Standing Well Back
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.

1800-1810

French Technical Intelligence on a Command-initiated IED, 1801

I have written before about the IED attack on Napoleon Bonaparte on Christmas Eve 1800, and I am slowly uncovering more and more details.  These include:

  • Detailed costs of medical support and pensions for the families of victims.
  • Details of the 25 houses damaged by the explosion, and examples of that damage.

In the investigation that followed, a gentleman called Chevalier was arrested, and an “infernal machine” in his possession was seized.  This was a command initiated device, and “Citizen Monge” a member of the office of the Prefect of Paris was assigned to examine it.

The device was described as follows:

This infernal machine consisted of a barrel hooped with iron, and filled with balls, maroons and gunpowder. To this machine was attached a gun barrel, heavily loaded. This machine was placed on a wagon, laid on purpose to intercept the way and discharged by the aid of a pack thread from a neighbouring house. The intent: was, that its discharge should overturn  and destroy everything that was near it.

A separate report has Chevalier admitting that it contains six or seven pounds of powder, then:

In this barrel is securely fixed a musquet loaded, but with the stock cut off. This machine is placed on a small carriage, which unexpectedly, and at a given signal is pushed into the street to obstruct the passage, and then by means of a string the trigger of the musquet is pulled and the whole machine blows up.

The use of a trigger mechanism from a firearm is of course well known and I have blogged before, several times :

So who was this Citizen Monge to whom the task of examining the device was given?  It turns out Gaspard Monge was a technical and scientific adviser to Napoleon and a famous scientist. He was held in very high regard by Napoleon.  Monge was interested in explosives, and ordnance and wrote books and papers on the subject.   Monge was tasked earlier in 1800 by Napoleon to consider Fulton’s inventions.

Once again I’m struck by several issues:

a. Technical examination of IEDs goes back over two hundred years.

b. Simple adaptation of firearms to initiate IEDs can be found repeatedly over history.

In doing this research I’ve uncovered much more about Fulton and his devices – which I’ll return to in future posts

1810-1820

The Mystery of Dundonald’s Destroyer, a WMD developed in 1811.

This is an interesting tale. Hold on as a guide you through it.

Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald was a remarkable man.   A naval hero, as a young captain he had marvelous adventures fighting the French on the high seas. The French nicknamed him “Le Loup des Mers” – the Wolf of the Seas.  He is said to be, in part, an inspiration for Jack Aubrey, indeed many of the stories from Cochrane’s naval exploits are rehearsed in the novels of Patrick O’Brian.

As a young officer his career was not without aspects that cause, and caused, raised eyebrows – he was court martialled for showing disrespect to a senior lieutenant, and reprimanded.   But his naval career was generally exceptional, showing daring and gallantry in action.  During his time in command of HMS Speedy (with a mere 14 guns)  he captured or destroyed 53 enemy ships.  One of his exploits was his seizure and copying of French code books, leaving the originals behind so that the French would think they were uncompromised. When he captured the Spanish ship El Gamo, in 1801, he personally led the boarding party of 53 which consisted every man of his own ship, bar one, the surgeon, and took 319 Spaniards aboard the El Gamo prisoner. The El Gamo had seven times the firepower of the Speedy.  As the hand to hand battle was being fought fiercely and in the balance, Cochrane called over to the surgeon (the sole man left behind) and called for him to send  “the rest of the crew to join the fight”, so disheartening the Spanish.

After a short political career, he was convicted of stock fraud, dismissed from the Navy, lost his knighthood, humiliated in public and expelled from parliament (but then re-elected), standing on a ticket of parliamentary reform.  He was eventually pardoned in 1832 after a change in government. He was restored to the Navy list in the rank of rear-admiral.

In the intervening period before he was pardoned, he continued an adventurous life. Leaving England in disgrace he became a Chilean citizen and became a Vice Admiral of the Chilean Navy, conducting spectacular naval operations from his frigate the “O’Higgins” against the Spanish.

He then left Chile in a fit of pique and enrolled in the Brazilian navy ( I said you had to hang on and I haven’t even got to the interesting bits yet!) . He took command of the Brazilian flagship and fought the Portuguese, and fought them hard. In one episode he chased the entire Portuguese fleet across the Atlantic with just one ship.  He then fell out with the Brazilians and left with his pockets full….

He then joined the Greek Navy and fought the Ottoman empire, for once, with little positive effect.    His wiki entry is worth a detailed read.

Now, my interest in Cochrane, beyond his adventures, was in the development of certain weapons technologies. He invented numerous devices and systems to aid naval warfare and in other areas too. He worked with Brunel on tunneling systems and with Stevenson on steam engines.  One of his technologies was an “explosion ship” (see earlier posts). Explosion ships or “Infernals or “Machine ships” were not new but Cochrane made use of them to his own design in his attack on the French ships at Aix Roads in 1809

In 1811 he developed a mysterious weapon which became known as “Dundonald’s Destroyer”. He submitted a secret report detailing the technology in 1812 to the prince regent. This secret weapon system was demonstrated to the government on more than one occasion. On each occasion the reports are that the government reviews (whose panel included other weapons developers such as Congreve, the rocket developer)  were horrified with its effectiveness but declined to acquire the weapon system, it being beyond the sensibility that any person could use it against another, or as they described it “too horrible for humanity”. They demanded that its mystery remained secret. Even 100 years later, in 1914, as Britain faced the German empire there were calls to unveil and field this mysterious system.  There is a suggestion that a German butler stole the papers detailing the plans from the Cochrane family and passed them to the Germans in 1914.  Cochrane described the system as follows:

“The infallible means of securing at one blow our maritime superiority and of thereafter maintaining it in perpetuity,” that “no power on earth could stand against it,” that it could be used by the weakest nation against the strongest, and that its construction was “so simple that the most ignorant minds could readily master its mechanism.”

Some historians suggested in the early 1900s that the device could have been some form of focused beam of sunlight using lenses and mirrors, which frankly I don’t find credible.  Others point towards Cochrane’s experiments with “smoke ships”. Cochrane, as we know used fire ships to cause arson and panic in an opposition fleet, and machine ships to detonate amongst them.  He also used smoke ships loaded with burning sulphur and charcoal which caused thick smoke that disguised the movements of his own ships.  The suggestion is that he realised that the choking effect of the sulphur dioxide produced a chemical effect on those exposed to it that turned it into a chemical weapon.  It seems the “Destroyer” was an improved version of the smoke ship, and perhaps associated with improved “machine ships” that exploded.  There is some mention of machine ships being tilted at an angle to project massive explosive effect in a single direction being used in conjunction with hulks loaded with charcoal and sulphur.

In the Crimean War, Cochrane again proposed the use of explosion ships and ”stink vessels”  against the Russians at Sebastopol and in the Baltic.  The eminent scientist Michael Faraday was consulted with regard to the potential effects of the burning of 400 tons of sulphur (which gives us an indication of the scale of Cochrane’s plans), so it is clear the ideas were seriously considered some 40 years after Cochrane made the initial suggestion.

It’s apparent that “Dundonald’s Destroyer” was some form of Weapon of Mass Destruction.  I note that Cochrane claims that it could be used on land or at sea…. Cochrane himself died, penniless in 1860.

1860-1870

Coal Torpedoes

A “coal torpedo” was the name given by Confederate Secret Service agents for a crude IED disguised as a lump of coal. The device was then introduced into the stocks of coal on ships and trains with the aim of causing an explosion in the boiler when it was shoveled into the engine.

The coal torpedo seems to have been invented by Capt Thomas Edgworth Courtney of the Confederate Secret Service.  Courtney proposed the idea to Jefferson Davis motivated probably by the financial rewards promised by the Confederacy which were suggested could be 50% of the value of Union shipping destroyed by new inventions. In this case, financial reward became the mother of a number of inventions. Courtney was commissioned and formed a Secret Service Corps of 25 men with direction to to attack any Union vessel or transport carrying military goods found in Confederate waters, with his rewards (no salary) being paid in Confederate war bonds.

Details of Courtney’s plan leaked to the Union who put a price on his head. Courtney escaped to England, and tried to sell the design of the Coal torpedo to the British Navy, the French, the Spanish and Turkey, without success.

The Union naval forces on the Mississippi under Admiral David Porter issued General order 184 accordingly:

The enemy have adopted new inventions to destroy human life and vessels in the shape of torpedoes, and an article resembling coal, which is to be placed in our coal piles for the purpose of blowing the vessels up, or injuring them. Officers will have to be careful in overlooking coal barges. Guards will be placed over them at all times, and anyone found attempting to place any of these things amongst the coal will be shot on the spot.

Details of the actual ships destroyed by this means are unclear as records have been destroyed but it appears likely that a number of the devices functioned as intended.

Courtney’s torpedoes were manufactured carefully at the 7th Avenue Artillery shop in Richmond, Virginia. Actual lumps of coal were used to form a mold into which iron was cast. The walls of the devices surrounded a hollow sufficient to hold about four ounces of blackpowder.  After filling, the void was closed with a threaded plug, dipped in beeswax and rolled in powdered coal to disguise it.  The device, although small, could rupture the pressure vessel of a ship, causing much greater secondary damage.

The concept of coal torpdeos carried on. After the American Civil War the Fenian Brotherhood (see previous blog posts) had connections with both sides and there appears to have been a plot in the 1860s and 70s to use such devices to place in the furnaces of New York hotels and British shipping .

In WW1 German saboteurs operating in the US planned to use such devices to attack munitions ships, and in an earlier post I mentioned that such devices were found by US forces after overrunning the Germans in France in 1918.

In WW2 both the OSS and the SOE used similar devices, as did German spies. I have found reports that the Japanese also developed a similar tool at the Noborito research Institute, and they were used by Japanese commandos in raids in New Guinea.  There is also a hint that the CIA explored this as a tactic to be used in Vietnam.

The OSS didn’t do things by halves and developed a coal camouflage kit for such devices, with a range of paints to enable the device to match variations in coal supplies.

1870-1880

Alexander Keith and the Crime of the Century bomb

This is another oddity.  Alexander Keith was born a Scotsman in 1827. He worked in Canada for a while and then worked for the Confederate States in the American Civil war as a blockade runner. In one escapade he was involved in what would today be called a chem bio plot to send clothes infected with yellow fever into the Northern cities in the United States.

It appears that he attempted to swindle some colleagues and fled to St Louis and then settled on the prairie. However one of his alleged victims tracked him down and he fled again, this time to Europe, where he assumed the name of “William King Thomas”, and later the alias William Thompson.  As he began to run out of money, in 1875, he concocted a complex insurance fraud that involved blowing up a passenger ship.  But his plans went badly wrong.

Keith hid a large timed IED in a barrel and arranged for it to be shipped across the Atlantic to New York in the steamship Mosel.  As the barrel was being loaded onto to the Mosel, the barrel slipped, fell and exploded on the dockside in Bremerhaven.  There must have been a significant quantity of explosives, and in a massive explosion 80 people were killed.  A witness stated ” “A mushroom-shaped column of smoke rose approximately 200 meters above the harbor. Everywhere people were crying and whimpering beside ruins. The entire pier was covered in soot: it was like the gateway to hell.”    Newspapers of the time dubbed the incident the “crime of the century”.

Interestingly Keith was on the Mosel and clearly understood that his plan had gone wrong. He had intended to sail on the ship, but leave it, and its explosive cargo, when he got to Southampton.  He went to his cabin immediately, and shot himself in the head twice (think about that…) . In the drama of the post blast no-one noticed the two shots from his cabin – only later did someone hear a groaning from his cabin. The door, locked from the inside, was broken down and Keith found lying on the floor, still alive. A revolver was by his side with 4 remaining bullets. His second shot paralyzed him.

Now, as I have written before, placing IEDs on ships was something that confederate agents had done before. (My next blog post will be about confederate “coal torpedo” IEDs used to damage ships) But by 1870 dynamite had become available significantly increasing the potential of an IED. As we know, Confederate IEDs had utilized clockwork mechanisms. Keith needed to obtain one for his plan, and had approached a German clock making company called JJ Fuchs of Bernberg, with a  request for a silent spring-loaded mechanism capable of functioning after a 10 day delay.  Keith refused to explain why he needed the mechanism but Fuchs designed it nonetheless. The mechanism was large and weighed about 30 pounds, and was so expensive that Keith initially refused to buy it. He approached two Viennese clock makers for a cheaper alternative but they failed, so eventually he returned to Fuchs.


The Fuchs timing mehcanism

There remain suspicions that Keith may have been involved in the disappearance of at least two other ships, The SS City Of Boston in January 1875 and the schooner Marie Victoria in 1864.

 


The suicide note

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