Standing Well Back
1710-1720

18th Century TPU, 19th Century Grave Robbers

I’ve blogged before about the use of flintlocks and other gun-lock mechanisms used as initiators in IEDs between the end of the 16th century and the middle of the 19th century.   Some recent digging has made me think that the integration of a timing mechanism with a flintlock mechanism was a widely used system, perhaps not regularly within an IED but widely enough that it’s use must have been well known, even if only as a potential initiation system.  Here’s some images of a couple of peculiar alarm clocks which I think make the point well. The operator sets a time on the clock which when reached released a spring loaded trigger on a flintlock.  A small amount of powder is then initiated which also ignite the wick of a candle which then by a linked spiring stands up in the box. These are I think from the period 1715- 1740 or thereabouts. Nowadays we’d call these a Time and Power Unit (TPU)

 

I have also found a “set gun” which attached a flintlock to a tripwire, used as a deterrent for both for both poachers and grave robbers. Here’s an image of one of these.

 

To be clear I’m not suggesting any of these are IEDs, just that such a mechanism could have been used at the time to initiate explosive devices.  The set guns were outlawed eventually but in 1878 an inventor, Mr Clover of Columbus, Ohio then came up with a “coffin torpedo” to deter grave robbers who opened a coffin with something like a shotgun cartridge, initiated by the opening lid.  “Torpedo” was the name given to IEDs at that time.

In 1881 a Mr Howell invented two “Grave Torpedos”, much more like IEDs and images from the patent application is shown below. These were much more like an American Civil War land mine, placed on top of a coffin with a plate above it, designed to be initiated when the grave robbers dug down.

 

 

These were effective – a grave robber was killed by the device and an accomplice wounded:

1880-1890

Victorian era Bomb basket

I’m indebted to John Balding for forwarding me this picture. The image, I think from around the 1880s, shows the contraption used by Colonel Majendie, the British Chief Inspector of Explosives, for transporting IEDs.  The IEDs were taken to the EOD facility on Duck Island in St James’s Park, Westminster.   I think it is very possible that Majendie copied it from a similar technique used the the French authorities in Paris.

A nicely sprung vehicle, clearly intended to be pushed by a person, possibly based on a “pram”.

1880-1890

IED Response Operations 1880 – 1910

For some time now I have been digging slowly and methodically for details of late 19th century techniques for dealing with IEDs, mainly focused on the activities of the London based Colonel Vivian Majendie. As the Chief Inspector of Explosives he had a broad ranging role, including legislation regarding the industrial production and storage of explosives.  But Majendie was also responsible for the response to anarchist and Fenian revolutionary IEDs which were remarkably prevalent at the time.  Remember that the 1890s, for instance, were referred to as “the decade of the bomb” because of the prevalence of explosive devices.

I have mentioned in previous blogs that Majendie constructed a “secret” facility for rendering safe IEDs. His work there was assisted by Dr August Dupre – a German emigre and highly experienced chemist. This facility was surprisingly just a couple of hundred yards from Downing Street on Duck Island at the bottom end of the lake in St James’s Park, opposite Horseguards.

There is a story that the bomb defusing facility still existed in mothballs in the 1970s. To preserve it, the wooden building and its contents were recovered by the Royal Engineers to Chatham in Kent. The story goes that some RE quartermaster in the 1980s felt it was messing up his stores so it was destroyed and scrapped. Sigh. In such a way is Ozymandias sometimes forgotten.

So for a couple of decades I’ve been interested in what equipment existed there – but Majendie’s OPSEC was pretty good.  I think I know where some official files may be that detail it but time has precluded a visit to those archives yet.

But yesterday I turned up a new lead.  Firstly I found a document that detailed some of Majendie’s thoughts on EOD operations. He discussed moving suspect devices in wicker hand carts to one of three locations strategically placed around London. One on Duck Island – close to the heart of government in Whitehall and sufficiently remote in its immediate environment.  One in the “ditch” surrounding the Tower of London, for IEDs found in the financial centre of London, and one in a cutting or quarry in Hyde Park for devices in the commercial district.  It appears that Majendie won approval for the construction of at least two of these (Hyde Park and Duck Island) and that the Duck Island facility was completed first.  But not much of a clue as to what it contained, other than some sort of mechanical contrivance for dealing with the infernal machines. So a bit more digging ensued. Now, I know from other research that Majendie conducted close relations with both the United States and with France. Anarchist IEDs were almost endemic in France at the time. Majendie makes some remark in the 1880s that he has “adapted the French techniques” and refers to their approach as often blowing the devices up in place – whereas Majendie prefers to move them to his secret facilities to deal with them there.

But then I find an associated reference that suggests that Majendie used equipment of the same kind for defusing bombs that the French used at the Municipal Laboratory in Paris.  A clue, then, and a new avenue.

So, I’ve had some success.

This is a summary of what I have found.  The French authorities established a Municipal Laboratory for dealing with IEDs in some open ground near Porte de Vincennes in Paris and others at 3 other locations elsewhere in the City.  The facility consisted of some earth banks and a series of wooden huts. I think the facility was set up in the 1880s and certainly was still in existence in 1910. This is an image from 1910.

Within this facility was a range of equipment including x-ray equipment (after it was invented) and a very robust piece of machinery called a “Morane Press”.  I think this is that key piece of equipment and I have a hunch (nothing more) that Majendie’s facility on Duck Island was somewhat similar in terms of construction, and Majendie too may have used a Morane press. This is a picture of the “Morane press” taken at he the Paris facility, again somewhat later but the press was still in use in 1910.

I then found a beautiful report from 1906 describing the operational routine of the Paris police at the time. The report describes that the occurrence of suspect IEDs in Paris in 1906 was “not at all an infrequent occurrence”.  Some elements of the report:

  • A “bomb squad’ was based at the laboratory and connected by a telephone to central police headquarters.  The headquarters tasked the unit to respond to a suspect IED. The response is described as being similar to a “fire call”.
  • The lead EOD tech has a fast response vehicle, described as a 16 horsepower “racing bodied” automobile. it is followed by an “automobile bomb van”.
  • Six chemists are assigned to the unit, and one always deploys as the lead operator. They work one week shifts, and five weeks off to “recover from nerves”
  • The lead chemist brings the “bomb van” close to the device, and the operator after inspecting it, lifts it carefully , maintaining its positional attitude and places it in a containment box. Perhaps their procedures had evolved from the 1880s “blow in place” policy.

The photograph below may show the response vehicle and a containment vessel.  I can’t be sure because I think the photo was mislabelled as “Paris police headquarters, 1920s” but I found the photo amongst other photos of the explosive laboratory and to my untrained eye the vehicle looks like a 1906 car not a 1920s car. I think the black object on the floor might be a containment vessel. The operators are certainly steely-eyed.

  • The report describes how many IEDs of the time were sensitive to movement which changed its orientation – the initiation mechanism was two liquids which, if the device was tilted, mixed and caused a detonation.
  • The bomb van is described a “heavy (voiture lourde) double phaeton 12 hp automobile, refitted from the regular tourist trade, with a pneumatic spring device for gentle running and 120mm tires”
  • The “bomb box” or containment vessel is placed over the rear springs, opening by a letdown from behind. It is fitted with shredded wood fibre and into this is placed the IED.
  • The IED is then moved accordingly to the facility in Porte de Vincennes or one of three other such facilities strategically placed around the City ( note the similarity to Majendie’s plan) . The concept is to move the device very quickly in case it is time-initiated.
  • Once at the facility the device is immediately x-rayed after being placed behind an armoured screen. As noted in earlier posts, the French deployed x-ray equipment for security operations within months of the invention in 1896.
  • At this stage, depending on the x-ray, the device may be manually rendered safe. The report mentions a specific IED were the hands of the timing clock could be seen to be stationary from analysis of the radiograph, allowing a manual procedure to make the device safe.
  • The report then describes the “hydraulic press”. It is tucked in behind earthen mounds. Here’s a picture of what I think is the pump that powered the Morane press.

  • And here are the earthen mounds surrounding the facility

  • The press is used to dismantle IEDs, and if a detonation is caused, the effects are contained. The press is robust enough to survive. Quite often there are detonations several times a week. The effectiveness of the press is described as 75% – three times out of four a device does not explode but the components are recovered for forensic examination.  That’s not a bad strike rate at all, given the sensitive explosives used and the initiation types.
  • The report also stresses how many of the IEDs are not publicly reported in order to keep the public calm

In summary then I think that the Paris facilities are a remarkable reminder that IEDs are not new, and surges in IED use have been seen before. The facility seems to have been in use for about thirty years, and despite the different techniques of today’s bomb squads, their technology was surprisingly effective.  We can’t be certain that Majendie was using the same strategy and same technology in London in the 1890s but I think there is a high degree of likelihood he was. Like today, there was a willingness to share EOD technology, and technical intelligence, between different national agencies. The Paris police clearly had a sophisticated and well resourced EOD unit operating across their city, with a thought-through strategy focused on:

  • reducing damage to property
  • returning the situation to normality as soon as possible
  • technical intelligence and forensically-focused render-safe procedures.
1880-1890

The IED Technology of Propaganda of the Deed, 1884

There’s a lot of attention given these days to the dissemination of such things as “Inspire” the extremist jihadi online magazine about how to build bombs and such like.

The truth is that this, like terrorism itself, is nothing really very new.  In 1884 the anarchist Johann Most published “Revolutionare Kreigswissenshaft”, a self proclaimed scientific handbook for would-be revolutionaries.  Johan Most popularized the concept of “Propaganda of the deed.”

While the modern day jihadist spreads his technology concepts by such things as “youtube”, “web forums” and “on-line magazines”,  Johann Most used “printing presses” and “bookshops” and “newspapers” to the same effect.

Most and his work are an interesting tale.  Most was born in Germany in 1846, and lived in England for a few years from 1878. Some of those English years were spent “at Her Majesty’s pleasure” in prison.  He was an ardent and open revolutionary. Finally he moved to the USA 1884, and was employed by an explosives manufacturer in New Jersey, building some small degree of technical expertise.  He published his book in 1884 and it is still available today still. I ordered mine openly from Amazon and I think I can justify it to the authorities.

The context of the situation in 1884 is important to understand.  My American friends will, I hope, forgive me when I say that it was a pretty easy place to build IEDs. A number of US citizens were openly involved in building IEDs for profit and training people to use them.

Here’s one example of a bomb maker from Philadelphia of the same period.  And another here from an earlier blog post on this site. .  I have records of several others including a man in Des Moines in the 1880s who was manufacturing IEDs to be sent to support the Fenian bombing campaign in London. Iowa was a hotbed of anti-British “Fenian”  feeling!   Then in 1886 was the Haymarket bombing in Chicago, which I have written about in an earlier post.

The Haymarket bombs were of a type described by Most in his handbook published two years earlier. There is a link, allegedly with Most promising to send the Haymarket conspirators dynamite. He really pushed the “classic” anarchist IED of a black sphere with a burning fuse projecting from it.

The truth is that Most’s understanding of explosives is nowhere near as good as he thought it was.  Perhaps that too is like modern extremist publications available on-line. The handbook has numerous technical errors but is all the more interesting for that. Clearly I’m not going into those errors here, but it’s pretty interesting to see his revolutionary ardour overtake technicalities. I would also add that most copies available are translations and I think there are some peculiar spelling errors and possible technical misunderstandings of the translator. For instance in the copies I have seen, Most describes “Oraini bombs”, which should I think read “Orsini bombs”. Also the translator clearly has no technical background – at one point complaining irritatedly that Most’s phrase “Cloral de pottage” doesn’t appear in any of the University of Arizona’s French Dictionaries. It clearly means Potassium Chlorate to anyone with a smidgen of understanding of the chemistry of explosives.

Most describes the manufacture of the chemical impact fuzing system that was in the IED used to assassinate the Tsar in 1881.

Interestingly Most advises that it is easier to obtain nitro-glycerine or dynamite legally or illegally than it is to manufacture it.   Amusingly, as a revolutionary, Most doesn’t describe it as “theft” but “confiscation”.   But then describing the manufacture of nitro-glycerine he views with disdain some of the safety measures that are normally advised for such projects.   Most’s instructions are not detailed or specific enough and are subject to dangerous misinterpretation, especially , I suspect, the translated versions, translated by a non-chemist who I don’t think has much technical understanding.

Most describes a way in which explosives should be used to cause damage to buildings and railway lines, but most of this seems to be a “cut and paste” job from Austrian military handbooks of the time. Again, somewhat like certain extremist sites of today who recycle conventional military handbooks.

Most does occasionally have some very pertinent ideas about such things as disguise of devices.

Most describes the manufacture of a range of explosive charges and also primary explosives and incendiary devices. There is an odd, and somewhat silly section about poisons, but no sillier, I suppose than some of the nonsense on extremist websites today.  I can’t really imagine copper acetate is a serious poison for the serious terrorist.   He also has ideas about operational matters such as organization of an operational terrorist group.

Most takes an interesting view on the question of the right to bear arms, which he equates directly with the right to possess explosives.  He attacks US lawmakers of the era who were trying to make the possession of explosives illegal, which he viewed as a first step along the road of making weapon ownership illegal.  “How then would the American revolutionary be able to shoot the lawmaker?”, he asks indignantly. Finally, Most describes some very “modern” OPSEC procedures.

So the history of disseminating terrorist technology and tactics goes back an awful long way.  Most was doing exactly what “Inspire” is doing now, just with a different level of media.  You’d be surprised at the similarities.

19th Century

The Curious Death of Louis Lingg

Louis Lingg was a self confessed German anarchist, found guilty of his involvement in the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886 that killed a number of police officers. Lingg was one of a number of agitators charged and found guilty. It appears in retrospect that the charges against the other six conspirators were weak to say the least, but against Lingg I think there was some degree of convincing evidence that he built the IED. Not least because of witnesses who testified that they were given IEDs by Lingg, and further, that IEDs were discovered in Linggs lodgings.

Here’s two pictures of an IED discovered in Lingg’s apartment.

The Haymarket bomb is thought to have been of a similar spherical design, but slightly smaller in diameter. The devices were lead spheres filled with dynamite, and initiated by a detonator/blasting cap attached to a burning fuze, inserted into the sphere.

There’s an image here of other devices, all generally filled with dynamite with a burning fuze.

Between the trial and the planned execution two strange things occurred in Linggs prison cell in Cook County jail.

Firstly during a search of his cell on December 6th four IEDs were discovered hidden under his bed. From the description of the devices they appear to have been pipe bombs.  How the IEDs got into his prison cell is not known, but visitors to the prisoners had plenty of opportunity, reportedly, to hand over gifts.

Secondly, four days later, in the same cell, Lingg died. It’s the circumstances of his death that is intriguing.   His death is described as a suicide, but frankly I think that explanation is unconvincing.  The official story is that Lingg obtained a blasting cap, held it in his teeth and initiated it.  He died in some agony six hours later from his wounds, his jaw having been blown off.  It is believed that the blasting cap was smuggled into the jail by an accomplice, Dyer Lum, who hid it in a cigar.

Here’s my doubts and explanation:

Blasting caps can kill of course, but one could not be certain of death by initiating a detonator or blasting cap in one’s mouth.  In a sense this is proven by Lingg’s painful death.  Lingg probably knew that a detonator in his mouth would be an uncertain way of committing suicide.

Lum has been accused of planning to break the anarchists out of jail. Could the pipe bombs discovered 4 days earlier have been part of such a plot? Could this detonator have been associated with an attempt to break out of prison?

Crimping.  Detonators/blasting caps need crimping onto the fuze.  A crimping tool or pliers wouldn’t have been available in Lingg’s cell. Lingg wouldn’t have been the first person in history to resort to using his teeth to crimp a cap onto a fuze. He wouldn’t be the first person, either, for that simple action to go dreadfully wrong.

So, I am not convinced as to the intended suicide.  Was he instead preparing an IED in his cell, perhaps big enough to blow the lock on his cell door in an attempt to escape?  The truth is we will never know.

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