Standing Well Back
20th Century

WW2 Thermobarics?

If this story is true, (and it may not be), it changes what we have thought about the origins of thermobaric weapons. It also could have changed the course of WW2 in one instant. Bear with me as I explain.

Thermobaric explosive weapons came to the general attention of the defence community in the 1990s.  They are still widely misunderstood. The explanation is also not helped by slightly odd nomenclature and descriptions. “Thermobaric” is one such descriptor. Sometimes “Fuel Air Explosives (FAE)” is used, sometimes “Vacuum bombs” even if the words have somewhat different meanings.  Sometimes thermobaric weapons are infantry weapons, engineer demolition weapons and at other times artillery weapons. Sometimes they are deployed by Chemical units.  All these lead to confusion, as do amateurs who also comment that where terrorists add gas cylinders to IEDs they are creating thermobaric or fuel air explosives, when generally that is not the case.  If you need to, you should read up elsewhere on thermobarics but please go beyond the rather simplified wikipedia efforts.

Here’s a very simple summary.  The ability of a fuel when mixed with air and initiated in the right mixture can cause explosions. This is well known and accidental things such as coal dust explosions in mines, and even dust in agricultural or industrial situations has been known to cause significant destruction.   It is possible to artificially, rather than accidentally, cause such explosions to occur, although it is not necessarily easy. Chucking gas cylinders on top of an IED pretty much doesn’t work whatever people may tell you.  The oxidisation of the fuel in the explosion and the progress of a blast wave through the fuel and air is very complex and affected by a large number of variables.  What is important is the effect of such an explosion. Traditionally military weapons, at least in the West, have concentrated on attempting to reach as high a peak pressure for the blast wave as possible, on the assumption that the higher the peak pressure the higher the damage to the target.  Thermobaric weapons however don’t follow that logic. On a graph of pressure over time, the energy imparted by the explosion is represented by “the area under the curve”. Thermobaric explosions give a lower peak pressure but the duration of the pressure is much longer, so there is much more energy involved.  The long pressure pulse also has horribly strange effects in terms reflection, reinforcement and effects on targets, structures, and the human body.  Long pulses knock buildings over very effectively so thermobaric weapons were seen as useful against  structures  and some of the “peculiar effects” that themobarics have in some environments made them “good” at killing people and even against armoured vehicles. That’s about all I’m going to say on that aspect of subject for now, do your own research.  But they make dramatically different weapons with “new” destructive capabilities and should not be underestimated.

Some sweeping statements now, which I’m then going to hit with relatively new information:

Thermobaric weapons first came to my attention in the 1990s, like most people, I think.  The story was the Russia had invested in some new technology and weapons like the shoulder launched RPO-A were the first example. Translation often (in those days and still today) classed these as “flame weapons” which confused the issue but all of a sudden people seemed to realise their effect against targets and the West sat up.  More and more thermobaric/FAE weapons have been produced over the years, including RPG variants, and artillery variants. Perhaps the most dramatic variant is the TOS-1 “Buratino”, a Russian armoured multi rocket launcher that has the ability to attack a large area (such as towns, villages, armour start lines, forming up points etc) with a barrage of thermobaric weapons.  It has an apparently remarkable effect.  Google it. The weapons have been used in Chechnya and indeed the Middle East (probably) and now they are on everyone’s radar.  The technology was presumed to have been Russian, and relatively recent. But if you did some research you might have come across a passing reference to an unsuccessful attempt by Nazi Germany to use thermobaric weapons to attacks formations of Allied bombers, with a missile system called “Taifun” – Germany for Typhoon.

A few days ago an old colleague, Paul H., pointed me in the direction of two books. The books are interviews with German soldiers who were in France around the time of D-Day in 1944. As I understand it the interviews were conducted in the Mid 1950s by Dieter Eckhertz and the books have been edited by his grandson and finally published in the last couple of years.   WW2 history, like most war history, is written by the victors, and the books are fascinating because they give the perspective of the losing side, from apparent primary sources. The Germans, not surprisingly, often have a different take. On their own, the books are fascinating. There are two volumes, both available on Amazon :

“D Day Through German Eyes – by Holger Eckhertz.

Link https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071NTXK2H/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

Kindle version are cheap.

One chapter in Book One has a fascinating chapter regarding the operational use of Goliath RCVs by the Germans against tanks on the beaches of Normandy, and links to my earlier blog post about these early RCVs here.

But it is at the end of the second book that really made me sit up. You really need to read the chapter yourself and I don’t wish to take away from the authors right to be rewarded for publishing it. So here only in startling outline is what is said.:

  • Germany had an apparently large effort developing thermobaric weapons in WW2.
  • The interviewee, K L Bergmann,was a specialist weapons officer with thermobaric weapons. He eventually died in the early 1980s.
  • The design evolved and was used at various stages of WW2 along the development line, that perhaps were very crude to start (not much more than “flame weapons”  and got increasingly sophisticated.)
  • A version of the Taifun weapon (Taifun A) was used very effectively, allegedly, against Russian Bunker structures in Sebastopol wit dramatic effect.
  • A Taifun system of some kind was allegedly used against the Warsaw Ghetto.
  • The interview clearly implies that the weapon was “tested” against captured Russian soldiers as human targets to examine the effect on the human body.
  • By the summer of 1944, the system had evolved in to Taifun B.  It was mounted as an MLRS system on a number of tracked vehicles (Stuka zu Fuss type vehicles) Interestingly (and very importantly) the interviewee who had taken a detailed part in the development program describes the contents of the Taifun B system as containing a burster charge with a fill of kersoene like liquid with the addition of carbon and aluminium particles. I think that’s a pretty credible thermobaric material, in outline. A second missile system fired after the main charge caused initiation of the dispersed cloud, but eventually the initiation was integral by the summer of 1944.
  • Taifun B was deployed to Northern France with the intent it be used against any port seized by the Allies as the focus of the invasion.  The intent was to simply destroy the port with a barrage from Taifun B and the officer in command appears to have had no doubt it would have that dramatic effect.
  • The fact the Allies didn’t land at a port such as Dieppe or Calais for the D-Day invasion and instead landed on beaches surprised the German command and meant the Taifun-B system wasn’t deployed quickly. There is some discussion by the interviewee about the effect the system would have had on the Mulberry harbours.
  • Eventually the Taifun B system was deployed to counter the expected US breakout from Normandy, under General Bradley, Operation Cobra. Taifun was deployed to the correct place, and the very densely packed tanks of General Bradle in its form up location was set up as the target. However just before the fire order was given the Taifun B vehicles were hit by counter-battery fire (maybe accidentaly as part of a rolling barage), and the launch of the missiles was prevented.
  • Bergmann believed that the use of his thermobaric wepaons would have destroyed Operation Cobra, and could have changed the course of the war. Also he believed that the effective operational use would have convinced the German command to use it again and again.

My assessments:

  • The word “Taifun” seems to have been used to describe a number of weapons systems that were part of the Thermobaric program. They evolved over the war.
  • I note that some commentators have dismissed some of the interviews in the books as fiction because they don’t match “established facts”. To me the interviews seem authentic but I’m no professional historian.  I again point that usually it is the victors who write the history and it doesn’t surprise me there are anomalies from these German interviews.  I find the description of the chemical content of the Taifun B system convincing as is the effect of artillery on a loaded Taifun B Stuka zu Fuss vehicle and its rockets. The description of a thermobaric effect is also convincing, as is the evolution of the system, which is logical. Elsewhere separate interviews such as the operator of the Goliath RCVs ring true to me.
  • I need to research more on possible Taifun usage against Russian bunkers in Sebastopol in the 1942 offensive. This is slightly hampered because the Germans used “Taifun” to describe a very wide strategic military operation in Russia.
  • Ditto Taifun use against the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 needs more research.  There is an odd discussion here:  https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=106078   which describes it as a demolition device using a fuel air explosive to destroy tunnel systems.
  • I think anti-aircraft Taifun systems may have been an entirely different system and may or may not have been thermobaric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifun_(rocket)  Again the use of the word Taifun may be confusing matters
  • Research is hampered by a number of things. a. Secrecy of the original project.  b. Confusion over the nature of “flame weapons” and thermobaric weapons, with historians and perhaps the military conflating the two, perhaps understandably. c. The  use of Taifun to describe a much broader German invasion of Russia and d. the fact that Taifun thermobaric weapons evolved over a period of time. e. A lot of amateurs on the web who while clearly understanding nothing about thermobarics feel able to offer detailed comment.
  • To me there is a striking similarity between the Taifun B concept allegedly deployed in France in 1944 and the TOS-1 system of todays’s Russia. I think earlier Taifun A, was possibly simply an engineer demolition tool using a fuel gas pumped into tunnels and defensive structures. Taifun B appears to have been much more advanced system delivered by rockets. Early version of this rocket delivered system required a second barrage to initiate the cloud, but by the summer of 1944 this had been integrated.

This is still somewhat of a mystery, and I’m not yet fully certain it is true – some have raised doubts about the veracity of the author. Let me know what you think.

 

Here’s a pic of a possible launch vehicle showing large calibre rockets (added Sep 2020)

Rockets

The First Metal Cased Rockets

Over the past few months I have been in conversation with a new Indian friend, Mr Nidhin Olikara.   He has done some tremendous work with archaeological colleagues on some ancient rockets recently discovered from the time of Tipu Sultan, in the late 1700s in India.  These metal cased rockets predate any European metal cased rockets, and were, I believe a source of technology for Congreve’s rockets, developed at Woolwich in England in the early 19th century.  Congreve gave little or no credit to the Indian technology which he exploited, and no credit at all to the Dublin rebels’ rockets, which I believe were also inspired by the Indian rocket technology.

This is a complex story of industrial history, archaeology, munitions exploitation, technical intelligence, metallurgy and ordnance design.   For context, I have written before about European rocket development here:

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2018/5/2/the-history-of-metal-cased-military-rockets-an-investigation.html

and Robert Emmet’s rockets in Dublin in 1803 here:

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

Mr Olikara and his colleagues came across many rockets which appear to have been disposed of down a well. They have been able to recover these and examine them scientifically and the results are fascinating. They have written a paper recently published in the Journal of Arms and Armour Society, Volume 22, No 6, dated September 2018. It is not yet available on-line.

Rockets were developed in India by the forces of Haider Ali and then his son Tipu Sultan in the late 1700s. They were used extensively against their enemies, including the British. Amongst Tipu Sultan’s allies, were the French, which may be relevant for later parts of this story. It appears that the British recovered some of these metal cased rockets to Woolwich Arsenal.

Some of the 160 rockets that Mr Olikara recovered have now been analysed and the results are fascinating. A quick summary:

  • a. The rockets are largely of a similar dimension to the (later) first of Congreve’s rockets, varying in diameter between about 35mm and 65mm
  • b. They appear to be made of what we would call today “mild steel”. ie relatively low carbon content. This would make the metal relatively malleable.
  • c. The assessment is that the cylinder components of the rocket were hot or cold forged on a cylindrical die or anvil, with two end caps (one with a vent) forged onto the ends. To be clear, the base material is a rectangle of sheet mild steel, hammered on a cylindrical anvil into a tube shape and two flat circles then attached to the ends, by hammering. One of these ends has a central vent acting as a venturi choke.
  • d. Remarkably the contents of the rocket were still largely present and chemical analysis gives results consistent with gunpowder/blackpowder.  In some rockets there is still a clear suggestion of a formed central combustion chamber formed in the propellant.
  • e. Perhaps most interesting of all, from a munitions design perspective is that the rockets appear to have been lined with a refractory element such as clay, providing a layer between the explosive/propellant fill and the steel wall of the rocket. Most intriguing. I can find no reference of a similar fabrication in later Western rockets

What is still unclear is the filling process in relation to the fixing of the end caps. What came first?  Fixing the end caps first makes sense from a safety perspective but makes the filling process tricky. I expect it will depend on the nature of the filling and how easy it was to load it in the cylinder. I suspect that the front end cap was fixed first, and the rear closing cap fitted “snugly” then removed, the rocket then lined with clay, dried, and the powder fill put into place. The combustion chamber would then be bored, the rear cap affixed in some manner (carefully) so as to not ignite the charge, and a fuse made of some sort of cloth inserted in the nozzle/venturi.

What is also is unclear is how the longitudinal seam of the rockets metal cylinder body was formed. I suspect it was “folded” in a “finger lock seam”. To do this, (and speaking as a very amateur blacksmith), the two sides of the rectangle to be joined would be first turned and folded back a few mm on the edge of an anvil into a lip. When the sheet is then formed into a cylinder these folded turns would interlock.  I will experiment in my own forge in coming days and try to post pictures.

I think the implications of these findings might be as follows:

  1. The Armies of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan had an industrial level production firstly of mild steel in sheet form.  I doubt this was “ rolled” steel but was probably very skillfully hammered. what is most significant,  I think, is that the steel was being produced for a “ disposable”, one-time-use system. That indicates that sheet mild steel which heretofore was perhaps an expensive luxury for body armour of the rich and wealthy was available in such quantities in its sheet condition to be economic to make into one-time-use discardable munitions. I think that’s quite significant.
  2. This was proper industrial scale production of steel components, albeit the rocket diameters seem to vary.  The skills in hot and cold forging mild steel are not dissimilar to the making of protective armour.   The history of technology of India in a broader sense has often been ignored or discounted by the West. India’s metallurgical developments of such things as pure wrought iron, mild steel, carbon steel and Wootz steel is fascinating and the technological processes associated with manufacture of items from these materials seems to have been often ignored in history.  This book  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Indian-Oriental-Military-History-Weapons/dp/0486422291 published originally in the middle of the 19th century gives some insights into the broad range of military metallurgy in India over a number of centuries.
  3. The technology is well in advance of European rocketry which did not use metal cases (apart from the Emmet rebellion in Dublin in 1803), until 1805. Congreve, a man of his time, was disinclined to give credit to India, Emmet the Irish Rebel or indeed others (a Scotsman also claimed to have sent him the idea of metal cased rockets.)  Congreve was driven of course by the opportunity to make a considerable fortune and reputation. Also, perhaps the role of technical intelligence from one’s enemies was, as it still is, always understated.

This development, like all good historical stories, prompts further questions:

  1. How did the French alliance with Tipu Sultan allow them to obtain metal cased rocket technology and pass such technology down to manufacturing instructions to Emmet in 1802/1803?
  2. Why did the French (at the time renowned for their scientific expertise in military matters) not develop rockets themselves until after Congreve had? French interest approved by Napoleon seems to have started in about 1809.
  3. What was the level of input into Congreve’s development from Irish rebel Pat Finnerty, Emmet’s rocket maker who ended up working for Congreve at Woolwich in 1804?
  4. What earlier (non-metal cased) rocket experiments at Woolwich by the British artillery general, General Desaguliers was Congreve able to draw on. He would have been aware of these experiments I’m sure, which had occurred some years earlier but were deemed a failure. But much would perhaps have been learned about propellant.
  5. Was there any technology transfer in the other direction?  Mr Olikara and his team found what I am certain is a rocket boring tool in their investigation, used to bore a combustion chamber in the packed rocket body – it is remarkably similar to tools used in European rocket making in the 1600s…also,   steel rolling mills were developed in Europe in the latter part of the 1700s… is it possible that this technology transferred to India, enabling the production of quantities of sheet steel for the rocket bodies? Or did Tipu Sultan simply reply on a large number of people involved in the manufacture, hammering out sheet steel with such skill?

Mr Olikara has also, interestingly and separately from the paper, found records of what I take to be a British military EOD operation in 1871. The operation involved the disposal (by an Ordnance officer) of cannon from the time of Tipu Sultan (70 years earlier) and mentions finding rockets that were still filled with propellant  from this time. One of the cannon exploded (still loaded from 70 years earlier) while it was being prepared for destruction, killing one man.  So in 1871, Ordnance EOD operations were dealing with dangerous munitions from earlier wars… Plus ca change!

The development of military rockets by Congreve and subsequently by quite a number of European and American nations continued throughout the 19th century, slowing when artillery systems improved, but there was certainly some sort of rocket arms race as Congreve, then Hale developed British rockets systems and the Europeans raced to get ahead.  Even today it is possible to see in very real terms the evolution from Mysorean rockets to Congreve, to Hale and all the way through to say a modern Russian 107mm rocket system – and such systems are being adapted for improvised systems in Syria  and Iraq today with much effect. Military metal-cased rockets are a staple of modern warfare, but now the nature of its origins in India is somewhat clearer. Those wishing more detail should obtain Mr Olikhara’s paper (I may be able to help), and also a book “The First Golden Age of Rocketry by F H Winter is a useful reference.

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.

20th Century

Was Lawrence of Arabia trolling the Royal Engineers?

Further to the series of posts on Railway IEDs I have found an article written by Lawrence of Arabia for the Royal Engineers’ Journal, Vol XXIX, No1, January 1919, shortly after the end of the war. The article was signed “T.E.L.” and describes how he and his colleagues blew up Ottoman railway lines in Arabia during the war.   Now, as I have written earlier, Lawrence was quite willing to take credit for others where he felt it necessary. He relied on the technical skills of one or two Royal Engineer officers and Major Garland (a former Ammunition specialist) for developing his sabotage techniques. You can see these articles here.     In this article there is a strange paragraph where Lawrence may be “pulling the leg” of his Royal Engineer colleagues, as he describes handling explosives in a fairly “adventurous” way.  I’ll leave you to judge by repeating a paragraph verbatim. I have bolded a couple of the most outrageous sentences:

The actual methods of demolition we used are perhaps more interesting than our manners of attack. Our explosives were mainly blasting gelatine and guncotton. Of the two we infinitely preferred the former when we could get it. It is rather more powerful in open charges in direct contact, far better for indirect work, has a value of 5 to 1 in super-tamped charges, is quicker to use, and more compact. We used to strip its paper covering, and handle it in sandbags of 50 lbs. weight. These sweated vigorously in the summer heats of Arabia, but did us no harm, beyond the usual headache, from which we never acquired immunity. The impact of a bullet may detonate a sack of it but we found in practice that when running you clasp it to your side, and if it is held on that furthest from the enemy, then the chances are that it will not be hit, except by the bullet that has already inflicted a mortal wound on the bearer. Guncotton is a good explosive, but inferior in the above respects to gelatine, and in addition, we used to receive it packed 16 slabs (of 15 oz. each) in a wooden box of such massive construction that it was nearly impossible to open peacefully. You can break these boxes with an entrenching tool, in about four minutes slashing, but the best thing is to dash the box, by one of its rope or wire beckets against a rock until it splits. The lid of the box is fastened by six screws, but even if there is time to undo all of these, the slabs will not come out, since they are unshakably wedged against the four sides. I have opened boxes by detonating a primer on one corner, but regard this way as unnecessarily noisy wasteful and dangerous for daily use. 

20th Century

Investigating Zeppelin Bombs – WW1 Tech Int

A while back I posted a long piece, here, about a number of German air dropped bombs including a peculiar incendiary dropped from Zeppelins.  Here’s a picture I just found of two officers inspecting the remains of such a device – Tech Int from WW1.  I think the “well-known naval airman” on the right might be Lt Rex Warnford, awarded the Victoria Cross for shooting down a Zeppelin.

 

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