoops, about four inches long. The top of this piece of board was near the surface of the earth covered slightly, so as not to be perceived. On any slight pressure upon the board, such as a man treading upon it, the thin iron supports yielded. When the board came into contact with a glass tube (n) containing sulphuric acid, breaking it and liberating the acid, which diffused within the box, coming into contact with chloride of potassa (sic) , causing instant combustion and as a consequence explosion of the powder.

First device

Crimean victim operated IED

Delafield goes on to note that the British and French exploiting these devices did not have a chemistry lab available to properly identify the explosives.

A second device is then described:

Another arrangement, found at Sebastopol, was by placing the acid within a glass tube of the succeeding dimensions and form. This glass was placed within a tin tube, as in the following figure, which rested upon the powder box, on its two supports, a, b, at the ends. The tin tube opens downwards into the powder box, with a branch (e) somewhat longer than the supports, (a, b)   This , as in the case of the preceding arrangement, was buried in the ground, leaving the tin tube so near the surface that a man’s foot, or other disturbing cause, bending it, would break the glass within, liberating the acid, which, escaping through the opening of the tin into the box, came into contact with the potassa, or whatever may have been the priming, and by its combustion instantly exploded the powder in the box.  What I call a tin tube, I incline to believe, was some more ductile metal, that would bend without breaking. For this information I am indebted to the kindness of an English artillery officer who loaned me one in his possession and from which measurements were made.

Sebastopol IED

This last sentence has the hairs on the back of my neck standing up – because I know that the famous Colonel Majendie, who later became the British Chief Inspector of Explosives and who conducted remarkable IED and WIT investigations some 30 years later, fought as a young artillery officer at Sebastopol. Could it be the same man?  I’d like to think so.

Later in the report is some intriguing details of electrical initiators for explosives, including the use (in 1854 )of mercury fulminate.

I’m also on the hunt for a report I know exists of a US investigation into Chinese Command initiated river mine IEDs from the Boxer rebellion in 1900. When I get it I’ll post details.

1830-1840

Electrically Initiated Command Wire Devices – the first?

In an earlier post I suggested that the first electrical command wire initiated device appeared in the American Civil War. This was incorrect, as I believe the truth is that such things were first developed by the Russians in the 1830s as electrically initiated sea mines  and later used in the Crimean war by the Russians  .  A “forgotten theatre” of that war was a series of naval engagement in the Baltic as the British and its allies blockaded Russian ports. The Russians protected their ports with ingenious improvised sea mines and a number of these were electrically initiated.

These first “galvanic” initiated mines were developed by Engineer-General Karl Shilder, who was a senior engineer in the Russian Navy – and he had a chance encounter with Alfred Nobel’s father, Immanuel Nobel in the late 1830s.  Immanuel Nobel had developed the concept of a rubber backpack containing explosives for use by the military as a contact initiated explosive mine. He failed to gain interest from the Swedish military so took his ideas to the Russians.  Shilder was on a committee set up by the Tsar to investigate electrically initiated mines. Nobel suggested his contact mine as an alternative and subsequently the idea was presented and demonstrated to the Tsar who rewarded Nobel with 3000 Roubles.  Nobel set up a facility to develop the concepts further and succeeded in a trial in 1842 to blow up and sink a three-masted ship – gaining a further substantial financial prize from the Russian government.

When the Crimean war began Nobel’s mines and other command-initiated devices were used extensively on land and sea, and in particular to protect the Russian naval port of Kronsdtadt on an island in the approaches to St Petersburg.  A British operation to recover and exploit this new foreign technology was mounted and Russian mines was recovered and carefully tested.   Other British attempts to exploit the Russian technology were less successful – a number of senior British naval officers, including the commander, Admiral Dundas were badly wounded when examining recovered Russian devices.  Here’s a diagram of a Russian contact mine, a description of some early naval EOD actions, technical device exploitation and a fascinating account of the stupidity of senior officers, twice in one day – all in one:

They are made cone-shaped of strong zinc, about two feet deep, and fifteen inches wide at top. The bottom holds the powder, about eight pounds; the top is full of air, to keep it up; a strong tube (B B B) goes through the top, and reaches the powder; a small tube about the size of a lead pencil is hung in the centre of the large one (D D) – it pivots on its centre; and fixed in the bottom of the large tube, in the little chamber of priming-powder (C), is a small glass tube (+), sticking up into the bottom of the small tube. You will see that if anything pushes the upper end of the small tube on one side, as I have tried to show in figure 2, as it is pivoted in the centre, it must break off the glass tube, which is filled with some ignitible stuff, which fires the priming-powder (C), and of course explodes the machine. Now the two thin tubes of iron on the top (A A) slide to and fro, out are kept away from the tubes by slight springs. On being touched by a ship’s side, or even pressed with a finger, they shove the small tube aside, as in figure 2, and explode the machine. How any were hauled into boats without exploding seems marvellous; but some lost their tubes when canted up to be hauled in; others had been put down with caps on the tops, which prevent their going off. These ought to have been removed; but the parties putting them down had been so afraid of them, they had preferred leaving them safe for us to risking removing the caps themselves. I don’t know what the Grand Duke will say if he knows this! Admiral Seymour and Hall got one up, and hauled it over the bows of the gig. How the little slides were not touched is wonderful. It was then passed aft; and the master of the fleet joining them, they, thinking it was damaged with wet, got discussing the way to set it off. Stokes touched the slide, shoved the tube a little on one side, but evidently not enough to break the glass tube. They then took it to Admiral Dundas, and again they all played with it; and Admiral Seymour took it to his ship, and on the poop had the officers round it examining it. Hall, being in the act of hoisting a second one, was on the quarter-deck. Some of the officers remarked on the danger of its going off, and Admiral Seymour said, ‘Oh no; this is the way it would go off,’ and shoved the slide in with his finger, as he had seen Stokes do it. It instantly exploded, knocking down every one round it. As Hall looked round he saw the captain of marines, a son of Sir John Louis, carried down the ladder, with every bit of clothes burnt off him and covered with blood. He then heard, ‘The admiral is killed.’ The latter was lying insensible, his face covered with blood; but he soon recovered, though very seriously injured in one eye and the head. The poor captain of marines had pieces of the machine in his legs, besides the burns. Pierce, the flag-lieutenant, much hurt, a piece of iron going through the peak of his cap, and knocking it into the mizzen-top, but not touching his head; a young volunteer also. The signalman holding it up at the time not very much hurt, though burnt; and one lieutenant and the chaplain, though next to Admiral Seymour and close to it, only had their hair singed, and were not hurt at all. Two or three men also slightly wounded. It is a wonderful escape, for pieces of it flew down the main hatchway; and we know that the Russians getting one into a boat exploded it, and killed seventeen men. Admiral Seymour is much less hurt than was first supposed, as he is able to sit up to-day; but concussion of the brain is what they fear. He can see a glimmer of light with the eye, so it is hoped he will recover the sight. The marine officer’s is the most dangerous case, but it is hoped he is doing well also.

The extraordinary thing is that the same evening Admiral Dundas and Pelham were examining a tube; so Caldwell went and got an empty machine (that had been cut open) to put the the tube in, to examine how it explodes. While they were close round. it, the admiral shoved the slide, and the tube exploded, shooting up in the middle of them, and hurting the admiral’s eyes so much that they were looking inflamed and bloodshot yesterday morning when he was explaining all this to me. 

Moral of the story – don’t let senior officers fiddle with recovered devices.  In future blog posts – How the US Army studied the Russian experience of contact and command wire initiated devices and did or didn’t employ them in the American Civil War – and the strange story of another US-Russia connection regarding command wire IEDs.

 

Update on Sunday, October 30, 2011 at 6:32PM by Roger Davies

I should make clear that the Russian experiments only just preceded perhaps more successful US experiments in electrical mine initiation.  In 1841 – 1843 Samuel Colt demonstrated successfully on a number of occasions electrically initiated sea mines on the Hudson and then Potomac rivers sinking a number of target ships. Later developments were undertaken by Maury, a confederate naval officer in the 1860s

Update on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 6:14PM by Roger Davies

see later post  http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/9/26/siemens-tangents-command-wire-ieds-of-1848.html

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