Standing Well Back
19th Century

When EOD Innovation Goes Wrong

Here’s the interesting tale, from 1879 about a the disposal of explosives that went tragically wrong, despite the method being developed by one of the top explosive scientists in the country.  At some point during the year, 12,000 detonators were imported illegally into England.  They had been labeled “percussion caps”. For a while they were put in storage and after some discussion were sent for disposal, the procedure to be used being an innovative one that perhaps had not been tried fully and limits set.

Here’s an extract from a report on the matter:

Useful lesson here – what might work theoretically as a scientific, chemical disposal method for one detonator doesn’t necessarily apply to a larger quantity. Having said that I’d say the method was a bit weird at the most perfect of times.  The report above was extracted from the annual report (1879) of the Chief Inspector of Explosives, Major Majendie – an absolute treasure trove of information about the management of explosives, and the investigation of explosive incidents at this time in history. The reports, by Major Majendie and his co-inspector Major Ford, assisted by Dr DuPre are professional, technically sound and beautifully written.   It also shows that the UK MOD were assisting the police in the recovery and disposal of explosives all the way back then – something 11 EOD Regiment are involved in today – modern Ammunition Technicians being direct descendants of the Woolwich Royal Laboratory staff.

19th Century

Update – Majendie and the “Crime of the Century” bomb

A few years ago I wrote a blog post about an IED that exploded prematurely at Bremerhaven docks on 11 December 1875. That post is at this link here – Crime of the Century.  Please re-read that report before reading on here.   At the time I had somewhat incomplete information but now I have found more material including a report, written soon after the incident by Col (then Major) Majendie that has come into my hands and adds some fascinating detail.  This is good Weapons Technical Intelligence from our esteemed Colonel Majendie. Majendie was the lead explosive expert in the Home Office and the father of modern British EOD and IED incident investigation. He had access to German police reports suggesting the following:

  1. The explosive used was a Nitro-glycerine based dynamite, called “Lithofracteur” – nitro-glycerine mixed into kieselguhr, sawdust, charcoal and bran . This, Thomas (aka, Keith, aka Garcie) had purchased in March 1875 .
  2. Keith had actually attempted to blow up cargo ships on one or two previous translatlantic crossings, but the initiation mechanism had failed. It seems likely that the Bremerhaven incident was the second or third attempt.
  3. The large crate that the device was hidden in was dropped but it probably wasn’t the impact of the drop on the sensitive dynamite to explode that caused the explosion.
  4. The complex timing and initiation contraption, designed by Keith but manufactured by German clock engineers , was not quite manufactured as per the instructions – because Keith’s “cover story” to the manufacturers provided a set of circumstances that didn’t quite make sense. Part of the contraption had levers which caused the action on the detonator at the right time.  These levers were held in place with springs.  The design included a spring detent to hold the levers in place but because Keith had told the  manufacturers that the levers were to cut silk threads while fitted to a bench in a factory, the manufacturers saw no need for this detent and left the spring out.
  5. Thus, the levers were able to move under external force on the whole mechanism. The force of the crate dropping on the stone dockside was not enough to cause the explosive to function – this form of dynamite is not that sensitive in most cases. But the assessment is that the force was enough to overcome the striker springs in the timed initiation mechanism even though it wasn’t  technically  “armed” at that point.
  6. So the premature explosion of the IED occurred because the perpetrator was so secretive about the use of the mechanism that the efficient German engineers manufacturing it thought it was a redundant part so omitted it without telling Keith.

Majendie also reports on the complex insurance negotiations that Keith engaged in with the insurers Baring Brothers and others regarding the insurance of the box, which was his ultimate purpose to defraud.  The report by Majendie then suggests a deeper engagement in the investigation. Separate from the German police reports furnished by the British consul in Bremherhaven, it appears that Majendie and his scientific adviser Dr Dupre obtained a diagram based on a drawing by the clockwork engineer Fuchs of the timing and initiation mechanism.   I think this was a copy of the diagram shown in this excellent report. This report even includes a picture of replica of the mechanism made by the original maker.  Fuchs, the clock engineer made a bit of hay after the explosion and made duplicates of his clockwork mechanism and sold them to a number of museums. There is a vagueness about the source of this diagram in Majendie’s report which I find suspicious and deliberate.   Furthermore it is clear that there was some form of very rapid international investigation which Majendie refers to obliquely. Although Majendie doesn’t mention it, I think this will have been an international investigation undertaken by the famous Pinkerton’s agency, probably at the behest of the insurance companies involved.  Majendie’s report also suggests to me that Dr Dupre, the scientist, was working perhaps secretly on a mission Germany to gather more intelligence on the operation. It certainly appears he met Fuchs, the clockmaker. A secret IED intelligence operation, no less. Certainly Majendie seems to have full details of negotiations the perpetrator had with insurers so I suspect he was provided with a copy of the Pinkerton report on their investigation.

It is suggested that Thomas/Keith may have had a role in other curious incidents and missing ships, perhaps in a series of insurance frauds.  This appears to have worried Majendie who undertook investigations of other cargoes that may have been sent by “Keith” including the investigation of the cargo on the ship “Salier” docked in Southampton.  Majendie also conducted quite a range of experiments on the sensitivity of lithofracteur – but also complains of the salacious reports in the press which exaggerate the threats from explosives- comments from public figures who should know better, exacerbating his challenges in an unwanted manner and misunderstanding, misrepresenting or having no bearing on the technical issues. Plus ca change as Dr Dupre would say.

Here’s a pic of the bodies being removed from the dockside in Bremerhaven after the explosion:

The lessons from this incident, still today, after over 150 years are:

a. International cooperation on IED investigation is not new, and pays dividends.
b. The implicit secrecy of planning and preparing IEDs leads to unexpected pressures. These pressures often cause the operation to fail, or provide the perpetrator with unwanted or unexpected changes to the operation. A careful WTI investigator will consider these pressures in his analysis.
c. The obvious cause of an explosion isn’t always the case. Only careful examination of the components, or in this case the component diagram revealed the full nature of why it occurred when it occurred.
d. Close partnership between lead investigators and scientific advisers is essential as is the ability to carry out experiments to test theories.
e. IED incident investigations were pretty good 150 years ago.

19th Century

Attacking the Tsar’s train with IEDs, 1879

A shorter gap between blog posts than usual, as I am prompted by responses to the last one about a railway IED in 1880.  This one is about a series of three IEDs all targeting the same train, all carrying Tsar Nicholas II on a journey from the Crimea to St Petersburg in November 1879.   The attack also allows me to explore once again the concepts of tactical or operational design, which describes how, why, what and when an IED plot is developed and instigated and the factors which constrain or provide opportunity to the development of a terrorist plan.. It also allows me to dissect in more detail why railway IED attacks have seemed attractive over the years.

The group concerned was the revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya. Read upon them if you have time, elsewhere.  The sub groups concerned with this “triple” plot are in interesting mix of revolutionaries, peasants and engineer/scientists.  In 1879 Narodnya Volya “passed a death sentence” on the Tsar in August 1879 for all the reasons you can read about elsewhere.  It then came to their attention that the Tsar, who used the railways extensively to travel throughout Russia, would be travelling from the Crimea where he had a “summer residence” at Livadia, all the way North to St Petersburg.  They therefore could predict, somewhat, his route.  Here we come to the issue about railways, that when you look at it, is obvious but needs pointing out. Railways are attractive to terrorists because:

  • The railway provides a location, somewhere on its length, where a target will present itself. The terrorist knows that the target will be at any specific point along its length at some point, between point A and B, at some perhaps unknown time. So it’s a location where the target “will” present itself with a degree of certainty, and the manner of that presentation (in a railway carriage) is also known. This is a factor a terrorist can exploit.
  • In many circumstances, trains are scheduled by a time table. so again the terrorist has a factor he can exploit to a greater or lesser extent. This may give him options for detonating the device, either by timer, or by a victim-operated (train operated booby trap) switch, or by command, allowing the terrorist to only be present at a firing point for a limited period of time, enhancing his security.
  • The lengths of railways lines (in this case hundreds of miles) ensures that the terrorist has freedom to lay a device, when no-one else is around, perhaps at night or at distance from people. Security measures cannot cover hundreds of miles of railway. so there is a freedom of action for the terrorist to exploit. In essence every dark night and in every remote location the authorities are forced to relinquish control of the railway.
  • The nature of railway lines provides additional factors that the terrorist can exploit. Firstly it is easy bury and hide a device under a rail. secondly the fact that a train is travelling at speed adds to the effect of an explosion which might, perhaps simply rupture the lines – a train will then be derailed, and thus the explosive effects can be added too if needed, so as well as explosive damage there is the kinetic energy release of a train crash. Trains have a large mass, and a high speed, potentially, and these are again factors for the terrorist to exploit in terms of energy utilisation, especially on a bridge or embankment.
  • Some other factors, which might appear trivial but which can be important. The railway line can usually be found easily by the terrorist -“Go to station A and walk up the line a particular distance.” The rail system itself is a mode of transport for the terrorist and the IED. Railways are large constructions and a train can usually be seen approaching from a considerable distance, allowing the terrorist some freedoms, and some warnings which can again alert him and allow him to be in a dangerous firing point for a limited period of time. The noise of a train at night also provides this “signal” to a terrorist, which can help them.

In this case, the Narodnaya Volya, as was sometimes their wont, decided on three separate IED attacks on the train as it carried the Tsar from the Crimea, northwards to Moscow and on to St Petersburg at different points in its journey, providing a degree of built-in redundancy in their plot. Interestingly it was known that there had been a plot ten years earlier in 1869 to attack the Tsar’s train in Elizavetgrad with explosives. so the “concept” of such an attack was known to the revolutionaries. In effect they had a template half formed in their mind already.

The group had a “man on the inside’, employed as a railway-guard near Odessa who was able to provide a degree of information.  This probably included the fact that actually the Tsar’s train traveled in convoy with at least one other train, one carrying his entourage, with the Tsar in the second train (according to some sources there were three trains and he traveled in the third). This ruled out the sort of attack described in my earlier blog post about the attack in UK, which was designed to be initiated by a train, because that would simply hit the first train.  Thus the attacks on the Tsar in the second or third train had to be by command initiation.   Three subgroups were formed, one for each attack. They were supplied with over 200 pounds of dynamite made by their technical expert Nikolai Kibalchich in his apartment on Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg. Kibalchich carefully tested the explosives and the other components, using as a power source a Ruhmkorff induction coil – which produces high voltage pulses from a low voltage battery (plenty of good you-tubes on such things)

  1. At a point on the railway near Odessa, Kilbalchich and four others developed the tunnel or trench to run the wires to an explosive charge under the railway taking two weeks to get it into position. Kibalchich brought the explosives he had made himself in a suitcase.  Then, days before the expected attack they got news from the insider that the Tsar wouldn’t be travelling on the stretch of track they had expected. So they packed up, recovered the explosives and abandoned this aspect of the plot.
  2. At a village called Aleksandrovsk, a village between the Crimea and Kharkhov a second group of five rented a house close to the railway line.  With difficulty they dug a shallow trench all the way to the railway embankment, laying an electrical cable.  It seems the circuit was faulty and when the circuit was closed nothing happened, and the Tsar’s train passed over unharmed.
  3. At the third point, on the approaches to Moscow, the terrorists successfully detonated the device, electrically, under the second train, not knowing that for unknown reasons the order had changed and the Tsar was in the first train which was allowed to pass safely. In this case the device exploded under the baggage train. Interestingly in the “follow up” the police raided the house where the device had been initiated from and remarked how well everything had been “properly camouflaged” to ensure a casual visitor wouldn’t deduce what was going on. More evidence of very careful planning.

So the attacks all failed in their stated intent. But nonetheless Narodnaya Volya claimed a degree of success in terms of derailing the Tsar’s baggage train, and notably announced their pride in planning such a complex operation with care and great diligence. The group saw the attack as a “modern” attack better than confronting the target with a revolver and little chance of escape. Interestingly not long after in 1881 they succeeded in assassinating the Tsar, in St Petersburg, but not by “sophisticated” command devices, allowing their escape but with a bomb simply thrown at the feet of the Tsar, in effect a suicide bomb.

There has been some discussion about how the Narodnaya Volya attacks may have been a preliminary inspiration for other railway attacks that occurred in subsequent decades.  But while it may have been something of an inspiration I think that the experience of the US Civil war, where there were a number of IED attacks on railways, and indeed the IED incident I reported on previously in 1870 as art of the Franco-Prussion war, showed the world the potential vulnerabilities of railways to IEDs, well before the Russian events detailed here.

To return to the tactical and operational design concept. I think it’s useful to look in detail at this triple plot, (which failed) compared to the assassination of of the Tsar two years later, which succeeded. An understanding of the design of these plots, and indeed any plot is best elicited (I propose) by asking the following questions of each incident:

  1.  Why did the attack occur here, at this point?   The answer is rarely simple, and indeed some of the factors may not even be recognised by the terrorist perpetrator themselves. A few years ago doing a study of roadside bombs in Iraq, an activity I was associated with established 27 different factors which affected the choice of firing point , route of command wire and initiation point.
  2. Why did the attack occur at this time?  Again think beyond just time of day.
  3. Why was this target attacked?
  4. Why was this particular device used? Not just the actual device but why this means of initiation, this size, in this container , etc. sometimes an IED is presented to a perpetrator and they have to use it somehow, at other times the device is designed or at least adapted for a particular mission. Understanding which of these options occurred is a useful insight.  Sometimes it is driven by some of the other factors.

Answering as many of those questions as you can will give insights into the expertise, resources and skills of the perpetrator, and also provide other valuable information or suggest other leads for the investigator.  for the historian too these leads may become fruitful as a result. Comparing the answers regarding these attacks in 1879 and the subsequent successful assassination two years later in intriguing – very different operations, yet counter-intuitively the mission with less detailed planning succeeded. How Narodnaya Volya got from planning meticulously three electrically initiated command devices, over the length of the country (all of which failed in one sense) to a much more ad hoc but successful suicide bombing gives insights that are valuable today, I submit.

 

19th Century

Attacking Railway Lines with IEDs – 1870

Readers of this blog will know I have written on a number of occasions about the use of IEDs against railway lines.  In one of the “threads” I have followed, I worked backwards from the use of such devices by Lawrence of Arabia in WW1, established that they had been developed and used in Arabia , by “Bimbashi” Garland, Lawrence’s explosive mentor, a former Ordnance Corps Laboratory technician, and traced the design of these devices back to the Boer War where they were used by Boer guerrillas led by Jack Hindon against the British. Devices under railway lines were also used by Russian Narodnaya Volya terrorists in 1879 and in many attacks since then.    In digging around the provenance of the Boer devices I found a vague reference to the experience of a Boer who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War 30 years earlier, that the Boer’s utlised.  Here’s a list of previous posts on the matter in the order I wrote them.

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/5/15/bimbashi-garland.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/6/6/garlands-first-ied-attack.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/6/ied-triggers.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/6/8/martini-henry-and-other-ied-initiation-systems.html

I have been digging around reports on the Franco-Prussian war for some time, hampered by my sadly limited language skills, looking for something that might indicate where the Boers had gained their experience of blowing up trains using a pressure switch activated by the weight of a train. At last I have found something that fits and it’s pretty interesting. In 1870 a young Royal Engineer officer, Lt Fraser, was observing the events of the Franco-Prussian war, a habit that many armies followed in the 19th century. Lt Fraser wrote a paper, published, in the Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Vol XX in 1872. The paper is entitled  “Account of a Torpedo used for the Destruction of a Railway Train on the 26th of October, 1870.”  As a reminder the word “torpedo” was used at the time to describe a much wider variety of explosive devices and munitions than is applied today.

Here is a brief extract from a third party source, as I await a hard copy of the publication in the post which I hope will contain more detail:

Learning that a Prussian troop train was to pass through Lanois (on the line between Reims and Mons) on October 26, 1870, they resolved to effect its destruction. How they operated is told by Lieutenant Fraser, R. E., who arrived on the spot shortly afterwards, and heard the story from some of the men engaged on the work. 

 

Any obstruction placed on the line would have been seen. Hence a different course had to be adopted. Selecting a spot where the line ran along a 12-ft. high embankment, to which a well-wooded slope came down on one side, the franc tireurs took up a pair of rails, removed the sleepers, cut a deep trench across the line, laid some pieces of iron at the bottom of the trench, placed on the iron a box containing thirty kilos (2 qrs. 10 lbs.) of powder, and fixed into the lid of the box a French field shell in such a way that, when the rail was replaced over the box, the head of the fuse would be just below the lower flange of the rail. In restoring the line again in order that there should be nothing to attract attention, the franc tireurs omitted one sleeper so that the weight of the locomotive should in passing press the rail down on to the head of the fuse. The party—some seventy-five strong—then withdrew to the shelter of the woods to await developments.   

 

In due time the train of forty coaches approached at the ordinary speed, the driver not suspecting any danger. When the engine reached the spot where the “torpedo” had been placed, an explosion occurred which tore up a mass of earth, rails and sleepers, threw the engine and several carriages down the embankment, and wrecked the train. Those of the Prussian troops who got clear from the wreckage were shot down by the franc tireurs under the protection of their cover. The number of the enemy thus disposed of was said to be about 400.

I think there is a clear link to the device I report in the my previous blogs about the depressing rail activating a pressure sensitive switch albeit in this case an artillery fuse, and not the trigger of a rifle breech as seen in the Boer War and used by Garland and Lawrence in Arabia.  The device too has a link to the earlier pressure sensitive devices, using artillery shells with contact fuses adapted to initiate on pressure used by General Raines in the American civil war in 1862.

1870-1880

Mechanical Sabotage Devices

This is an interesting news report I found.  It discusses some clever mechanical devices used to sabotage ships. The devices are secreted inside the ship, against the hull, and utilise the movement of a ship through the waves to steadily and slowly bore or cut a hole in the hull. This report from about 1876 was repeated in some other newspapers at the time, in identical reports referring to the Bremerhaven attack  and provided as context for other types of attacks on ships.  However, I have dug away and not found any other details of such devices. Really this single report. Intriguing. The explanations are not entirely clear, I’m afraid.

Close Me
Looking for Something?
Search:
Post Categories: