Standing Well Back
Sabotage During World Wars

Booby trap IEDs on the Battlefield – 1918

Readers may recall that I have blogged before about German IEDs and sabotage devices in the US during the period 1915- 1918, focused on munitions plants and shipping on the US East Coast.  I’ve been doing some more research on German IEDs of the period in general and found a remarkable number in Europe right towards the end of the war. A significant number were being left behind when the German army retreated in 1918 and others were being transported from Germany via Norway and Switzerland  Some of the IEDs were sophisticated and used some dastardly (love that word) initiation systems.  Here’s some examples:

In October 1918, because so many “infernal machines” had been found, US forces adopted a strict policy of clearance of  facilities vacated by retreating Germans. Therefore they must have by implication had a significant search and EOD capability. US forces discovered a temperature initiated IED in one dug out left behind by retreating Germans.  US ordnance specialists defused the device and assessed that since there were no houses in the area, the Germans expected the advancing Americans to occupy the dug out , and that when they warmed up the space, the switch would have initiated the device.   In the dug out they found the temperature switch under a “cot”, with ten large artillery shells buried nearby connected to the switch.   On at least one occasion a device left in a bed in a house vacated by German troops detonated killing an allied soldier who lay on it.  There are reports of a booby trapped pair of binoculars.  As one quote of the time said

There are unsubstantiated reports that the Germans realized how popular their spiked helmets (pickelhaube) were and so frequently booby trapped them.

Another report (written by Col Joseph Hyde of the US 105th Engineers) reported a 300 pound device in a church steeple, connected to a pressure plate where a man might kneel in front of the altar.

In April 1918 , Norwegian authorities discovered one hundred and seven IEDs that had been smuggled into Norway by German agents, with a view to attacking Norwegian shipping. Also recovered were:

104 incendiaries

9 IEDs disguised as lumps of coal

133”strikers”

269 detonators

470 tubes of acid (for delay fusing)

33 pieces of explosives disguised as chewing tobacco

some fountain pens filled with acid as delay initiators

95 large rectangular bombs in iron cases, initiated with a clockwork mechanism

Also in 1918, Swiss authorities discovered a similar plot, which involved German diplomats smuggling sabotage devices and explosives through Switzerland and on to Italy.  In a similar manner to the way in which IEDs were manufactured in the US, so the Germans established two bomb making facilities in Switzerland at this time.

Here’s a couple of press clips about the devices,  one in a piano in 1916 and one from 1918.

 

I have found some interesting official US Army documents detailing how common booby traps and other IEDs were towards the end of WW1 – they bear remarkable resemblance to documents detailing the threat in Afghanistan today –  I’ll post them in a few days time.

20th Century

Bombing Hitler – A lone-wolf bomber in 1939

Hitler was the subject of a number of assassination attempts. This is the story one of the lesser known ones, using an IED.

Georg Elser was an ordinary German carpenter who took a dislike to Hitler in the 1930s. In late 1938 Elser decided to assassinate Hitler. He took this decision apparently as an individual, with no outside help.  He became aware that once a year Hitler returned to Munich to give a speech in a famous Munich Beer Cellar.  He visited the cellar in November 1938 and decided it would be the site of an attack a year later, showing immense patience and careful planning. Not having access to explosives but realising that an IED would be suited to the attack, Elser got a job in a quarry and over the year was able to steal enough explosive components. He made several “test” devices and exploded them successfully in the Bavarian countryside.

 

Several weeks before the planned assassination, Elsner frequented the Beer cellar and each night hid in a storeroom before closing time. Then after everyone had left, he spent the night preparing the location for his concealed IED. He removed a wooden panel and hid the explosives in a space he chipped out methodically from a stone pillar adjacent to where Hitler was due to speak.  The preparation took two months, working almost every night.

Finally Elser placed the charge, which he had built into a cork lined wooden box, to conceal the noise of the ticking clock timer. He set the timer to go off at 9.20pm on 8 November 1939, twenty minutes into Hitler’s scheduled hour long speech.  The IED functioned right on time, right as expected, killing eight and wounding dozens more.  The only problem was that Hitler had rescheduled the time, had spoken at 8pm and was out of the building at 9.07pm, to catch a train.

Elsner was caught trying to cross the border into Switzerland and arrested.  The border police then found a postcard of the beer cellar in his pocket along with a diagram of an IED. The game was up. Elsner confessed all. He was imprisoned and eventually killed in Dachau concentration camp.

 

There were other attempts to kill Hitler with explosives, including the von Stauffenberg plot, and other failed plots, one involving a suicide IED hidden in the operatives trousers…(underpants bombers aren’t new!) and one hidden in a bottle of Cointreau – I’ll save those stories for future blog posts.

This attack was interesting – by being able to (almost) predict a year in advance the presence of his target Elser was able to conceal an IED behind wooden panelling and time the device to explode at the right time – exactly the same technique used in the failed attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher with a timed device hidden behind panelling in the Brighton Hotel in 1984.

20th Century

Bomb Suit, 1933

1850-1860

Chinese River IED of 1857

Here’s an interesting story about a failed IED attack on a British Naval vessel in 1857. Britain was at war with the city of Canton in China in what was called the “Opium War”. Two British naval vessels, the “Niger” and the “Encounter” were patrolling the Pearl River. A couple of months earlier two small boats had exploded next to the Niger, so a strict policy of look-outs and challenges was being enforced to keep small boats at bay.  At 4 am on 7th January 1857, a look-out on the Encounter spotted a man in a small boat sculling towards the ships. He challenged him and on not getting the appropriate response, shot him dead.  A ship’s boat was launched and they recovered two large explosive charges, each with over a half a ton of explosives. The charges consisted of sealed wooden barrels weighed down with stone so that they only just floated. Protruding from the barrel was a gunpowder filled tube to a small platform on which glowing embers were placed. The embers were kept separate from the gunpowder in the tube by a metal tray or slide attached to a piece of string. The render safe procedure used was to splash water onto the embers.  The plan was that the two barrels linked by rope would float down and the rope fastening them together would catch the bow of the Encounter, then pushing the barrels close either side of the ship. Then the boatman would pull the string to pull out the slides on each barrel, causing the glowing embers to ignite the gunpowder.

Here’s a picture of one of the two charges:

The tactical design has great similarities to British IED attacks in 1804 on the French, although the initiation system is somewhat exotic.

20th Century

The Ingenious Bombs of Harry Orchard

A colleague put me on the trail of some interesting devices used in Colorado at the turn of the last century and I’ve found some interesting details about some very unusual IEDs.  In balancing the interests of readers and my natural disinclination to inspire any bomb makers I’m going to be a little vague about certain aspects of the design, so bear with me.

The perpetrator of the attacks was a man who called himself “Harry Orchard” but he had an awful lot of other aliases.  Orchard was involved in what are now called the Colorado Labor Wars, a struggle between mine owners and miners in Colorado in 1903 and 1904.

The dispute became more and more violent, and in that time and in that industry explosives and knowledge about their use was easily available.   Harry Orchard first became embroiled with this as a striker and then as a bodyguard to the miner’s leadership. He was a man with few scruples at the time.

IEDs had been used prior to 1903 by both sides – the mine owners had blown up the offices if a “Private Assay Office’ which catered for miners taking gold out of the mine for private sale – a practice called “high grading”.  And a mine workers association had blown up a mill in 1899. There were other incidents using explosives.

Orchard may have worked for both sides of the dispute – planting and laying IEDs in support of miners and also, for pay, for the mine owners as provocative acts.  In one attack Orchard assassinated the former Governor of Idaho, Frank Steuenberg.  There are a few sources about the various attacks that readers can find but for this post will concentrate on his IEDs.   The IEDs were constructed in a way that makes me think he was not an experienced “blaster, with experience from the mines.  In principle most of his devices used a very unusual and dangerous initiation system.  This largely involved using a bottle of acid, placed on its side over a sensitive component in an explosive train.  The acid bottle had a cork in it, and the cork was attached to fishing line.  Orchard then created a number of mechanisms to “pull” the cork, releasing the acid, which caused the explosion.

  • To create a command-initiated device, he ran the fishing line to a safe spot, and waited for his target to approach, then physically pulled the line, puling the cork from the bottle.
  • To create a booby trap, victim-operated device, he stretched the fishing line across the likely path of a victim, leaving the IED hidden beside the path.
  • To create a timed IED he attached the fishing line to the “key” at the rear of an alarm clock. When the alarm sounded (Orchard removed the bell) the key which wound the alarm element rotated, and wound the fishing line in, eventually puling out the cork from the acid bottle.

Orchard had a couple of other designs:

  • One used a pistol, aimed at explosives with fishing line attached to the trigger – for both a command pull and for a booby trap.
  • Another device was  a handful of blasting caps wrapped in burlap and then pitch so it eventually looked like a lump of coal, then the device was thrown onto the coal bunkers.

Here are some pictures of IEDs which he re-created as part of his confession.

 

This was the device used in the Steuenberg attack – but Orchard adapted it to operate by tripwire, leaving the clock element unused.

 

Orchard’s confession is available online –if you’d like details of where to find it let me know – but because it has detailed description of how he constructed the devices I won’t post it publicly.

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