Standing Well Back
1860-1870

Augmented reality and explosive initiation – an historical mystery

There is much focus today on “augmented reality” technology and a fair proportion of this is in the defence world. Systems like the Google Glass project and a number of others can be used or adapted to add visible data and tactical information and analysis to a soldier, overlaying that data on what he is seeing. Very hi-tec. So I was surprised when during some research I came across the details of a genuine Augmented Reality technology being used for a defence fire control system in the 1860s over a 150 years ago.

During the 1860’s a room-sized camera obscura was used to conduct military research in Belgium. The system was set up to project a “live view” of the River Scheldt in which an electrically initiated underwater mine had been placed. That view was projected onto a large table. The operator of the camera obscura marked the position of the submerged mine on the viewing table, in effect as a data overlay with the image. An enemy ship passing over the mine could therefore be seen and as it approached and when in the optimal position, the mine could be exploded by remote control. The experiment was repeated in Venice in 1866 by Austrian engineers who then held the city, with more elaborate steps to pinpoint the location of the mine, and in this case a series of mines.  As a small boat laid each mine, the operator recorded that position and marked it on the image table.  The boat then did a full circle, I’m guessing 20ft around each mine position, and the operator recorded that circle on the viewing table, in effect becoming a specific kill zone, for each individually activated mine, presumably numbered,  overlaid on the live image.  This ingenious arrangement was never tested in action.

Doing some more digging on this subject I have found oblique references to the connection with Samuel Colt the American inventor. Colt did indeed develop systems for initiating observed river mines in the 1830s, and this poor diagram, dated 1836 labeled “Submarine Batary first thorts 1836”, drawn by Colt, seems to indicate a reflecting lens which might project an image onto some form of viewing screen. To me that looks like a version of a camera obscura.

This second diragam, an overhead diagram, might be interpreted as a viewing position with a lens in the building at the very top, which projected a view of the scene over a set of terminals for initiation.

This third diagram, again by Colt begins to make sense, perhaps. Note the large lens in the upper right, I think reflecting the camera obscura image onto the actual reflective control panel.  Thus the image is projected onto the switches. I think….

Colt was incredibly secretive about his inventions, but I think there is a very good possibility Colt had invented something similar to (and possibly more sophisticated than) the 1866 Austrian camera obscura system, but 30 years earlier, or at least had the concept in his head. Due to Colt’s obsessive secrecy I can’t be quite sure.  It is possible that as well as protecting the commercial rights to the system with this secrecy, Colt was also very aware that the observation towers housing the “camera” had to be placed on prominent, well visible, high ground – making them potential targets for the dastardly British fleets which his systems were designed to combat. There were plenty of good reasons to keep the observation system secret.  So it is intriguing to wonder how a system, somewhat similar ended up on the River Schelde some years later.

It would be interesting to replicate Colt’s augmented reality fire control system of 1836, wouldn’t it?

1910-1920

Extensive IED Campaign in the USA

During the period 1914 to 1932 in the USA there was a violent and extensive campaign of IED attacks from the anarchist group the “Galleanists”.  This IED campaign is largely now forgotten but there are important lessons. The issues are slightly hard to discern because of aspects of the crimes that remain unsolved but with 20/20 hindsight it seems sensible to attribute key attacks to this group. We should also remember that this period in history was complex and also saw IED attacks in the US from German saboteurs, from local home-grown labor disputes and from organised crime.

The politics of the time were heated and radical. The leader of this particular Anarchist group was the Italian Luigi Galleani, and he was active in the US between 1901 and 1919.

Galleani very much pushed the idea of “propaganda of the deed’ as described a couple of decades earlier by Johann Most. Galleani was a powerful orator and writer with an international reputation before he got to the US in 1901, aged 40. His intense activity continued, and he wrote and published anarchist and revolutionary literature extensively. Galleani always championed “direct action” and praised those who committed violent acts. Galleani published a bomb making guide, oddly called “Health is in You!”, which sold for 25 cents.  The guide is interesting reading though with a technical error that allegedly cost the life of at least one enthusiastic student bomb maker making nitro-glycerine.

Galleani was deported to Italy in 1919 but continued his revolutionary work. His followers mounted a number of IED attacks and some significant IED campaigns in the US from about 1914 onwards. Here’s an outline summary:

  • 1914 – Several IED attacks in New York including St Patrick’s Cathedral and the placement of an IED in Tombs Police court under the chair of a Magistrate.

  • 1914 – Premature explosion on Lexington Avenue in a bomb making facility. killing four anarchists.

  • 1915 – Another Plot to blow up St Patrick’s cathedral in New York, intercepted by NYPD Bomb Squad commander Thomas Tunney
  • 1916 – Mass poisoning attempt with arsenic, Chicago. The perpetrator was never caught.
  • 1916 – Bomb attack on a Boston police station
  • 1916 – Galleanists now believed to have been responsible for the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing on 22 July, which killed ten people.  Local labor activists were convicted but decades later pardoned and the evidence against them discredited. No other perpertrators were brought to justice. Many historians now attribute blame to the Galleanists.  The device was reported as dynamite or TNT packed into metal pipes in a suitcase with a clock as a timing component. However examination of the evidence years later suggest much less certainty about the construction of the device.
  • 1917 – A bomb placed in a church in Milwaukee was recovered to a Milwaukee police station where is exploded killing 9 policemen and a female civilian. The perpetrator was never caught
  • 1917-1918 Other bombings across the US attributed to the Galleanists.
  • 1918 – A number of IEDs placed in the homes of Philadelphia public officials
  • 1919 – An IED being placed by four Galleanists in a Wool Mill exploded prematurely killing four of the perpetrators.
  • 1919 – Further bombings
  • 1919 – In late April 1919 a total of 36 dynamite IEDs were posted to a number of high profile individuals across the US in the mail. The bombs were intended to be delivered on May Day.  No-one was killed but a senator’s housekeeper was badly injured opening one of the packages. No-one directly charged with the offence.  The postal 36 IEDs were described as follows:   The package was wrapped in brown paper. Inside the brown paper the package was again wrapped in green paper, stamped “Gimbel Brothers – Novelty samples”. This contained a cardboard box containing a six inch x three inch x one inch block of hollowed out wood, which held a stick of dynamite. A small vial of sulfuric acid was fastened to the wooden block next to three mercury fulminate blasting caps. Opening one end of the cardboard box (marked “open’) released a spring which broke the vial of acid, which dripped into the blasting caps, causing a detonation.  I note that in some senses the initiation mechanism is similar to the acid initiated devices of Harry Orchard in 1903.
  • 1919 – In June, the Galleanists exploded eight large IEDs nearly simultaneously in several different US cities.  Each utilised about 25 pounds of Nitroglycerine, and was packed with shrapnel. Only two people were killed, – one a night-watchman and the other an anarchist who was laying a device when it exploded.   Police traced the printer who had printed flyers left at the scene of the bombs. They arrested two men, Andrea Salsedo and Roberto Eliam. Salsedo was questioned (some reports suggest he was tortured).  He then either jumped from a 14th floor window or was pushed by Elia. Elia refused to talk and was deported. The investigation stalled and the police used more aggressive tactics, including, allegedly, warrantless wire taps.  No direct suspects were indicted but several hundred suspects were exported.

  • 1920 –   The Galleanist Mario Buda is believed to have built and detonated the Wall St bomb on 16 September, killing 38 people.   The perpetrator was never brought to justice. 
  • 1927 – More bombings of court officials
  • 1932 – Another bombing of a court official

To us, sitting here in 2014, some one hundred years after these bombings started, the concept of a radical revolutionary IED campaign, and significant violent industrial disputes in the USA is hard to fathom.  I’m intrigued too that the revolutionary fervour of the times wasn’t “underground” as it would be today.  Here’s useful evidence of that. In 1914 there was an explosion in an apartment occupied by anarchists in Lexington Avenue New York. Four anarchists died, after the IED apparently exploded as it was being constructed. This image below shows a very well attended public demonstration in New York in support of the dead anarchists. Bizarre by today’s terms, I think.

But the threat posed by the Galleanists was real, and while complex and occurring at the same time as other threats, there was clearly a public concern about their capabilities.  I think that the logistics of planting 8 devices across the country is significant.  I’m also surprised so few perpetrator were properly brought to justice.

The Galleanist campaign reinforces once again the fact that the USA, of all nations, has had a significant domestic experience of IEDs throughout its existence. Those who suggest that the USA only really came to terms with IEDs in the last decade are simply wrong.

1890-1900

Early equipment for X-raying IEDs

The use of emerging technology to counter IEDs appears to be a theme of the moment.  But like many of the themes in countering IEDs, this is another that is not new. In 1895 Rontgen developed our understanding of what are now called X-rays and made public his findings on 28 December 1895. This technology was seized upon with alacrity for a number of purposes, including medical applications and non-destructive testing. There was much discussion about the use of “Rontgen images” in court as forensic evidence. But one of the other applications, implemented in early 1896 in Paris, barely more than weeks after the publication of Rontgen’s studies, was the use of both portable and permanent systems to x-ray suspect packages and other contraband. At that time there was a significant threat of IEDs used by anarchists, revolutionaries and criminals.

I have posted before some of the x-ray images of IEDs at the time, here. But now I have found some images of the systems themselves.

The Paris Bureau de Post seems to have had a permanent system emplaced in an office in Paris for examining suspicious items of post by about June 1896, image below:

And the Bureau de Doaunes appeared to have two portable systems operating, one at Gard du Nord (below) at about the same time.  Thus, within just a few months the technology was being commercially exploited in C-IED roles.


I think nowadays you wouldn’t get quite so many people crowded around the operation. By comparison modern systems such as AS&Es excellent MiniZ technology still uses the X-ray concept (but in the much safer backscatter application)  – but it’s doing exactly the same job as the systems above, it’s just a lot smaller and more portable. Take a look at the guy on the right in the image above and the guy on the right in the video below – spookily similar!

 

It’s amazing how so little changes, looking at these four devices chronologically.

1590-1600

Spanish naval troopship destroyed by an IED?

The Brod Martolisi was a high sided, commercial trading ship, of 800 tons, probably built in Dubrovnik some time before 1585.  It was a little under 100ft long.  It was owned by Petrov Jug and Jaketa Martolosic, traders operating from an Adriatic base. “Brod Martolisi” means “Martoli’s ship”, probably referring to the latter of the two owners. The ship served a wide range of trading in the Mediterranean and beyond. In 1586 it was returning from a long voyage to England, with a cargo of wool, due to be delivered to somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The ship called in to the port of Termini in Sicily, then under the control of the Spanish.   There, the Spanish viceroy was having trouble mounting support to a military operation in Cartagena. So he simply requisitioned the vessel and crew, offloaded the wool, and put aboard 300 Sicilian mercenaries.  The captain at that time was Luka Ivanov Kinkovic.

By 1588, the ship was still being used by the Spanish as a troop transport as preparations for the the invasion of England began and the Spanish naval fleet prepared itself. The ship was one of the bigger vessels in the fleet, essentially a large troop transport.  A Spaniard, Don Diego Tellez Enriquez,was put aboard as the nominal commander, but it is thought the original captain (referred to in Spanish as Luca de Juan) remained skipper. The ship, by then renamed formally Santa Maria de Gracia y san Juan Bautista, but referred to as San Juan de Sicilia underwent minor adaptations for the joining the Armada, including fitting 12 guns.  The ship was part of the “Levant squadron” of the Armada. The squadron consisted of 10 ships, with 767 seamen and 2780 soldiers. Aboard the ship when it set sail for England were 3 contingents of troops, – Sicilians, Flemings and Spaniards. The senior officer of the troops was Don Diego Tellez Enríquez.

In the battles with the English along the Channel, as the desperate attempts of the English Navy kept the Armada at bay, initially the ship played only a small part, but later near Calais, it was at the heart of the sea battle. One story recounts how the sea was stained red with blood in its wake, so much damage and injury was caused aboard. It is also suggested that the ship might have been lost to English boarders, had it not been the deterrent of the high sides of the ship.  The Spanish fleet decided to retreat, by sailing north around Scotland.  The San Juan lagged behind, its masts and rigging severely damaged.  The English fleet in the main did not chase the Armada because they were concerned with other Spanish forces holed up in Holland and they had, by and large, run out of ammunition anyway, and the fleet was suffering from an outbreak of typhus.

On 20th September 1588 as the remaining ships of the Armada were off the west coast of Ireland there was a huge storm.  It wrecked many Spanish ships on the Irish coast. Lagging behind because of damage to its sails, the San Juan was hit off the Western Isles of Scotland, suffered more damage and sought refuge there. It was spotted off Islay on the 23rd September and a few days later it put into the small bay at Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, north of Islay.  Negotiations were opened with the local clan leader of the Clan McLean, and for some weeks the ship was repaired, and the troops aboard acted as mercenaries for the McLeans in a local dispute with rival Clan MacDonald.

Finally, repaired, re-victualled and re-supplied, the ship was about to set sail and still within the bay when a massive explosion occurred and the ship was destroyed. The entire ship forward of the mizzen mast and above water was blown apart and the ship sank immediately. Only two people survived, both occupants of a cabin that was completely blown the hundred yards to shore, where, shaken and injured they emerged. (This latter story may not be true).

Now the question is, what caused this explosion?  There are a number of possibilities – accident, sabotage by the local McLean clan when by some reports they fell out with the Spanish who had been supporting them, or could it have been another unseen hand initiating the sabotage?  I want to explore the latter, and look at the role of Sir Francis Walsingham, the English spymaster and and true master of intrigue.

Walsingham maintained a spy network, of course, in Scotland, then not part of the Union. One of his Scottish spy networks was controlled by the “Head of Station”, William Ashby, who worked within the English Embassy in Edinburgh. Walsingham had other agents throughout Scotland, included John Smollett, a merchant in Dunbarton.   Walsingham put out a request for intelligence about any sightings of the Armada’s ships in Scotland and in September, Ashby started to report the sightings of large ship, variously in Islay and then Tobermory. Here is Ashby’s first report (ignore the wrong date and the over estimate of the tonnage).

‘As I had writ this letter Sir William Kith send me wourd that Mack Cleiden an Irishe Lord in the isles wrot to the K. that on Fridai the 13 of September there arrived a greate ship of Spaigne of 1400 tons, having 800 soldiours and there commanders; at an Iland caulled Ila (Islay) on the west part of Scotland; thether driven by weather, thei thinke that thei rest of the Fleat is driven on the north part of Ireland; I will make further inquirie and presentlie certifie your honour with sped: thei report this ship to be fournished with 80 brass peces, She beaten with shote and wether

The difference in the date can be ascribed to the ten day difference in calendars used by England and the rest of the world at the time. 13th September in Spanish and Scottish calendars was the equivalent of 23rd September in the English calendar. The assessment of the tonnage of the ship is not relevant and perhaps a typical exaggeration. Ashby clearly has interesting intelligence sources within the royal court in Scotland (“K” being the King James VI)

It would appear too, that John Smollett played a key role in re-victualling and re-supplying the ship in Tobermory bay.  Much more interestingly, in another secret letter to Walsingham on 26 November, Ashby writes:

the partie that laid the traine (fuse)…the man knowen to your honour and called Smallet’

As to the technical aspects of the intrigue, it remains possible the explosion was caused by the drying of gunpowder in the open air on the deck and that was the cause that a later Spanish inquiry came to conclude, albeit I think based on speculation themselves.  Procedures at the time for drying powder are not known but it is hard to imagine that it would be done with anything other than small quantities at a time. It’s also hard to imagine that it was dry and sunny enough in Tobermory in November! But the explosion must have been of the entire magazine and I think that is hard to ascribe to drying explosives on deck.

That leaves us with the saboteur theory.  I think that the saboteur theory has some speculative merit because:

  1. The ship had been resupplied and re-victualled, providing an opportunity for a saboteur to get aboard or have a device put aboard. The several weeks the ship had spent in Tobermory allowed times for the sabotage operation to be put in place. The supplier, Smollett, was an agent of Walsingham.
  2. Ashby specifically uses the phrase ”laid the train”, which is clearly, I think, a reference to an explosive train in an IED.  A similar set of words is used , just a few years later to describe the actions of Guy Fawkes.
  3. The indications are that the whole magazine exploded, if there was a fire first, some of the crew would maybe have been expected to have abandoned ship as the fire got close to the magazine. An accidental fire of powder drying on deck would not necessarily cause the magazine to detonate.
  4. Walsingham had the best motivation, and everything we learn about him suggests a willingness to use these tactics, and he had a demonstrated a direct intelligence interest in the Spanish ships in the Western Isles.
  5. Walsingham had the technology because not least he had hired Giambelli three years earlier. Even if the device was a simple IED , then that would of course not have been a problem for Walsingham’s resources. The actual technique for initiating the device would have perhaps have been a burning fuze, similar to the “match” of a matchlock – a slow burning igniferous fuse. The magazine would have contained slow fuses for initiating cannon, of course.  But a clockwork timing mechanism was within the technical capability of the English secret service at the time, and arguably more easily to conceal inside a barrel of gunpowder than a burning fuse which would protrude. A booby trap using a wheel-lock mechanism is also theoretically possible.

Warships in foreign ports have been and always will be potential targets for attack by IEDs.

1940-1950

1948 Truck Bombs by British Army deserters

This is a strange story in today’s context. One of the biggest vehicle bomb attacks ever occurred in Palestine, just prior to the formation of Israel on 22 February 1948.  Two large IEDs in trucks were initiated simultaneously in Ben Yehuda Sreet in Jerusalem early in the morning.  The devices were contained in British Army trucks, accompanied by an armoured British military police vehicle. There had been a series of incidents over the period before this attack (in the run up to the formation of Israel as a state) and security was high, but as this was apparently a British Army convoy it was allowed through the checkpoints.  On arrival in Ben Yehuda street the trucks were parked up and the occupants, in British military uniform, left in the armoured vehicle. Some reports suggest three vehicles were left.

Three of the participants are believed to have been Azmi Djaoumi, a Palestinian Arab,  Eddie Brown a British military policeman and Cpl Peter Madison.  Both the latter were British Army deserters. The pair had been responsible for an earlier truck bombing against the Palestine Post building using a similar tactic.

Shortly after they left the scene both trucks detonated. The devices were prepared by Fawzi el Kuttub, a Palestinian bomb maker. Kuttub had a strange history. Tall, blond and with blue eyes he was the lead explosives expert for the Palestinians in Jerusalem, and was allegedly trained by the Nazis in WW2. His nick name amongst the Palestinians was “The Engineer” – not the first to be called this title.

At first I was going to take a stab and suggest that the initiation system was probably a standard military delay fuse in each truck. Then I found a description of the earlier attack by the same perpetrators, which described lighting a fuze protruding from the truck with a lit cigarette, and there is one report that some smoke was seen coming from one of the trucks before it detonated, so I’m going to guess that both trucks had burning fuzes as initiation mechanisms. – probably less than a few minutes in terms of duration.  Of significant interest is a single report I have found suggesting that the initiation fuze was inside a metal tube attached to the dash board of each truck, so that once ignited it could not be accessed easily.

I have been unable to ascertain exactly how far away from each other the trucks were parked – there may have been two explosions or one may have initiated the other.  But this is just a guess. The explosive content is interesting – each truck reportedly contained a ton of TNT, but in addition 200lbs of a home made mix which included aluminium powder, and possibly potassium nitrate, packed into a dozen oil cans.

The explosion demolished four buildings and killed about 60 people.   If we assume that the two trucks contained between them over 2 tons of explosives, and both detonated together, that’s one of the bigger vehicle bombs  in history.

The incident added to that strange triangular violence of the time with Palestinians, Jews and the British at the three corners and elements of each corner with elements taking more and more extreme actions. No side comes out well.   As for the British Army some deserters did support the Palestinian Arab side and others the Haganah.  The Irgun used vehicle bombs too.

Ben Yehuda street as been the the scene of a number of terrorist bombs since then.

The deserters, Brown and Madison went to Cairo in expectation of a reward of £1000 from from the Mufti of Jerusalem. However they were given nothing and left empty handed. I can’t find out what happened to them both.

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