Standing Well Back
21st Century

Intriguingly Similar Designs of Improvised Munitions Over Decades

One of the most notable improvised weapons in the last 15 years has perhaps been the “IRAM”.  This “Improvised Rocket Assisted Munition” appeared in 2004 in Iraq, using the rocket motor of a 107mm rocket with a “bolted on” over-calibre warhead. This is a relatively short-range munition with more target effect than a standard 107mm, but quite difficult to range and target.  The IRAM munition came in various designs. Here’s one variant:


IRAMs 2004

Such munitions appear to be being used now by Syrian government forces and others in Syria. See this report from the excellent Brown Moses/Bellingcat website from 2013:   http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/is-syrian-military-using-another-type.html.  Sometimes the users seem to have not fired these from 107mm tubes (with the overcalibre warhead “left out the front”) but from tubes with a greater diameter. See: http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-syrian-national-defence-forces-most.html .  In this variant the rocket motor is “under-calibre”, in effect.

When the IRAM appeared in 2004 it was commonly thought to be a new type of improvised munition. But as readers of this blog might already suspect, it wasn’t new at all – the concept was used in the early part of the Vietnam war. Here’s the image of Viet Cong overcaliber warhead that was fitted to a 107mm rocket, just as they are today. The image provider suggests that the warhead was cast iron, but the welds in what is probably rolled mild steel are clearly present.  These early Viet Cong “IRAMs” were fitted with what were described as WW2 Japanese impact fuzes.

 


Viet Cong over-calibre warhead for 107mm rocket


Japanese WW2 impact fuze on Viet Cong warhead

Now here’s another interesting thing – probably coincidental. The design of the Viet Cong over-calibre warhead is remarkably similar to a Provisional IRA mortar bomb warhead. This image is from a de-fuzed Mk 12 mortar bomb taken in 1991.  The IRA warhead was of course not on a rocket but on a mortar, but the design structure of the mild steel welded warhead looks remarkably similar to the Viet Cong warhead, does it not and is of an almost identical construction. The Mk 12 mortar of course is a horizontally fired anti-armour weapon with a copper cone liner, but the outer form of the warhead is remarkably similar.

 


PIRA Mk 12 Mortar bomb with identical shaped warhead

Keen readers of this blog will recall too that Irish revolutionaries were firing rockets horizontally at the British Military as early as 1803, using a rocket designed in 1696. 

21st Century

Fuel, Air, Fool

21st Century

Rockets, again

This week the police in the Republic of Ireland held a press conference where they displayed a range of weaponry seized from Republican terrorists. Included in the display were rockets which were described as similar to “kassam” rockets used by Palestinian militants in Gaza.  Here’s a picture of one of the rockets.


And here’s some Kassam rockets for comparison:

Now of course there is some alarm at this, and understandably so, but regular readers of this blog will know that a recurring theme of mine is that terrorist weaponry, well, has a recurring theme. And this is a great example. One might think from the press coverage that the occurrence of terrorist rockets is new in Ireland, and that these terrorists might have been exchanging technology with Palestinians. I’m not going to comment on that, but let me highlight something – rockets used by revolutionaries in Ireland aren’t new at all. A couple of years back I ran a series of posts about Irish rebel improvised rockets used in Dublin in 1803. That’s 216 years ago. And frankly they weren’t that dissimilar, a little smaller, but not much so.  And I made the point that the designs used by Emmett’s rebels in Dublin in 1803, were actually built on instructions from an English rocket designer, Robert Anderson, from over a hundred years earlier, in 1696. Here’s two pages of those three-hundred-year-old build instructions:

 

By the way, I still believe that Congreve, who claimed to have invented military rockets in about 1805 was copying Emmet’s designs and inadvertently copying the even older design by Robert Anderson.

Here’s the links to the posts about the Dublin rockets of 1803 and their links to the 1696 design.

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/24/revolution-and-invention-comparing-syria-in-2012-with-irelan.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/28/the-mystery-of-the-the-man-with-no-history-other-spies-and-e.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/27/woosh-bang-ohnasty.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/28/rockets-a-reassessment-a-mystery-and-a-discovery.html 

1940-1950

Warsaw IEDs

I’ve been researching the improvised explosives used by the Polish resistance in WW2.  One can’t but help notice some parallels between the Warsaw uprising and the ongoing tragedies in Syria – the devastation of Warsaw looks pretty similar to that being seen in Aleppo and other Syrian cities.  The Nazi destruction of the ghetto is scarily similar to the Assad regime’s destruction of areas of Syrian cities.  Compare the effect of the use of the siege mortar “Thor” (Karl-Gerat) against the Warsaw ghetto with the user of barrel bombs in Aleppo.

Here’s two interesting images – the black and white one shows a Warsaw resistance fighter examining a “blind” Karl-Gerat munition. The colour image below it shows a Syrian resistance fighter with a “blind” barrel bomb. I’m not suggesting the munitions are identical, but in terms of explosive effect they will have been pretty similar, and it’s spooky how similar the images are, some 70 years apart.


1944


2014

Consider the similarity of effects:


Warsaw


Aleppo

There are other similarities too – the Polish resistance had a very significant production of ingenious improvised weapons – and some of their techniques appear similar too to those seen in Poland. Look at this image of a spring-loaded Molotov cocktail projector – I’ve seen similar from Syria

The boundaries between improvised weapons and production weapons can get a bit vague here – for example its is thought that tens of thousands of Sidolowka and Filipinka grandes were produced by the resistance.

These improvised grenades had a variety of fills, but most commonly “cheddite”, a chlorate/nitrobenzene mix I have discussed in earlier posts (used by many including Irish revolutionaries circa 1920.) Not much difference in design , of course with the Irish grenades seen here…with the same explosive fill.  All aspects of the grenade including the fuse and the detonators were produced by the Polish resistance. Largely they obtained the potassium chlorate component of the explosive by theft from the Germans.


An improvised Filipinka grenade. The Cyrillic marking is an attempt by the Polish resistance to obfuscate indigenous manufacture

 


Improvised Sidolowka grenade.

The Polish resistance also made significant use of command wires devices and other IEDs to attack trains and other targets.    Here’s a picture of the explosive unit of the Warsaw resistance on route to attacks the Warsaw telephone exchange on 18th/20th August 1944 with a command wire initiated device.

Hundreds of German military trains were attacked with IEDs too. During one six month period the British SOE assessed that the Polish resistance had wrecked 1,268 railway engines and damaged 3,318 carriages. This report describes the operationally sophisticated use of multiple IEDs along a railway line:

An ordinary railway mine, which exploded when the first train passed over it would cause an interruption in traffic for only about four hours. At one time we were anxious to interrupt traffic on the main Warsaw-Malkinia sector of the Eastern front for a minimum period of 10 days. Our experts solved the problem, and the resulting interruption lasted as long as two weeks.  It was done by specially devised mines which could be automatically blown up. A chain of these mines was laid across the tracks. The first, which was placed in the middle of the chain, went off as the first train was passing over it. Two more placed on the tracks on either side of the first when the rescue train arrived from one side or the other. The remaining mines on both sides of the wrecked trains exploded successively when the repair trains arrived from both directions. Result: Ten miles of track effectively mined. After their first train has been blown up four repair and relief trains sent in to deal with it had been effectively destroyed.

Other sophisticated IEDs were also created by the Poles. I have found one report that 18 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed by the use of an explosive device in an elongated cylinder which was hidden in the rear of German aircraft and initiated on a reduction of atmospheric pressure once the aircraft reached a certain height.

2010-2020

Wearing flip flops while blowing up an ATM

The lessons are:

1. Don’t rob banks. In fact, “Don’t rob” covers it.

2. Don’t initiate your explosive device while stood next to it.

3. Don’t run away leaving money lying around.

4. Don’t wear flip flops while robbing banks.

(seriously, flip flops?)

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