Standing Well Back
20th Century

Garland’s first IED attack

I continue to be interested by the story of Herbert Garland detailed in this blog a couple of weeks ago.   I have found some more details here (the primary source being Garland’s own reports held in the UK National Archives) of Garland’s adventures.  Garland had a very dry sense of humour and his reports are full of droll phrases.

Some examples:

Garland went to the town of Yanbu in what is now Eastern Arabia to help the Arab revolutionaries defend it against the Turks.  The defences were short of firepower, but Garland found an ancient Turkish cannon at the fort but as it “was apt to fire astern instead of forward we relied on its warlike appearance to help us scare off the Turks”

Here’s his own words describing  the first IED attack on the railway at Toweira station, I think on the night of 20 February 1917. After a week’s camel ride to the attack point, Garland argued over the tactics for the IED attack with his Arab guide. The guide wanted him to place the device and then scarper, but garland wanted to watch the explosion from a nearby hill. As Garland says “The approach of the train five minutes after starting work settled the matter.”

The trains rarely ran at night which was the cause for surprise. Garland, hearing the shriek of a whistle followed by the squeal of wheels was startled. He scrabbled for the three 5 pound cartons of dynamite which he jammed into the hole under the track he had started excavating.   He pulled from under his black Arab cloak the action of the old Martini Henry rifle. Its barrel had been sawn off and the trigger guard removed so that all that was left was an oblong of brown steel from which the trigger protruded, exposed.  This he loaded with a round of ammunition.. Turning the mechanism upside down, so the trigger was uppermost he wedged it under the rail, bullet pointing into the explosive, trigger brushing the rail above.  The lights of the engine were now close, barely two hundred yards away, travelling at, he guessed, 25 mph.  He got up and ran “ I wished I had devoted more time to physical training in my youth,” he says. His Arab robe swirled around his legs, as if determined to trip him up. Beneath his bare feet, the stony ground felt like ”carving knives, bayonets and tin tacks”.

As the locomotive’s front wheels passed over the device , nothing happened, but a split second later the heavier driving wheels of the train flexed the track enough to pull the trigger.  The explosion threw the train from the track, followed by the carriages behind it as they fell down a stony embankment with a “clanking, whirling and rushing” noise.   It was “the first time that the Turks have had a train wrecked” he reported. Some commentators have said it was the first ever act of sabotage committed by the British Army behind enemy lines.  I’m not sure of that – its an interesting thought – if any reader of this blog can think of an earlier sabotage attack by the British, please let me know.

 I’m truly fascinated that Garland was copying, in part, the IED design used by the Boers some 15 years earlier.  I’ve blogged an image of that Boer device before – but here it is for ease.  Somewhat different but very similar in many ways.

I’m intrigued as to how Garland learned about and decided to copy the Boer IED.  The concept of using a bullet fired from a gun as an initiation mechanism was not that unusual – indeed some of the fenian devices of the 1880s used a similar principle.

In looking closely at the role of the Arab Bureau, of which Garland and Lawrence were part a couple of interesting things come out:

Firstly, while I admire Garland’s efforts immensely, of course I’m torn because essentially he was planting IEDs and I’m normally interested in defeating IEDs and view with contempt those who plant them so there is a dichotomy there that I’m struggling with.

If you were to think of modern day night vision images of local terrorists  planting roadside IEDs being planted next to a road in Iraq or Afghanistan there is very little difference between that and the descriptive image Garland gives of himself scuttling away from the railway track near Toweira in 1917.

Separately I’m intrigued as to the parallels with the Arab Bureau and modern day “special forces operations” in terms of working within a country aiding revolution, identifying future leaders amongst a revolution, encouraging the right people, discouraging the “wrong” people, and enduring battle alongside indigenous forces.   Garland and indeed Lawrence didn’t regard themselves “special forces” and were essentially amateur, but there is no doubt that the paradigm they developed by the seat of their pants is identical to certain SOF principles being developed (again) today.

Next I’m going to hunt out details of Garland’s grenade launcher.

USA

Blowing up dead animals…. really

How many frozen cows do you need to blow up to make a hamburger…… news report 

From history , here’s that famous whale – stick another couple of sticks of dynamite on there… and some more….. and some more…. here….   brilliant commentary.

UK

100 years since British suffragettes used IEDs

The public perception of the suffragette movement, some 100 years ago, tends to see it as somewhat non-violent, all “handcuffing to the railings” and ladies throwing themselves in front of horses.  But a deeper dive into history shows that the suffragettes made use of IEDs between 1912 and 1914. Perhaps my wife who regards my blog with disdain as being “boring and irrelevant” : -)  will appreciate these stories.

A small number of the IEDs contained dynamite rather than gunpowder.  Here’s a selection of a the few dozen or so that I have found records of:

  • In 1913 suffragettes planted a 5lb gunpowder IED in a house at Walton Heath in Surrey belonging to politician Lloyd George, severely damaging it, and the components of a second IED were discovered in the house. The device was believed to have been very crude and initiated by a candle burning down to a metal can of gunpowder, surrounded by nails.  A similar device was used at a house not far away Walton-on-the-Hill three weeks later.
  • Also in 1913 a dynamite IED was planted in St Paul’s Cathedral, but it failed to detonate.  An EOD team from the Chief Inspector of Explosives led by Major Cooper-Key of the Royal Engineers dealt with the device (after it had been placed in a  bucket of water (!!).  It contained ¾ of a pound of nitroglycerine, in a metal case. A small adapted watch and a battery were connected to an electric detonator.  However the electrical connection was faulty and the device failed.
  • On April 14, 1913, a small timed device was found attached to railings outside the Bank of England.
  • In January 1914 two IEDs with burning fuzes were planted in the Kibble winter botanical gardens in Glasgow. A night-watchman, came across one device with the fuze burning. He bravely cut the fuze off with a pocketknife.  Seconds later a second device exploded causing considerable damage.
  • On 11 June 1914, an IED hidden in a lady’s handbag was placed on the back of “King Edwards chair” or the coronation throne  in Westminster Abbey , the throne built around the historical “Stone of Scone”.  The device exploded causing minor damage and reportedly contained steel nuts as shrapnel.

The suffragettes also used letter bombs (and acid devices) posted to intended victims, as well as a significant series of straightforward arson attacks.

 

 

Update there’s a later post containing a more comprehensive list of suffragette explosive devices.

20th Century

Bombs in lavatories

The conviction of a team of radical would-be terrorists who discussed planting IEDs in the lavatories of the British Stock Exchange  reminds me that lavatories are a theme in many IED attacks, which I think is curious.  Here’s a range of previous “bombs in the bogs””

Only a couple of days ago some sort of apparent explosive device was found in the lavatory of a Libyan plane in Egypt    For what its worth I don’t think it was an IED but the story is pretty cloudy for now.

In May 2008 there was the very peculiar incident in Exeter, UK, where a decidedly odd individual detonated a device while he was in the lavatories of a fast food restaurant.

In 1957 an elderly man blew himself up in the lavatory of a passenger aircraft over California. A good investigation report is here    The device was constructed by dynamite and blasting caps with the blasting caps initiated by matches and burning paper.  Only the perpetrator was killed.

A similar dynamite IED functioned in the lavatory of an aircraft in 1962 over Iowa, this time killing all aboard. http://www.airsafe.com/plane-crash/western-airlines-flight-39-1957.pdf

A Canadian passenger aircraft  blew up after a device exploded in the lavatory over British Colombia in 1965. The crime was never solved.

In 1939, as part of a significant Irish terrorist bombing campaign in England a bomb was planted in a public lavatory in Oxford street. Disaster was averted when the lavatory attendant dumped the IED in a  bucket of water (not a good response, but a brave man).  Several other incidents in this campaign were IEDs left in lavatories. The attendant was awarded £5 for his bravery

In 1884, during another Irish bombing campaign in England, (yes there have been a few) the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, Scotland Yard, was severely damaged in an explosion caused by a large IED being left in a public lavatory next door to the police Headquarters.  Here’s a picture.

There’s an interesting aspect to this story. Several months earlier, in 1883, an Irish revolutionary organization , the Irish Republican Brotherhood sent a letter to Scotland Yard  threatening to ‘blow Superintendent Williamson off his stool’ and dynamite all the public buildings in London on 30 May 1884. The Met Police largely ignored the warning, and then on the very day promised the explosion at Scotland Yard occurred, as did two other explosions elsewhere in London.  The failure of the Met Police to protect their own headquarters, as well as the occurrence of several other IED attacks across London embarrassed the police severely and led indirectly to the formation of Special Branch.

There are numerous other IED attacks on lavatories, too many to list.

19th Century

US Technical Intelligence on IEDs – 1856

This history of looking at IEDs and IED incidents for technical intelligence is interesting and goes back quite a way – certainly as far as the late 1500’s when Elizabethan spy master Francis Walsingham engaged Giambelli, the IED maker who made the Hellburner hoop – (Walsingham calls him “Jenibell” but there is no doubting it is the same person)

Stories of the British  WTI investigations of Russian sea mine IEDs  are here, and I have a stack of stuff on Colonel Majendie’s quite excellent WIT reports from the 1880s to discuss in future blogs.  For now though, here’s a very early US WIT report from 1860, by Major Richard Delafield. He is reporting on a Russian IED encountered by the British four years earlier in 1856.

As the British and French fought the Russians in Crimea, there was significant interest in the US military about how warfare was developing given the technological advances in weapons and tactics used by both sides in the Crimea.  In 1855 Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, created a team called “The Military Commission to the Theater of War in Europe”.  The team consisted of three officers – Major Richard Delafield, (engineering), Major Alfred Mordecai (ordnance) and Captain George B McClellan of later civil war fame.  McClellan resigned in 1857 and the report was published in 1860. It is wonderfully detailed and I’d recommend it to any students of military history – it covers just about all aspects of European military developments, from defensive positions, artillery to mobile automated bakeries aboard ship, ambulance design, hospital design and French military cooking techniques.

In the Crimean War the Russians protected their elaborately engineered defences with  “fougasse” explosive charges – nothing new there, because as a tactic this is as old as gunpowder itself.  Until the Crimea these fougasses had to be initiated by an observer, i.e. command detonated by burning fuze or the newly invented concept of electrical initiation.  However the Russians had a new technique to deploy. Immanuel Nobel (father of Alfred Nobel) had been engaged by a Russian military engineer,  Professor Jacobi  to develop submarine charges and a contact fuzing system. These “Jacobi” fuzes consisted of a pencil sized glass tube filled with sulphuric acid fastened over a chemical mix.  Some reference history books say the chemical mix was potassium and sugar but I think that’s probably a misunderstanding – I would suspect the mix was actually either potassium permanganate and sugar or potassium chlorate and sugar, as in Delafield’s report below.  This explodes initiating a gunpowder charge sealed in a zinc box.  One might have expected Mordecai to take an interest in the IEDs but it was Delafield who took particular interest and heartily recommended the use of such things by the US military. Here is an extract from Delafield’s “WIT” report from the device recovered to the British “CEXC:”:

They consisted of a box of powder eight inches cube (a), contained within another box, leaving a space of two inches between the, filled with pitch, rendering the inner box secure from wet and moisture, when buried under ground. The top of the exterior box was placed about eight inches below the surface, and upon it rested a piece of board of six inches wide, twelve inches long and one inch thick, resting on four legs of thin sheet iron (o), apparently pieces of old hoops, about four inches long. The top of this piece of board was near the surface of the earth covered slightly, so as not to be perceived. On any slight pressure upon the board, such as a man treading upon it, the thin iron supports yielded. When the board came into contact with a glass tube (n) containing sulphuric acid, breaking it and liberating the acid, which diffused within the box, coming into contact with chloride of potassa (sic) , causing instant combustion and as a consequence explosion of the powder.

First device

Crimean victim operated IED

Delafield goes on to note that the British and French exploiting these devices did not have a chemistry lab available to properly identify the explosives.

A second device is then described:

Another arrangement, found at Sebastopol, was by placing the acid within a glass tube of the succeeding dimensions and form. This glass was placed within a tin tube, as in the following figure, which rested upon the powder box, on its two supports, a, b, at the ends. The tin tube opens downwards into the powder box, with a branch (e) somewhat longer than the supports, (a, b)   This , as in the case of the preceding arrangement, was buried in the ground, leaving the tin tube so near the surface that a man’s foot, or other disturbing cause, bending it, would break the glass within, liberating the acid, which, escaping through the opening of the tin into the box, came into contact with the potassa, or whatever may have been the priming, and by its combustion instantly exploded the powder in the box.  What I call a tin tube, I incline to believe, was some more ductile metal, that would bend without breaking. For this information I am indebted to the kindness of an English artillery officer who loaned me one in his possession and from which measurements were made.

Sebastopol IED

This last sentence has the hairs on the back of my neck standing up – because I know that the famous Colonel Majendie, who later became the British Chief Inspector of Explosives and who conducted remarkable IED and WIT investigations some 30 years later, fought as a young artillery officer at Sebastopol. Could it be the same man?  I’d like to think so.

Later in the report is some intriguing details of electrical initiators for explosives, including the use (in 1854 )of mercury fulminate.

I’m also on the hunt for a report I know exists of a US investigation into Chinese Command initiated river mine IEDs from the Boxer rebellion in 1900. When I get it I’ll post details.

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