Standing Well Back
Command IED

More early explosive ROVs

In an earlier post here, I discussed some First World War antecedents of modern ROVs, these early one being used to deliver explosive charges – essentially a mobile land mine.  One of the early ones I mentioned was a Schneider “Crocodile” from 1915 which I have not much information on but is pictured here, and which apparently was French developed, but was trialled by a number of nations including Britain and Russia.

Here’s a pic of the controlling team, manning some sort of command interface while the ROV pays out or pulls a cable. I think they are French.

Interestingly I’ve just come across a reference to a number of other Russian devices, some of which seem to have been ROVs. These are referred to as “Sidelnikov’s mobile mine, the creeping mines of Kanushkin and Doroshin, the crocodile mine of Colonel Tolkushin.”     It’s interesting that Colonel Tolkushin’s device was also called a “Crocodile” like the French device. I have only this poor image of it from about 1915-1920:

It seems to be a multi-charge device, on wheels, but to be honest it’s not that clear. Alas my Russian is not good enough to dig out more detail.

Russian ROV technology also preceded some other German technology to deliver large explosive charges in WW2 that I have written about here .  In the 1930s, Russia developed the “Teletank” . One of the versions of this teletank had a large charge (200-700kg) which was “dropped” by the ROV tank like the German Borgward. These were radio-controlled tanks and utilised some early systems which were designed to prevent radio jamming.  Don’t underestimate Russian technology.

 

1910-1920

Rediscovering the hand-howitzer

Some time last year I encountered this strange photo, which I assumed was a peculiar weapon of some sort developed in WW1.

At first I thought it was some form of captive bolt  “humane-killer” for horses, with the hook in front of the trigger designed to hook onto the bridle of a horse, perhaps for use under bombardment – the hand-guard protecting the veterinarians hand from snapping teeth. But I couldn’t explain other aspects of the complex system on the “top” of the weapon.  I put out a plea for help last summer on social media but got no useful answers at the time.  A couple of days ago I thought I’d try again and this time with success. So here is the story of this exotic weapon, named by the inventor as a “hand howitzer. I’d like to thank a number of folk who helped me find this – much appreciated.

The inventor was a Northern Irish engineer, by the name of Samuel Cleland Davidson. He did not have any great education, leaving school at the age of 15, but he clearly had an aptitude for engineering and he was an avid experimenter.  After some time in the tea trade, he invented a range of machinery to help with the processing of tea leaves. One of his inventions was particularly successful, a system using a centrifugal fan to blow hot air over drying tea leaves, and his engineering factory in Belfast was called Sirocco, presumably a reference to a “hot wind”. His company “Davidson and Co” went on to make a wide variety of fans and other related mechanical engineering equipment. His company made fans for the Titanic, built at the adjacent shipyard in Belfast, as well as for other ships around the world. Indeed during WWI it would appear that the entire German naval fleet were equipped with Sirocco fans.

Davidson was already 68 years old at the start of WW1, but his son James was an officer, who was killed on the Somme.

Now as readers of the blog will know, there was a lot of innovation encouraged in WW1 to address the particular challenges of trench warfare. Quite a number of grenade and trench mortar systems were developed with varying degrees of success and sophistication and I’ve covered some of these such as the Garland trench mortar in earlier blog posts.  The British Army and the Australian army set up “Munitions Inventions Departments” and these developed and tested such innovations. At some stage, perhaps driven by his son’s experiences. Davidson designed a grenade launcher. Unlike some of the cruder systems that abounded, the “hand howitzer” was somewhat more sophisticated, giving the ability to adjust the rage of the grenade mechanically.  He achieved this by having a system that vented the breech to a lesser of greater degree. If the vent was fully closed the range of the grande would consequently be maximised and the range was shortened incrementally by adjusting the vent.  By implication the system,  had some sort of mechanism to check the level or the angle of launch.  The full US patent for the system is here and open can see some sort of inclinometer on the side not shown in the photo above. The hook allows the system to be held firm while checking the inclinometer.  There were two versions, one hand held, and one fired from a tripod.

Here’s an extract from one of the diagrams in the patent. Note that there diligent engineer that Davidson was, has included a built in oil bottle into the bottom of the system (“u”).

Davidson’s son, James, was serving with 36 (Ulster) Division and was killed on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Somme. He was a Captain in the Machine Gun Corps. Some personal details of James Davidson are here.  Other details are here.  Although it has perhaps little bearing on his father’s invention, which brought me to this subject, one cannot but be moved by the story of his death. After eight o’clock on the morning of 1 July 1916, in response to a request for a Vickers Gun, the official battalion War Diary for the 13th Royal Irish Rifles reported that “Captain Davidson whose guns were in reserve was then sent out.”   At 10.20 am, the War Diary notes, Davidson reported:

“Am in B line & have got up two Vickers Guns, am consolidating both. Cannot say how many infantry are in line … We cannot possible advance & reinforcements, ammn [sic] & bombs most urgently needed.”

At 12.40 pm he sent a further message:

“I am holding the end of a communication trench in A Line with a few bombers & a Lewis gun. We cannot hold much longer. We are being pressed on all sides and ammunition almost finished.”

His family received a number of letters from his fellow soldiers. One was from Lieutenant WW Ashcroft written on July 3rd, 1916. He too was a member of the Machine Gun Company of the 108th Brigade, and noted of James Davidson that “It was through him that I came to the 13th [Royal Irish Rifles]…” He went on to describe to Davidson’s father the events around his son’s death:

“When things went badly, and he no doubt felt his obvious duty was to take up reinforcements, off he went, and for a long time he held up more or less single handed a dangerous position; although shot through the knee, he refused to be carried back; alternately he fired his Gun, and threw bombs until he had to retire to bind up his wound; he returned, and did what he could, and finally he started back to try and find reinforcements. He was shortly after shot through the head.”

Another, Gunner Thomas Pinkerton wrote in August 1916 to Samuel Davidson that he had been with his son when, having held out in the trenches despite being shot through the knee, Davidson had decided to try to get back to the British lines:

“We got to the German front line trench and went down the trench about 200 yards to get as much dead ground as possible. I topped the parapet, and helped the Captain up, and had just got through the wire when I noticed about a dozen men on my left, a few yards up, retiring. Just then the Germans opened a deadly Machine Gun and Rifle fire on us – we just got 20 yards from the wire when the Captain got shot through the head – he just fell, and never spoke nor moved. He died instantly – there was no hope.”

James Davidson’s body was lost in the confusion of the Somme. Twelve years later his body was found on the south side of the Ancre Valley, and identified from an engraved compass found in his pocket. He is now buried in the Serre Road Cemetery, No2, but his name also appears on the Theipval Memorial to the missing.

Samuel Davidson’s invention was registered and patented in 1917, the following year.  It is said he was negotiating a significant order for the hand howitzer with the US army but the end of the war came first and the design was shelved.  He was knighted in 1921.

I will have more on WW1 Munitions Inventions Departments activity in future posts.

 

 

 

 

20th Century

German Explosive Remote-Control speedboats of WW1 and WW2

Apologies, it has been some time since my last blog – I have been distracted on other projects.
This blog is an interesting addition, I think, and opened my eyes once again to matters of historical technology that have been forgotten by many. It concerns German remote-controlled, explosively-laden boats in WW1 and WW2 used in the English Channel and the north European coastline. Given current interest in drone technology it is tempting to start by putting it in that context, but I think I’m going to start by putting it in the context of the boat and ship-borne IEDs that have been something of a theme of this blog in recent years.  To remind you the North European coast from the Netherlands, through Belgium, the English Channel and round the French coast beyond St Nazaire have seen repeated use of the concept of a ship or boat loaded with explosives and sent to or placed next to a target for many centuries.  You can see my blogs on these by following the “ship-Borne IED” tag on the right hands column,   In rough historical order, these are:
  • The Hoop, Antwerp, 1584
  • A floating IED designed by Fulton, use against the French in 1620s by the British Royal Navy
  • Benbow’s Vesuvius of 1693, St Malo
  • Captain Dundas’s “machine vessel”, used against Dieppe and others used against Dunkirk, 1694
  • Meister’s ship IEDs of 1695
  • A catamaran IED used against the French by the Royal Navy in 1804
  • Cochrane’s Infernals of 1809 used at the Aix Roads, and a  larger vessel built in 1812
  • The Zebrugge raid of 1918
  • Operation Lucid, 1940
  • Operation chariot , St Nazaire, 1942
So all of these attacks used boats or ships loaded with explosives to attack ports and shipping.  In that context the use by the Germans of the same concept in WW1 and WW2 shouldn’t be a surprise but I have only just become aware of them.

WW1.

 Below is a picture of a WW1 weapons used by the Germans in the English channel in WW1. It’s called the “Fernlenkboot” (“remote control boat”), sometimes abbreviated to FL-boot.  The vessel was 17m long, and carried 700kg (1,500lbs) of explosive.   The concept was to use these against British Royal Naval vessels operating off the coast of Flanders – right in the traditional area for such attacks over the centuries. The control concept was quite complicated. Each boat had a spool of wire 20km long to provide control signals.  Observation was by aircraft which flew above and sent radio messages to a control station about steering directions.  The boat had a powerful petrol engine and could achieve speeds of 30 knots.  I have found some inconsistent but intruiging suggestions that as well as the cable controlled versions, radio control systems may also have been developed. Certainly some seem to have been equipped with antennae.
The commands available included
  • System test
  • Engine start, engine stop
  • Set Rudder position
  • Turn on a light, to enable the boat to be tracked at night
  • Detonate the warhead, to prevent capture of the boat if it missed its target
In later systems there was an auto destruct mechanism added that functioned after a time period.
The vessels were not used that often but one did hit HMS Erebus in October 1917 which was damaged but not sunk.
The provenance of this weapon is worthy of exploring. The system was built by “Siemens-Shuckert” and seems to have had its genesis in an idea that Werner Siemens the late 19th century engineer developed in 1871. I have blogged about Werner Siemens and his port defence command initiated IEDs before here.  In 1905 his son Wilhelm resurrected his father’s ideas for remote controlled boat weapon. It appears that Siemens developed the idea of an remote controlled , explosively laden boat some time before Tesla, who had a similar idea some 20 or 30 years later. Siemens really does play an important part in the history of explosive systems. The development of such technology of course parallels the development of modern torpedo technology. The advantage of a surface system is that it can be actively seen and steered by the user – the disadvantage is that the system can also be seen by the target, (stating the obvious here).    By 1914 the Siemens-Shuckert firm had continued to develop its technology and an interesting event occurred. There was a “power boat competition” in Monaco and a hi-tech French powerboat with an innovative engine was expected to be the winner. Just before the race, the boat was withdrawn by the French competitor and the boat disappeared – to turn up later in the Siemens- Shuckert research facility in Berlin, being reverse engineered. There was a French government investigation into the acquisition by the Germans of this technology. It appears that a man called Schmidt, who “pretended to be Russian” had bought the speedboat for hard cash. He was working with the German company Bosch, who were in return working for Siemens. This is the motor that appeared in the FL-boot in the war.  So some very interesting German technical espionage and industrial technology acquisition was going on before WW1.

WW2

In WW2, the Germans develop a similar concept called “Linsen” – high speed boats filled with explosives.  The concept was somewhat simpler – the boats had a crew (eventually of one person) who got the system within a distance of a target and then they “bailed out” jumping overboard. Then a control boat with an operator steered the Linsen craft to its target at high speed. this control boat in theory then picked up the original crew.  Like other systems, there were quite a few variants. Maximum speed from its Ford petrol engine was 31 knots. The boats carried a charge of 300kg.  A contact fuse in the bow caused the bow to blow off but the main charge (and engine) in the stern then sank, and detonated at a depth under the target, thus increasing the explosive effect. Clever.  Radio control from the support vessel was by ultra-short wave radio on the 7m band, a Blaupunkt, using various transmitted “tones” decoded into commands.  The receiver filtered the tones into relays and actuators.   The controls possible were:
  • Actuate starboard rudder
  • Actuate port rudder
  • Stop engine
  • Start engine
  • Slow ahead
  • Go faster
  • Detonate  the boat, if the attack was a failure.
  There is a suggestion that the control mechanism was also used in some of the Goliath tracked vehicles that I have blogged about here.
The control units, incorporating a very modern looking chest rig and joy stick look remarkably modern.
The Linsen boats were small, fast and worked in pairs.
The Linsen were used with very  limited success against Allied vessels off the coast of Normandy in the summer of 1944.   In one of those neat historical coincidences , later in 1944, Linsen explosive boats were used against Allied vessels trying to use the port of Antwerp in Belgium – some 360  years after the Hoop explosive vessel had been used near Antwerp to attack the Spanish invaders. Some things are never new…    Of course, other nations produced similar concepts in WW2, including the Italians, the Japanese (who used “swarm tactics” in high speed craft not unlike that envisaged by Iranian craft in the Gulf).  I may write about these in the future.    Small fast moving vessels containing explosives is a concept still very much in vogue, but largely the tactics remain similar, and the technology has advanced a little – but there’s really not much new, as ever!
20th Century

Lt Finch, Proto-ATO

In my last post I mentioned the command-wire IED used in Salonika to bring down a German Fighter ace, and that “Lt Finch” of the Army Ordnance Corps designed the device.  Well, it turns out that Lt Finch was a remarkable character – and since this blog sometimes veers into stories of interesting characters, such as “Bimbashi Garland” (another former member of the Army Ordnance Corps) I think his story is worthy of a brief recount here. I won’t tell the whole piece about his device because it’s going to be shortly included in a book by a former colleague on the exploits of the Ammunition Trade in the British Army – so you’ll have to wait for that for technical details of the device and read it in his book. I’ll let you know when it is published.

  • George Finch was born in Australia in 1888. He was brought up in Paris by an eccentric mother.
  • He was an outstanding piano player and nearly became a concert pianist. He was a clearly a born adventurer and scaled both Beachy Head and Notre Dame cathedral (at night) illegally.
  • He decided to study physics and chemistry in Zurich so sat down and learned German in 4 months to enable this.  He passed out with the highest marks, winning a prize. One of his lecturers was Einstein.
  • While in Zurich he climbed mountains, with his brother Max, making a number of “first ascents” on some serious mountains, inventing modern alpinism, which eschewed the traditional use of local guides. He invented several mountaineering pieces of equipment, still in use today, including lightweight anoraks and down filled jackets.
  • He was very critical of “traditional” British mountaineering, and the use of guides. He believed that modern alpinists should not use guides and be capable of leading serious pitches and choosing routes. In may ways he was a forerunner of post-WW2 British alpining techniques – just two men on a mountain, pitting their own skills together against the elements. But the British Alpine Club took decades to forgive him, and his somewhat abrasive character.
  • In 1912 he was appointed as a research chemist at Woolwich Arsenal Laboratory (the same Lab that Garland graduated from 8 years earlier). He also started work at Imperial College London, where he later became a distinguished Professor.

Finch in the laboratory

  • In 1914 he joined the Army as a Gunner Officer and ended up in Salonika where he worked for the Ordnance Department, managing ammunition stocks as an Ammunition Technical Officer. He was intimately involved in a major project to recondition many thousands of crucial artillery rounds that were exuding explosives.
  • He received great credit for his careful professionalism in designing the balloon explosive device discussed in my last post and about which more details will be published in a future book by JB.
  • In 1921 his role in a Mallory-led reconnaissance expedition to Everest was blocked by committee men in the Alpine Club. At the time he was the foremost alpine mountaineer in the country. He grew his hair long, wouldn’t wear a hat unless he had to, and hadn’t been to public school, so he didn’t fit the “establishment” Alpine Club.
  • But in 1922 he was part of Mallory’s first proper Everest expedition. He invented the oxygen system used in this climb and subsequently by Hilary and Tensing in 1953. He got as high as 450m from the summit in 1922  (higher than anyone ever before) but turned back when his partner became ill. He could have been first to summit were it not for this drama
  • In WW2 he ran a team improving British fire brigades responding to German Luftwaffe  incendiary bomb attacks by looking at the physics of how fire spreads. He conducted detailed post bomb analysis of incendiary attacks as a precursor to developing new firefighting techniques.   Later from an office in Whitehall he developed the “J-Bomb”, a much improved incendiary munition – 800,000 of which were dropped by Bomber Command from 1943.

    • The J-Bomb produced a 2 foot wide by 15 foot long white flame which burned for one minute or more.
  • The J-Bomb designed by Finch eventually used a liquid fuel/metal powder mix which is sort of interesting in terms of modern munition design.  He also helped the Americans develop a similar system, tuned for Japanese buildings and was much praised by the Americans for his pragmatic scientific contributions. By strange coincidence his Office in the Old War Office Building in Whitehall was later occupied 50 years later by an Ammunition Technical Officer.
  • He became a well respected Professor at Imperial College. In the 1950s he became the scientific adviser to India, and redesigned his oxygen system for Hillary’s ascent of Everest in 1953. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and awarded the Hughes Medal (other winners included Nils Bohr and Fermi). I believe he was a member of the Nobel Prize for Physics Committee.

So an interesting chap, to say the least. He had three wives. During the WW1 (as a young Captain) he had returned from Salonika and found out his first wife pregnant. It was ten months since he was last home…. and she told him she was having an affair with a Lt Col. He caught a ferry to France, found the Colonel, “thrashed him” and cracked on with a new girl.

So, our erstwhile Gunner/Ordnance Corps Ammunition officer was someone quite remarkable. You can read more about his mountaineering life in the book ” The Maverick Mountaineer” .

Sua Tela Tonanti.

1830-1840

Command Wire Devices – Land, Sea and Air

I’ve written before how command-wire electrically-initiated explosive devices have been around for a couple of hundred years now. But I want to look at the subject again, obliquely, by highlighting the different environments in which these devices have been used. There are one or two fascinating diversions in this post.

Clearly, command wire devices on “land” have been around for centuries, derived originally from the “string” or “cord” pulled devices of the late 1500s such as the one discussed in an earlier post here.  Then in the early part of the late 1700s/early 1800s (started by Benjamin Franklin who was the first to electrically initiate an explosive (I think) they spread into broader use. See these earlier posts here and here.  In the 19th century, “minefields” were sometimes not  constructed from autonomous victim operated mines, but rather command initiated devices, controlled from some form of command post.  See this one below from the US Civil War era, showing an underground store from which “torpedoes” (buried mines) were initiated on the battlefield in front.

Today electrically initiated command wire land based explosive devices are pretty common as terrorist ambush devices, with the only issue being the potential visibility of the wire or the process of laying the wire between device and firing point.

Various engineers and inventors in the early decades of the 1800s refined electrical initiation and waterproofed systems to allow them to be used for command initiated defensive minefields on coasts or in rivers – these include the German, Siemens, the Prussian Schilling, the Russian Schilder and Pasley, the British Royal Engineer used such waterproofed electrically initiated charges for demolition purposes. By far the most interesting use, however and one which strangely receives scant attention (perhaps not so strangely given the secrecy of the project was Samuel Colt’s 1836 concept of an “Underwater Battery”).  This was an electrically initiated complex defensive array of underwater mines designed to protect ports and rivers.  They key part of this invention however was not the electrical initiation but Colt’s remarkable command system which I’m 99% certain used a “camera obscura” to project a live image of the area in which underwater mines had been carefully placed. The image was projected onto a “command panel” with electrical contacts built in so that when a ship approached the position of the mine the image of the ship was projected onto one of many metal contacts on the  “command panel” . All the operator had to do was to use an electrical cable from the battery stored underneath to the contact where the ship was displayed on the command panel when the live image of  the ship covered it and that device would be initiated.  Rather like a “magic wand” – touch the live image of the  ship you wish to destroy and it will explode  Such a remarkable integrated “augmented reality” observation and command system seems to be 200 years ahead of its time. I have written about the system before here. Someone needs to recreate one of these for a TV show.

Colt’s control panel. Note the convex mirror reflecting the image of the minefield from above.

Colt wrapped his invention in secrecy, but I think its pretty clear to me that his ingenious observation and control system was a first for initiating complex command wire minefields.  Interestingly, a few years later it appears the Austrians used such a system to protect Venice around 1860. How they got hold of Colt’s idea, I have no idea. Here’s how it was described:

Here’s an image of the Austrian command post.

 

I remain  fascinated by this system. A remote, visual, augmented-reality weapon system, invented by Samuel Colt in the 1830’s. Kept secret, then deployed by the Austrians in the 1860s then forgotten about. Wow!  And only a few years ago people were shocked when terrorists in Iraq used a video camera overlooking an IED to know when to initiate a device, but Colt beat them to it by 170 years on the Potomac!

So that’s land and sea, but what about air – surely command wire initiated explosive devices haven’t been used in the air ?  Well, actually they have, over 100 years ago. During the Salonika campaign in 1917, some balloons were used by British Forces as observation platforms.   German pilots decided to take on these balloons and shot down several, one pilot alone claiming 18 balloons .

A German aircraft attacking an observation balloon

Lt Finch of the British Army Ordnance Corps was asked to design a charge to be placed on a balloon, and this was to be detonated electrically when an enemy plane was close. He placed a 500 pound ammonal charge in a  60 gallon galvanised water tank and “the balloon went up” carrying the explosives connected to a 3000ft cable, on 28 November. As a German plane approached, piloted by Oberleutnant von Eschwege, it was exploded, and the enemy aircraft’s wings were blown off, killing him. Here’s some details of the aftermath which is interesting:

There was no celebrating, no cheering. The British official history states:

He came to his end as a result of a legitimate ruse of war, but there was no rejoicing among the pilots of the squadrons which had suffered from his activities. They would have preferred that he had gone down in fair combat.

Eschwege was given a burial with full military honors; six British pilots carried his coffin to the grave. A message was dropped over Drama airfield:

To the Bulgarian-German Flying Corps in Drama. The officers of the Royal Flying Corps regret to announce that Lt. von Eschwege was killed while attacking the captive balloon. His personal belongings will be dropped over the lines some time during the next few days.

The next day a German plane dropped a wreath and a message:

To the Royal Flying Corps, Monuhi. We thank you sincerely for your information regarding our comrade Lt. von Eschwege and request you permit the accompanying wreath and flag to be placed on his last resting place, Deutches Fliegerkommando.

A similar but unsuccessful device was used on the Western front.

So there we have electrically-initiated command-wire explosive devices on land, on sea, and in the air.

To close though, my favourite Salonika campaign story. Nothing to do with explosive devices!    The British army’s  efforts in the multi-national campaign in Salonkia did not go unnoticed. The Serbians, ostensibly the British Allies in the Macedonia  campaign, of which Salonika was a part, were most grateful for the arduous efforts of their allies.  They therefore proposed a glamorous medal be minted, something like “the Glowing and Glorious Order of the Serbian White Eagle”.  They proposed awarding 5000 of these medals to a random selection of the British forces who had taken part as a visible sign of their gratitude.  The superior Headquarters of British Forces in the Eastern Mediterranean was based in Cairo and an overworked staff officer in G1 was tasked with providing a list of the assigned honourees. Somewhere along the line the list was accidentally put in the wrong envelope. As a result, a list of 5000 soldiers across the Near East, many of whom had hardly even heard of Salonika but who “had not yet received a typhoid injection” were surprised to receive a flowery, ornate and shiny medal through the post – and 5000 hardened Salonika veterans probably got another typhoid jab.

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