Standing Well Back
20th Century

1931 Train Bomber – Pervert or Russian Agent?

I’m grateful to Prof Tim Wilson for drawing my attention to these peculiar 1931 railway bombings by Sylvestre Matushka. Here’s the story:

In the 1930’s the most important “infrastructure” in Europe was the railway system. As my previous posts about railways have discussed, (see the tab on railway bombings in the right-hand column) railways provide a useful target for explosive attacks – they impact the wider world economically and therefore always get attention, there’s thousands of unguarded miles of tracks and bridges that provide safe and unconstrained opportunity of access, the presence of a population dense, massive target, arriving at great speed can be predicted, and the very fact a train balances fairly precariously on rails is also a key factor. So trains and railways were (and remain) a popular target.

The protagonist in this story, Sylvestre Matushka, was a Hungarian engineer and businessman. Some reports suggest that during the First World War he was a soldier in an Austro-Hungarian military engineer unit, responsible for demolitions of railway lines which of course, if true, would be significant. He later became a manager and owner of a number of businesses including a quarrying company which gave him access to explosives or a justification to purchase explosives. Other reports suggest he was a chemist.

Matrushka, (in a dirty raincoat!)

He made at least two unsuccessful efforts to derail trains with explosives in Austria in December and January 1930/31.  In the first attempt he loosened the railway track (also leaving a note saying ” “Assault! Revolution! Victory!”), but the attempted derailment failed. In the second, he fastened another rail across the track but that too failed to derail the train. Strange for him to use this methods if he was a chemist able to access explosives and had experience of damaging railway lines.

Then on 8 August 1931, he derailed a train with explosives causing over 100 casualties (none of them fatal) . The train was the Berlin-Basel express, and the attack took place just south of Berlin. I’m not sure of the device construction but one vague report suggests it was electrically initiated.

A little over a month later on September 13th, he successfully attacked the Budapest to Vienna express, a the Biatorbágy bridge near Budapest.  His device was placed on the viaduct and the train and several carriages plunged into a ravine.   Here 22 people died and 120 were injured. Matushka was arrested at the scene where he was pretending to be a surviving passenger. He was released but re-arrested a month later in Vienna, where he “confessed”. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

I have regrettably found little detail so far about the device here also. It reportedly used dynamite in one source but another more convincing source suggests the explosive was “ecrasite”. Dynamite as a main charge would match the quarrying background of Matruska but ecrasite would perhaps marry with the report he was a chemist, and as military explosive perhaps marry with the reports that he had been a demolitions officer in the First Wold War.  One source, without explanation, suggests the Vienna device was initiated by the pressure of the train closing a switch. That’s interesting but I can’t confirm it yet. Such devices were certainly technologically possible, and were used in the Great War and before, as I have discussed in earlier posts, so would have been available in concept to Matushka. But he was “present at the scene” and a command initiated device would have been simpler perhaps, so I think there still remains a question mark over the initiation.

The question of Matushka’s “motivation” is interesting. Initially the investigations assumed a political motivation because at the Berlin explosion a defaced Nazi magazine was found and the note found after one of the earlier attempted derailments.  Allegedly a letter was found after the last incident “praising revolution” but there are suggestions that this was a plant that enabled the government to implement an anti-communist security crack-down. Two communists were executed for supposedly encouraging Matrushka, but there were doubts about how genuine this was.   At his trial he claimed he first claimed to have been directed by “God” to conduct the bombings, then that they were instigated by an imaginary or long dead friend, “Leo the Ghost” who only he could see and who had hypnotised him. The assessment at the time was that Matrushka was pretending to be insane.  Then a story emerged that he had sexual gratification from seeing dramatic and tragically violent incidents. This was supposedly the first ever case of “Symphorophilia”, and to be honest I’m not aware of any subsequent ones involving explosives, so I’m a bit sceptical. To me, it’s no more believable than “Leo the Ghost”.    In any event he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Matushka remained in jail in Vac throughout most of the Second World War. Vac was liberated by the advancing Soviet Army, and at that point Matushka disappeared.   There are unconfirmed but intriguing suggestions that he then worked for the Soviet Union under a new identity, as an explosives expert in the latter part of the War,  and perhaps even operated as a demolition expert in the Korean War in the 1950s. The Soviet Union certainly had secret programs to cause disruption to Western European countries later in the 1930s (see my earlier posts on Ilya Starinov) , and some of these did include train bombings of a similar kind. There are other rumours (supposedly back by documents) that he reappeared in Hungary in the 1970s under another identity.

There is an interesting possible link to the first bombing near Berlin. The morning after the bombing, two policemen were assassinated by a communist group who were active at the time – and Berlin was a long way from Matushka’s home turf.

So the possibilities are that

  • He was inspired by God
  • He was inspired for reasons of perverted sexual gratification
  • He was a right wing “plant” to justify anti-communist programs
  • He was a communist operative.

Take your pick.

 

20th Century

Book Review – The Secret Horsepower Race

The subject of this book review is perhaps a little outside my usual scope, being a history of largely mechanical engineering developments. The book is ” The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development” by Calum Douglas.

Is there a more complex piece of machinery in history than a WW2 fighter engine combining dozens of technologies- with demands on it from 0, to 35,000 feet, and when life or death is the outcome?

This book has sparked significant interest from me for a number of reasons:

  • I’m originally a metallurgist and there’s a fair bit of that in there.
  • I have some background in Technical Intelligence matters in a previous life, decades ago, and there was plenty of that going on in the 1930’s and 1940s in this field. Techniques were largely the same!
  • Although I’m not a mechanical engineer I have a modicum of knowledge and recently have been refurbishing a 1914 stationary engine – this gives me just enough understanding to get through most of the technical elements of the book. When I say “refurbishing” I mean “tinkering and occasionally get it to spring in to life”.
  • My father was a mech engineer and had a connection with Ricardo, a British engineering research company which played a key role, and also with Vickers who bought Supermarine in 1928.
  • This blog is essentially about the technical development of certain weapon technology – and this parallel weapon technology development to the matters I discuss on this site was pretty important.
  • I “get” the importance of piston engine development at this period and had previously dipped into the subject a few years ago
  • I know many of the readers of this blog have a broader technical interest in military history

Mr Douglas has written a tour de force here. The research from various sources in various languages has clearly been thorough and detailed. The book hangs together well, is well structured, laid out and with significant effort on technical images, which genuinely add to understanding.  I admit that sometimes the replicated graphs of WW2 engine performance under tests sometimes become hard for me to decipher – a reflection on my patience rather than the author’s work. But they are there if you need to interpret them.   He has bridged the highly technical subject matter to most readers with a modicum of knowledge like myself in a clear and unambiguous way. I confess at points I went off to do some side research in occasional subjects (like getting a better understanding of sleeve valves and disc valves, as an example, about which I was ignorant) to give me a better understanding of some of the issues he discusses but I don’t see this as a negative – I’m now a more knowledgeable reader. A book that encourages one to read more around a subject can only be a good thing. If the author had felt the need to explain such matters, it would be several volumes long and I think he chose the right path, by and large.  Another example of this – I had to read up on the differences between “pre-ignition” and “detonation” (in terms of internal combustion engines) which I didn’t grasp the reasons for and the differences, but more importantly I was keen to understand the chemistry of detonation in the context my own separate understanding of explosive science. It surprised me that post-combustion products or remnants could explode “again” at the pressures present in the cylinder. Again, no huge negative and a detailed technical analysis like this would normally demand some contextual reading for the average consumer.  I also like the way he gives detailed technical excerpts from his sources as part of the main narrative – it helps the book hang together rather than having to refer to appendices or footnotes. The verbatim arguments recorded diligently by stenographers between the various German protagonists is astounding and, separately, pithy letters within other nations equally surprises, and it’s a positive to detail these directly.  On occasion a throw away line intrigues me and sets me off on a tangent – like the mention of 146 Merlin engines sat in France in June 1940 ahead of the Nazi invasion and an oblique mention of attempts’ to re-patriate them – there’s a story there, I suspect, that I’ll dig in to – readers may recall that I’ve written in the past about the efforts of The Earl of Suffolk who was getting machine tools, diamonds , scientists and heavy water out of France at this very time.

I think the book is important for a number of reasons:

  • The development of aero engines in the 1930s shows how nation states can influence strategic technology development in both useful and negative ways.  It is clear that the governments of UK, USA and Germany were all talking with commercial companies to develop key technologies, set priorities, targets, directions and aspirations, and providing money too. Sometimes that guidance failed or pushed matters in the wrong direction but at other times it led to remarkably fast technology development.   Like many I had heard of the importance of the UK ‘s efforts to win the Schneider trophy in the early 1930s, and I had the false (schoolboy) impression that it was simply a precursor to the Spitfire, but only now do I see the the importance that this government funded effort to support the Supermarine company in the competition and the benefits in terms of engine development capability.  But beyond that, the “R” engine in the Schneider trophy winning aircraft was hand-built and had an expected life of 4 hours operating only at sea level. In 1940, the RAF needed thousands of Merlin engines, with hundreds of hours possible on each, operating higher than 30,000ft.
  • The pace of technology development was remarkable. We think that technology development is fast today in the early 21st century. But take this as an example – In 1914 many aircraft engines used a wick to deliver fuel to the combustion chamber.  Just 17 years later, the “R” engine in the Supermarine S6 was as if from another planet, generating 2000bhp.  But the “R” in the float plane only operated at sea-level. 12 years later Spitfire IXs were operating at 38,000 ft, an entirely different proposition
  • It may seem that “piston engine development” is a single subject – but as Mr Douglas lays out, it’s much more interesting than that. To develop an aircraft piston engine the following technologies need to be improved, each of which impacts on and complicates the other:
    • Engine layout and construction
    • Metallurgy, as applied to every component
    • Valve technology
    • Fuel technology to prevent “knocking” or pre-detonation.  Germany was hampered by the logistics of its synthetic fuel production.
    • Carburation- how to get the fuel to the right place in the right form and with the right energy output – using carburettors, pressurised carburettors and eventually fuel injection.  Hugely complex engineering challenges in this alone.
    • Cooling technology and the associated challenges with pressurising cooling systems, applied to engines and components such as turbo chargers and even valves.  I had no idea that liquid sodium was used as a coolant inside valves.
    • Superchargers and Turbochargers.
    • Lubrication technology
    • Bearing technology
    • Spark plug technology
    • Logistics – the Luftwaffe were clearly hampered by poorly thought through logistics for their fuel production, by circumstance already a difficult challenge but one they made worse by poor decisions on storage and production logistics.  This is in marked contrast to the British effort to secure a robust logistics system for 100 octane fuel.
    • In some German engines the whole engine had to allow a gun barrel to be slid down the middle

The development of one technology often impacts on others – creating complexity. To give a simple example, adding lead to a fuel to improve its performance, has a knock-on effect (pun) causing more corrosion. So then a designer has to balance more performance with less engine life, along with a host of other implications from maintenance engineering resources, raw material supply, pilot training, production engineering, etc. At speed, in war and with life and death to consider too. It’s interesting that it often appeared that German research efforts were focused on “getting around” material constraints, while UK and US efforts largely focused on simple engine improvement. One wonders what the excellent German engineers could have done if resources were not a problem. Perhaps the Saturn 5 in the US space program indicates the potential of what might have been.

So the book is essentially a description of how nations pull together widely divergent technologies into a single strategic direction, with varying degrees of success. (Spoiler, the Allies win, although they were losing for some time).  The author’s efforts to address the parallel tracks of technology development in a coherent way are commendable.   I find it fascinating that each nation had its strengths within the above subsets of expertise but the overall successful engine required a fusion of many and, as often as not, that fusion was administrative rather than technical. In the early part of the war the German fuel injection system was streets ahead of problematic British carburettors. The Americans were better at fuel technology and turbochargers and the British had their strengths too, radiators being one example. Running successful engineering projects requires excellent communication systems and administrative skills as well as engineering knowledge. The question is, do those communication and administrative skills lie best in government or in engineering companies?  In the German system at one stage there was a clear gap between a central ministry and the development labs in terms of setting technical priorities. It was a fault at this interface that caused the Me 109G , intended to be a replacement for the Me 1o9 F, to be no better than the aircraft it replaced – a true disaster from the German perspective.  One particularly interesting example of  British government-company integration was the installation of “moles” who were “embedded” with engine manufactures with a specific, openly acknowledged role of reporting to Beaverbrook’s Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP), providing eyes and ears and direct up-to-date communications between Ministry and manufacturer.  These liaison positions were titled “Resident Officers”. I think that’s an interesting concept.  High tech development of multiple systems becomes a communications problem as much as anything else.

Government competence is an issue in terms of technical development. While there were some remarkably capable engineers within Nazi Germany, when the Nazis placed political appointees in the engineering system, or gave authority to people because they were famous pilots, things fell down. Fascists and competent government don’t go hand in hand.  A good example is the appointment of Ernst Udet, a WW1 fighter pilot and protege of Goering to head a technical research department, for which he was eminently unsuitable.  Running research departments demands an unusual fusion of technical brilliance and administrative skills – a mix that political extremists rarely provide.  But in Germany it wasn’t just personal inadequacies that flawed their strategic engineering development response – it was also the structure and attitude of its fascist government that seemed to think that metaphorically barking orders equates to authoritative competence. Italy was even worse.  That’s an interesting lesson for today’s governments too.  Running trains on time might be within the capability of a fascist government, but not making a 2000bhp Merlin operate at 35,000 ft and shoe-horn it in to a Mustang.   The point is really knocked home in reports in the book detailing how so many of the best Luftwaffe pilots were killed not by enemy action but by engine failure.

The book does highlight for me the strategic importance of any nation holding its engineers in high regard. The engineering talent that was applied to the development of piston engines in the 1930s and in subsequent war years is simply stunning. We celebrate the contribution soldiers and airmen make but the contribution to a national goal in war of engineers was never more apparent then. There were many more British aircraft engineers than Barnes Wallis, and dare I say some of them at least of equal stature, but today largely forgotten.   For what it is worth the Germans provide a fine example still to this day – “Dr-Ing” is still an honourable title in Germany – but in the UK engineers seem to be held in less high regard.  The occasional inserts provided by the author on key engineers emphasise the human aspect of this technological battle.

The amount of Technical Intelligence going on in the 1930s and 1940s was a surprise to me. British and American engineers visited Nazi engine development sites until the late 1930s and vice versa. Indeed in some areas technology was exchanged – the FW-190’s superior performance was at least due in part to above-board transfer of technology in the 1930s. Regular engineers working for civilian companies were clearly reporting back to government authorities about what they saw and heard on foreign visits. There was also covert activity with , for example, two German spies visiting the US Government facility at Wright Field in such a manner that they were able to draw extensive diagrams of equipment and tooling. The different approaches to analysis of captured enemy equipment is also fascinating – do you bang out a quick report, or do you spend a year or two doing detailed analysis? If you classify it as “Secret” , is it usable information?  If you are 3/4 of the way through the development of your own fuel injection system is it helpful; or a distraction, to have a report on the enemy’s system thrust under your nose, by an analyst who perhaps hasn’t seen your work?  Age-old problems seen in stark outline here with the US, UK and Germany all taking different approaches to Tech Intelligence analysis.

One area that particularly caught my attention, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a specific Technical Intelligence effort to examine fuel systems from captured or shot-down German aircraft. At every such opportunity, samples were taken, analysed and correlated over time. This provide a remarkable database for Air Intelligence to examine. Furthermore they clearly and specifically engaged with the top fuel scientists in the country to draw inferences from changing fuel specifications – and whether these were driven by technology demands or forced by fuel supply and synthesis problems. A great example of how collecting mundane data consistently can allow very valuable insights into enemy technical and strategic capabilities. The author, quite rightly, describes the analysis provided as a result as “astounding” – a great lesson for modern military technical intelligence.  On the flip side however, the British took an age to work out that the additional gas injection system they found on captured German aircraft was using Nitrous Oxide, despite knowing that the Germans referred to it as the “Ha-Ha” system. It never occurred to the Tech Int analysts or indeed the British combustion experts until much later.

One final Technical Intelligence matter – Open source – there is repeated reference to the important technical information on newly developed German engines by reading articles in magazines – the German seemed quite comfortable even as late as 1942 to announce aspects of their engineering developments in openly published magazines for enthusiasts. Similarly, in November 1941 American articles about new fighter aircraft engines were being openly published, and German Tech Int copied a diagram of a twin supercharged Merlin from “Flight” magazine. Who needs spies when the opposition makes public their secrets? That is, assuming people to bother to read the published material, which was not always the case.

As I read the book, I encountered several fascinating engineering problems and learned how different nations addressed them – fuel dissolving in lubricating oil on cylinder walls was one such issue for the Germans who ran their engines cooler, but not so for the Merlin which had a deliberately hotter running coolant system but  that meant the fuel evaporated off from the hot lubricating oil. Thus the German lubricating oil became dilute and less effective, even though, in principle, a cooler engine was a better thing.  Another interesting technical issues for Messerschmidt 109s was an engine malfunction caused by high performance synthetic fuel being stored in a flexible canvas rubber bag, which the fuel reacted with, reducing the fuel’s performance, polluting it, and damaging engines, reducing their life.

As someone with a modicum of metallurgical knowledge I was still surprised at the criticality of the lack of nickel for the German war machine. I hadn’t come across that before and the author’s explanation of the implications of essentially the German nation having no nickel in any of its components are stark. There’s probably an interesting story somewhere about how they obtained what nickel they had, mainly from Finland.  High performance engines operate in and produce inside themselves demanding environments for steel, and nickel is crucial in making steel less reactive -and this lack of nickel leads, as the author makes clear, to a direct consequence of lower performance engines. Their aircraft had less performance because of a lack of nickel – a mundane alloy component in today’s world. Imagine being the Daimler Benz house metallurgist and being told to come up with a nickel steel alloy, but not use any nickel.  At a crucial part of the war (1942) the conflicting demands on metallurgical resources means that key alloys were being taken away from aircraft production for use in flak guns.  Again, a fascist diktat-run government couldn’t manage the implications of that.

In one interesting area the German were well head and that was in developing control systems. The multiple subsystems in advanced piston engines create real challenges in terms of an operator managing them – and the Germans put great thought into automating these control systems where possible – allowing the pilots to concentrate on “being pilots” and not monitoring and adjusting sub-systems as a “flight engineer”. Today these would all be electronic but creating mechanical systems for this was quite something. Here’s an image below of the BMW engine management system from an Fw-190. Scarily complex, a mechanical analogue computer, automating engine controls.  Also… imagine being the engineering intelligence analyst presented with a captured engine trying to work out what every component actually did – intelligence analysts need to be very competent engineers too, and that crosses over into my own field of expertise too:

In a time of current “National Crisis”, it’s interesting to sense the concern across the Allies in June 1942, as they examined a captured FW-190 and it became apparent they were “losing” the air battles with it, and why. The reports seem to reflect depression and deep concern that Allied aircraft improvements were some way off. Intriguing, especially since the Mk9 Spitfire was only a month away, and the P51 Mustang , also Merlin powered, arrived very soon after.  It is also of interest that efforts to develop aircraft engines were in a sense similar to today’s efforts to make a Covid vaccine. You didn’t put all you eggs in one basket and in parallel with the continual (and amazing) development of the Merlin, several other horses/engines were backed, some of which proved fruitless, but in time of war made sense to reduce risk.

I also find it fascinating that piston engines of the time struggled to have a used duty cycle of hours flown – struggling often to get 100 hours without major refurbishment. I don’t know what they cycle is modern passenger jet aircraft power units is (fundamentally simpler, in a sense I guess), but the engine life must be in the ten thousands of hours. Another area that intrigued me was the development of turbine blade technology for turbochargers, and a very clever rim mounted turbine used in a Russian swirl throttle – I wonder if the science used in developing these was later applied to jet turbine blade design.  Until now I had sort of assumed that turbine blade design for jets started from scratch.

It’s not my habit to pick out errors so hopefully the author will forgive my wry smile when Eric “Winkle” Brown is described as an RAF test pilot. He was of course, a naval officer, posted to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) as Chief Naval Test Pilot. Probably a simple transposition of an F for an E.  My only other criticism , (I hope constructive) is that it would perhaps benefit from an Annex discussing the aircraft these engines provided power for – and their roles, as context for the engine development. It would have helped to understands that the Typhoon for instance originally was intended as a straight replacement for the Hurricane as an interceptor, and not as the “FGA” aircraft it became. Similarly the impact of the various models/roles versus engine variants of the Mosquito and Spitfire perhaps could have been pulled through a little more in an Annex.

Mr Douglas’s book brings a huge range of history and technical issues together in a readable and fascinating book. I’ve not some across a more enthralling book on an engineering subject. I’d recommend it to anyone with at least a little engineering knowledge.  It’s well researched history, telling an important tale. You can get it online, but best of all use a local independent bookshop if you can.  If you have a little engineering background and an interest in history, you’ll find this book fascinating.

Lastly an aside, which again brings about the human nature of war.  On of the key Luftwaffe technical administrators was Field Marshall Erhard Milch – a fundamental protagonist in the competitive development of fighter engines.  At the end of the war he tried to flee Germany but was caught on the Baltic Coast on 4th May 1945. On surrendering, he grandly attempted to surrender to British Brigadier Derek Mills-Roberts, a commando, while offering champagne, in an attempt to be treated kindly, according to his rank. Mills-Roberts was unimpressed with Milch’s attempted self-grandeur and attitude.  In previous weeks he had been appalled by Nazi atrocities when he liberated Bergen-Belsen. He lost his temper, seized Milch’s Field-Marshall’s baton and broke it on Milch’s head and then beat him further with the champagne bottle, fracturing Milch’s skull. He kept the baton as a souvenir. Milch kept his skull, just.

 

20th Century

Palestine 1935 -Arab and British IEDs

I’ve been digging away at a few historical instances of IEDs using artillery shells or other ordnance, either recovered from battlefields or from storage depots. – These were seen very frequently, of course, in the Iraq conflict of the previous decade and still occur today – but I’ve been looking back for earlier instances.

I have lost a reference that I’m sure I had found discussing Belgian resistance groups in WW2 “steaming out” explosive from munitions recovered from WW1 battlefields so I have no detail on that. But I do have some reports from IRA devices in the 1920’s that used stolen artillery shells.  Recently I have picked up threads of some interesting history from Waziristan (now NW Pakistan) in 1937 where the British were involved in a nasty little campaign against the Pashtun in the area (on and off over a few decades actually) – but there are reports of both locals AND the British military using discarded or recovered munitions in “booby traps”.  The British Army were no angels when it came to what we today call IEDs.  I have yet to uncover more details but I then stumbled across a great report from 1935-1936, but from “Palestine”: where British forces were dealing with an IED campaign from the Arabs at the time.

The report I have has some terrific diagrams – in the interests of not teaching the wrong people, I’m not going to say where I found this report and I’m going to blur a bit some of the diagrams and be a little vague about some technicalities. so if the diagrams or explanations don’t quite make full sense, that’s the reason.  The devices are largely what we would today call “victim operated” – i.e. with some sort of switch that an unsuspecting victim would trigger.  If I’m honest I think the author is describing the devices “second hand” – some aspects of his report are doubtful, but interesting nonetheless.

The first device was found and defused by an infantry patrol of the South Wales Borderers on a railway line between Jerusalem and Artuf. They noticed the switch laid on the rail, dealt with the device themselves, threw the components in a wheelbarrow and delivered the device to a Royal Engineer in Lydda station.

Although this device above used HE extracted from “old shells”, a number of other devices used the shells themselves, with a very idiosyncratic methodology of drilling a hole in the side of the shell, and then inserting a plain detonator into it.  The shell was then buried under a rail and a striker pin attached to the rail such that the defection of the rail when a train passes pushed the pin into the detonator. If I’m frank, I find the author’s report here a little unconvincing, as I cant see a safe way of setting the device below. Elsewhere the author of the report, an Engineer officer, doesn’t appear to be aware of the existence of delay detonators – but I may be doing him a disservice – did delay detonators exist in the 1930s?

The report mentions an interesting device rendered safe – a “daisy chain of artillery shells” along the Nablus-Tulkarm Road, with shells spaced out every few feet, a total of ten 6″ shells  buried a foot deep alongside the road – something that EOD operators in Iraq in say 2004/5 would have found very familiar. However the device had been placed by an amateur and did not have a viable initiation system.

Here’s an interesting victim operated device that was successfully made safe. I’ve hidden the key part of the mechanism but those that need to know can work it out, I’m sure. The device was placed on a track used by Jewish settlers.  The device was dealt with by pulling the string causing it to initiate.

I confess this next device described in the report I find a little unconvincing – while it might theoretically work its seems too tricky to manufacture with any ease. The idea of making a circuit with a key in the lock would be difficult to do reliably. Tell me if you disagree

 

The final device, which I won’t show because I suspect it’s a very effective device used a mousetrap and string to trigger an IED protecting a stone “sangar” sniper position near Nur-esh Shems. Interestingly the device was allegedly laid by an Arab revolutionary called “Fauzi Khawaji” from Iraq, who had been formally trained as an officer at the French St Cyr academy.

The report also mentions that the British Royal Engineers, (specifically 2nd Field Coy RE and 12 Field Coy RE) used IEDs themselves to protect the Jerusalem water supply – they booby trapped a number of manhole covers and other British used sanagars. The first victim was a water company official who hadn’t been told…. the official wasn’t seriously injured…  but as a result the RE increased the size of the explosive charges from 2lb to 5 lb!  the initiation system for these Royal Engineer IEDs was a “bare wire loop switch”….which I won’t explain further here.  I find this very strange given the theoretical availability of “proper” switches in the RE inventory.  These “British” devices were used elsewhere too and when they caused casualties the British blamed the victims for having a  device that exploded prematurely.

Given the reports I am piecing together about British use of IEDs in Waziristan, also in 1937, it seems that this tactic was not a one off. Make of that what you will.

The Arabs supply of munitions to use in IEDs were thought to have come from WW1 ammunition Depots in Gaza or Rafah (either Turkish or British)  that were mismanaged after WW1. The task of dealing with these munitions supply dumps after WW1 was given to a contractor (!) who allegedly cut corners, leaving a significant quantity “under sand” which could be easily recovered.

 

 

Sabotage During World Wars

Colin Gubbins – Gamekeeper turned Poacher

As part of my research into the use of IEDs for sabotage in WW2, I wrote an earlier piece about Colonel Ilya Starinov, the key person in developing Russia’s sabotage activity in WW2.  More recently I’ve been looking at Britain’s role in encouraging sabotage efforts using IEDs in the same war.  Of course there are differences but the parallels between Ilya Starinov, and his counterpart in Britain, Colin Gubbins are actually pretty interesting.

Steely-eyed Gubbins. 

Gubbins is well known for his role in leading the SOE during WW2, but his influence I think is broader than that. He was also responsible for implementing the ideas of Churchills “Auxiliary Units”, a plan to mount partisan operation in England if the Germans had invaded in the early part of the war.  His 1939 pamphlets on how to conduct partisan warfare were distributed across Europe during the war.  I was interested how this apparently traditional Artillery officer became such source for partisan warfare ideas, and it’s an interesting story, and some of the things I have found are startling, to me anyway.

As a young man he was already a German speaker and perhaps comfortable with the concept of living in a foreign country, having lived for a short time in Heidelberg before the war started.  His WW1 career was fairly standard for a Gunner officer fighting at Ypres, the Somme and Arras.   He was wounded and gassed.   It was only in 1919, after the end of the Great War did Gubbin’s experiences slightly leave the norm.

  • In 1919 he served for a time on the staff of the British Forces in the North Russia Campaign. This was a peculiar and unusual campaign by any standards. Gubbins would have been aware of activity by Bolsheviks to sabotage railways as part of their battles with the Allies who supported the White Russians. He would have also been aware of British encouragement (by MI6) of IED use by their agents and white Russians in Petrograd,
  • At the end of 1919, Gubbins was then posted to Ireland as an Intelligence officer, during the busy years of 1920 – 1922. During that time he attended a three day course in guerilla warfare. Most of his duties will have involved understanding the threats faced by the British Army by the IRA, who were operating a guerrilla campaign. The 18 months or so of this experience as an intelligence officer against an insurgent campaign seems to have sparked a longer term interest in irregular warfare , and started his thinking, in the reverse of poacher-turned gamekeeper. Gubbins was to think hard about gamekeeper-turned-poacher  in coming years.
  • In 1922 he continued his intelligence career in Signals Intelligence in India, before a range of staff, training and policy posts.
  •  In the late 1930s, as a Lt Col, Gubbins started to crystallise his irregular warfare thoughts by being the author of key pamphlets such as “The Partisan Leader’s Handbook”. This is actually a fascinating document, for a number of reasons. Firstly it shows that at least someone, in 1939, in the War office was thinking about irregular warfare. secondly I think I can see hints that the author, Gubbins, had studied earlier campaigns and drawn from not only his own experience in Russia and Ireland but also other campaigns I have discussed in earlier blogs such as the efforts of the Arab Bureau in Arabia in 1917 and the German WW1 Lettow-Vorbeck campaign in East Africa. I also sense that his advice on OPSEC is drawn from his experience as an intelligence officer “from the other side of the fence”

As a small diversion in this blog post, I’d also like to highlight a couple of other aspects of the Partisan Leader’s pamphlet that I think are worthy of attention, and that’s to do with the utter ruthlessness prescribed by Gubbins, which in modern eyes are startling.  Here’s a couple of examples, but remember this is a pamphlet produced by a Lt Col in the War office in 1939:

  • One method of sabotage that is recommended is the contamination of food by “bacilli, poison”.  So here is the British War Office advocating biological warfare by partisans in 1939
  • Gubbins is equally ruthless on the subject of “informers” within partisan groups. Informers must be killed “immediately ” or at “the first opportunity” and “if possible a note pinned on the body stating the man was an informer.  Having personally once had to retrieve such a body that’s a bit shocking as a British document.

Then later in 1939 Gubbins was posted to be Chief of Staff to one of this blog’s favourite characters, General Carton De Wiart, as part of a mission to Poland just before the Germans invaded and war started, advising on Polish partisan tactics.  He was with de Wiart as they crossed the Romanian border escaping from the German advance.  After that he went on to form commando units which deployed to Norway, and after was tasked  to set up the Auxiliary Units in preparation for a German invasion of England, and clearly applied much of his irregular warfare thinking into that.

I find it fascinating to look at a time line of Gubbins’ career with that of Starinov, from about 1918 to 1945. Both experienced in Russia, but on different sides. Starinov starting more lowly but with stronger technical skills, but importantly both learning from their experience and deriving very similar irregular warfare policy developments. Putting aside political differences, both came up with similar solution sets of irregular warfare based around explosive sabotage.  Both put huge effort into developing “stay behind” guerrilla operations against invading forces – for Starinov it was the plan to operate partisan groups in Ukraine if it was invaded, developed as a detailed plan by Starinov in the mid 1920s – 1930s, for Gubbins it was the Auxiliary units developed in 1940 to counter German invasion.  Gubbins formed the first British Commando units, Starinov formed the first Russian Speztnaz units.   Both men ended WW2 running very extensive partisan operations against the Germans. One can’t but help see certain symmetries. One can’t but help see their influence in all sorts of conflict types since WW2.  2003 in Iraq is just one example that could have been based on either man’s plan.    I wonder if they were aware of each other?

Gubbins in retirement

(Note: Copies of Gubbins’ partisan pamphlets and other Auxiliary Unit material including a fantastic explosive demolitions document, disguised as a British Farmers Diary, 1939, are available. Ping me and I might tell you where from). Here’s a couple of pics – some of you will work out the link to “Highworth”.

20th Century

Never New, Fact and Fiction

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet

One of the strange things about terrorism, and suicide terrorism in particular, is that people always think it is “new”. There is something about the fear of terrorism that always makes it fresh, always makes it feel like a new encounter. Add to that the short memories that people have, and the general perception is that suicide terrorism is a newly thought of tactic, or strategy,  but as I have detailed here before and as Iain Overton’s excellent “The Price Of Paradise” covers, these tactics are simply recycled, decade by decade, century by century.

There are themes within this tactic too. Themes that play out in public, in the mind of the public, and perhaps which terrorist groups recognise and copy, or reflect. Fact and fiction become confused.   There is a theme, played out frequently, of the innocent child, an unwitting, unknowing bomber, tasked with carrying an explosive device, without being aware it is going to explode. You’ve that recently, yes?     Nigeria, or was it Yemen? Gaza? Syria? Afghanistan?  Well, yes probably, but it’s not new.

Here’s a clip from a 1936 film by Alfred Hitchcock, called “Sabotage”, which plays on the fear of the public in the mid 1930s, of infiltration by terrorist groups bent on destroying the nation.  Here, an innocent unwitting child is tasked with delivering a package to a tube station in London- Piccadilly. The clip is classic Hitchcock. Having being delayed en route the boy is on a bus, approaching Piccadilly when the bomb detonates.

This is really very peculiar.  Tube stations were attacked in the 1880s with IEDs and again in 1939, three years after this film was made  Then again in the 1970s, including the Piccadilly  bomb which exploded at a bus stop outside Green Park station in 1975. Then more recently buses in 1996 and  2005 were again attacked   and tube stations have also been targeted again. But here in the clip, masterful suspense by Hitchcock weirdly foreshadows numerous attacks. Crowds of people, and military parades included… will the bomb go off?   And of course military bands and mounted units themselves became targets for real in 1982

So, it’s really a strange thing to see this modern essence of a threat, a child proxy suicide bomber in a fictional movie from 1936.  The rest of the movie (which can be found on YouTube in full)  ends with the bomb maker, with a suicide IED hidden in his coat, detonating his device behind a cinema as the police evacuate the theatre and mount a raid to capture him.  He had been discovered by an undercover police operation.  Such modern themes.

 

 

 

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