Standing Well Back
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

IED Innovation… or not

In May 1992 I was just starting my second tour in the EOD world. One of my jobs was to disseminate to my colleagues information on technically significant IED incidents, and the following was one of those incidents, and seemed very innovative. Given the ongoing discussion about “Backstop Borders”, or not, with the Irish Republic, it’s also quite pertinent.

In 1 May 1992, the British Army manned and ran a checkpoint ay Cloghoge on the Northern Ireland/Irish Republic border adjacent to the main road between Dublin and Belfast. This is about as far South as South Armagh goes, and in those days there was a very high level of threat from the Provisional IRA.  The main railway line also sat right there, and the small post, quite heavily protected, was right next to the road and the railway. It was normally manned, if I recall correctly, by about a dozen soldiers, providing “cover” and assistance for the police stopping the cross-border traffic at the check point. In Army terms the checkpoint was called “Romeo 1-5” (R15).

The Provisional IRA mounted a clever attack on the checkpoint. They stole a mechanical digger, and separately, a van. They loaded approximately 1000kg of home-made explosives in the van. Using the digger they made a makeshift ramp from the road, up to the railway lines, manoeuvred the van up the ramp then fitted the van with railway wheels. The digger was then used to lift the van, with its railways wheels, onto the the railway line (it wasn’t that busy a line and it was the middle of the night). All this happened out of sight of the checkpoint, at about 800m south of the border.

The van was fitted with a spool of cable, to initiate the device, and the cable fed to a terrorist who could see the checkpoint or someone who was in radio contact of someone who could see the target. At about 2 o’clock in the morning the van was set off in first gear, with no driver, towards the checkpoint paying out the spool of cable.

The Army sentry on the checkpoint, Fusilier Grundy, heard and then saw the approaching vehicle bomb and raised the alarm. Most of the occupants of the checkpoint took cover. Fusilier Grundy, correctly assuming this was a threat to his life and those of his team, opened fire in an attempt to disable the vehicle bomb. at 0205hrs the device was exploded next to the concrete sanger containing Grundy, killing him and throwing the ten ton protective sanger into the air. The remaining soldiers survived in a shelter, built to protect them if a vehicle bomb was delivered by road.  The replacement to this checkpoint was removed when the Good Friday Agreement came into effect.

I duly wrote up a technical report to the teams I supported (I was on mainland UK at the time), and highlighted that this innovative technique had never been used before.

Or so I thought…  But this is “Standingwellback” ain’t it, where I delve back in history. So check this out:

On 31 October 1943 the Germans were holding and guarding a railway bridge on the Ubort River in the Ukraine, West of Kiev. A Soviet partisan group led by an NKVD Major called Grabchak decided to use an “innovative” method to attack the strongly defended, strategic bridge. The area around the bridge was heavily mined, enclosed with barbed wire, there were several machine gun posts and a large garrison protecting it with mortars and other heavy weapons.

Twice a week the local German commandant travelled down the line to inspect the defences at the bridge from his base a few miles away. He invariably travelled to the bridge by a “special section car”, a small vehicle that was mounted on the railway line rails and used by railway officials for inspecting the line. As far as I can work out this was pretty much a road car fitted with railway wheels. Grabchack and his partsians, over a two week period, made a “replica” section car. The base of the vehicle was fitted with five large aircraft bombs. The fuzing arrangement was simple and ingenious. They knew the height of the cross bracings on the bridge. They fastened a long pole, upright between the bombs. Towards the base of the pole was a pivot point and at the base, a length of wire leading to the pin of a grenade fuze connected to the main charge explosively. So the concept was that the “section car” would be sent down the railway, and as it started to cross the bridge, the pole would hit the cross braces of the bridge, pulling the pin from the grenade fuze.   To add to the effect of the “expected” section car, two dummies were made, dressed in German uniforms, one an officer, the other a driver, and sat as realistically as possible in the car.

At 4pm, on 31 October 1943 the car was carefully placed on the rails about 1km from the bridge, just out of sight, near the village of Tepenitsa. It trundled down the line towards the bridge, and seeing it coming a guard opened a barrier and let it enter onto the actual bridge itself, presumably saluting smartly as it passed by. There, the device exploded, damaging the bridge severely.  Interestingly the German forces put out some propaganda that the device was a suicide bomb, driven all the way to the bridge on rails from Moscow, by “fanatical red kamikazes”. Apparently several more of these railway delivered IEDs were constructed and used but I can find no records, which given it was 1943 and the middle of a war full of sabotage operations is not surprising.

I have written a previous piece about trains loaded with explosives in Mexico in 1912, “loco-locos”, here.

So, the analysis of these incidents suggests the following:

1. There are several instances, historically, of trains or vehicles on train lines being the delivery method of getting explosives to targets. A variety of switching methods is possible. The technique can cause significant surprise, and such vehicles can carry sufficient explosives to overwhelm hardened targets.
2. Apparent innovation isn’t always new. Especially on standingwellback.
3. Border crossings are tricky, whichever way you look at it.

20th Century

IEDs in Belfast – 1922

Ian Jones has passed me details of IEDs in Ulster in 1922. Ian is a real EOD history guru and I recommend his excellent books.

In 1922 Ireland was still being fought over and Irish republican bomb attacks were still relatively frequent (see my earlier posts such as this.)

Belfast was no different and a range of IEDs were encountered. There are details below of some interesting devices.  But note that the military response to these was by the Royal Engineers, not the RAOC who later became responsible in the province for such activity.  In a report published in the Royal Engineer Journal, which I cannot reproduce here for copyright reasons,  Captain EW T Graham-Carter reports a series of incidents that his Unit responded to.

1. An attempted bombing of a telephone junction box in Arthur Square in the centre of Belfast, two IRA men disguised and equipped as telephone repair men opened a manhole cover and left a times device behind. A Sapper Unit was requested to deal with the device. The manhole was filled with water by the Fire Brigade (!) and after three hours the package was removed. The device, wrapped in sacking, consisted of a wooden box with a slider switch on the outside. The timing device was an adapted alarm clock. (There are pictures in the journal). The device failed because the alarm clock had not been wound up. The main charge was an unidentified home made explosive or incendiary material (possibly sodium chlorate and sulphur). The initiators were interesting – two glass tubes sealed with insulating tape with two copper electrodes immersed in magnesium flash powder. Subsequent experiments were able to cause the main charge mix to explode.

2. A series of other devices are interesting because like many modern devices in the Middle East they utilised artillery shells, in this case 18pdr, but filled with home-made explosive. These were left in a number of “picture-houses” (cinemas), but on a number of occasions failed to function and were recovered by the Royal Engineers.

3. Other devices were designed to be hidden by or in roads. One found near Armagh consisted of hollow concrete blocks, 9in X 9in X 9in, with the addition of scrap metal as improvised shrapnel. It held 5lbs of explosive and was initiated electrically by a command wire of 300 yards in length.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Apart from the Sappers that is.

Technology Development

Irish Republican Improvised Mortar Design – 1920

In a previous blog post 18 months ago I described how the IRA in 1920 designed and used an improvised mortar.  I’ve now found some context for that development and found out where a damaged mortar tube from 1920 exists today. Some of the below is a repeat of the earlier post and some is new information.

A number of IRA members had fought in the British Army in WW1 and had experienced trench mortars, either as a user or recipient.   The IRA funded a secret delegation to visit Germany and buy arms on the black market , including a German trench mortar but this mission was unsuccessful.  As a fall-back they asked their engineers to develop a home made mortar based on the British “Stokes” trench mortar.  I’m not sure how closely they followed the design, but the IRA version appears to have been of same calibre as the Mk 1 Stokes mortar (3 inch) and projected an 11lb mortar bomb, again the same as a Mk 1 Stokes mortar.  It appears that the IRA was able to obtain British Army manual for the Stokes mortar.   The tube was made by Matt Furlong’s brother, Joe, at a railway workshop, and Matt (who later died testing a version of the mortar) made the bombs for it at 198 Parnell St, Dublin.

Some early Stokes mortar bombs are “armed” on launch by use of a grenade lever spring which is released when the lever arm is free to fly off as it leaves the barrel.  I can’t be certain but i suspect the 1920 IRA mortar bombs used this principle too, and not the more sophisticated fuze design used in later WW1 Stokes mortars. Here’s a British Stokes mortar handbook from 1919 showing the later fuze types. Here’s an image of a Stokes mortar with a fuse fitted with a fly off lever.

The propellant charge was a 12 bore shotgun cartridge with shot removed and more propellant (black powder) added.  The impact fuze was adapted from a grenade fuze, (as was the early Stokes mortar bomb fuze). The mortar bomb weighed 11lbs.  I don’t have exact details but have a pretty good idea and those of you with an EOD background can probably make the same assumptions about arming on launch as I have.  For the rest of you, tough.                                 

The IRA conducted some extensive trials, under Matt Furlong of this improvised mortar system in October 1920 in County Meath. First a number of dummy mortar bombs with propellant only were fired, to establish ranges and calculate the propellant charge needed for a range of 100 yards.  Then three bombs were fired without a main charge but with an impact fuze fitted to test initiation.   The trials established that the bomb tumbled through the air, but despite that, the fuze appeared to work however it struck the ground.  One of the engineers believed that the impact fuze was being initiated on “set back” within the mortar tube and not on impact at the target. This is an important assessment ignored by Matt Furlong.  Attempts to fire a “live” mortar failed as the bomb got stuck in the tube.  Probably fortunately.

The engineers involved were concerned about the impact fuze functioning on “set back” within the mortar tube, so they added an additional safety mechanism (which I won’t describe here) and this was was built in to the fuze for subsequent trials. The second set of trials took place near Kells in County Meath.  After firing a live shell with the new safety feature which then failed to function on impact, an argument ensued between Furlong and McHugh, an assistant who was present.  Matt Furlong insisted on removing the additional safety feature and firing the mortar as originally designed. McHugh, nervous, stepped a few yards away.   The others retreated. As the mortar bomb was launched it did indeed explode in the tube, severely injuring Matt Furlong, who later died in hospital after losing a limb.

The loss of the mortar was seen as a significant blow to the IRA in Dublin who had expected to be able to mortar barracks with impunity mounting the mortar on the back of a vehicle, a tactic that they applied successfully 60 years later in the North.  

The mortar tube that exploded, eventually killing Matt Furlong, was hidden in the River Tolka for some years before being recovered.  In 1937 it was given to the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) where it exists today.  There’s some pictures at this link here – it has been mounted at an incorrect angle, but that doesn’t matter.
(Note the damaged base of the mortar tube some way down the page)

On occasion the arming system also failed in later IRA mortars, as I can vouch for personally.  To me there is a clear technological development route from the Stokes mortar of WW1, to the IRA’s improvised Mk 10 and Mk 11 mortars of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  I think there is a distinct possibility that the PIRA designer of the Mk 10 mortar and bomb based the designs in part on the 1920 Joe Furlong designed mortar and bomb which in itself was based on early WW1 Stokes Mortar designs.

Additional research leads me to believe that the additional safety feature in the mortar fuze that Matt Furlong removed before his accident was remarkably similar to a fuze safety feature I saw in on operations in 1991 – on another IRA mortar.  That’s seventy years apart, and essentially the same safety feature being used on an improvised mortar.  I won’t post details here, of course. The British Army EOD techs of the time were certainly not aware of that provenance. More fool us.

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 

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