My old friend Panjandrum saw a military history magazine in a newsagent’s today and took this image of Page 35.
Given the title of the article in the magazine, this blog’s title, and this piece from this blog in 2012, that’s a fine coincidence!
For what it is worth I’m pretty sure that Garland didn’t serve in the Boer War as the magazine articles suggests, but I have no doubt the concept of initiation system came from there.
Last night I enjoyed the inaugural US-UK EOD gala dinner, raising money for EOD related charities on both sides of the Atlantic. US Ambassador Matthew Barzun gave a great speech. The theme of the night was the shared challenges of the EOD community and the transatlantic bond that is so powerful between the EOD communities. I related this story to the audience which perhaps deserves wider understanding:
In 1933 a young American man, named Draper Kauffman, graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was the son of an Admiral. Despite his father’s position, at the time the US Navy was shrinking because of the economy and he wasn’t offered a commission because of poor eyesight. Instead, this adventurous young man left to seek employment in Europe for a shipping company. When war broke out in 1939, being a determined and ethically driven individual, he joined the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps and was captured by the Germans as they invaded France in 1940. He was released and went to England (after being awarded, I think, the Croix de Guerre by the French) where he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and trained in bomb disposal, serving during the Blitz in London.
Draper Kauffman in RNVR Uniform with a German Mine
In 1941 he returned to the US and obtained a US Naval Reserve commission. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the US entered the war, there was a problem with an unexploded Japanese 500-pound bomb just outside the doors of an ammunition storage compound in Fort Scofield, Hawaii. The US Army in Hawaii requested advice from Washington, who in turn asked Great Britain. The response was a little brief – “Try Lt Kauffman, we trained him, he’s experienced and he works for you now!”. Kauffman was sent to Pearl Harbor. There he won the Navy Cross for his EOD efforts defusing the first Japanese bomb for subsequent techncial study. Kauffman returned to Washington and because of this experience he was asked to urgently establish an EOD Training School. His first action was to request 4 British EOD instructors which the UK managed to provide despite the huge pressures on that profession at the time, where the life expectancy during the Blitz had been a lttle over two weeks.
He later earned a second Navy Cross in the Pacific theater in Saipan leading his team in a daylight reconnaissance of fortified enemy beaches under heavy fire. He retired as an Admiral having set up the US Navy Underwater Demolition teams. That’s a military career that is impossible to match.
When I related that story, my friend Ken Falke shouted “Go Navy!”. My only reply, of course, was “Go Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve!”.
Both communities, British and American, are proud to follow the footsteps of Draper Kauffman.
Rear Admiral Kauffman USN
I’m indebted to John Balding for forwarding me this picture. The image, I think from around the 1880s, shows the contraption used by Colonel Majendie, the British Chief Inspector of Explosives, for transporting IEDs. The IEDs were taken to the EOD facility on Duck Island in St James’s Park, Westminster. I think it is very possible that Majendie copied it from a similar technique used the the French authorities in Paris.
A nicely sprung vehicle, clearly intended to be pushed by a person, possibly based on a “pram”.
Some earlier posts discussed the home made explosives and IEDs manufactured by Irish republicans shortly after WW1 (around 1920), and I’ve returned to the trove of information I have discovered on this subject. One of the themes of this blog has become the way in which today’s counter-terrorist operatives can learn lessons from the past, and this is a particularly good example. During the 1980s one of a number of explosive devices designed by the Provisional IRA was a “drogue bomb”. This basically consisted of a tin full of explosives, with a striker fuze behind it, and it was lobbed at vehicles with plastic strips trailing behind it to ensure it hit the target nose first so activating the striker by momentum. To the EOD operator this was simple but “new” device.
What is interesting is that it wasn’t new at all. In about 1920 the IRA had previously developed what they called then a “drogue bomb”, and the diagram is shown below. For obvious reasons I’ve left off some of the technical detail – if you are an appropriately accredited EOD operator contact me and I’ll give you the full diagram. There are of course some differences between this 1920 design and the one from 60 years later in the 1980s… the striker mechanism has switched from the front to the back, and the steel case in the earlier device is thicker. Those of you knowledgeable of other IRA mortars from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s will also recognise certain aspects of the fusing from this earlier device. I can tell you that EOD operators of my generation had no knowledge of the history of Irish republican device design from earlier campaigns. More fool us. As I’ve shown in earlier blog posts, improvised munition design used by Irish republicans goes back not only to this post-Easter Rising period, but to much earlier back to almost 1800. Previous blogs to have highlighted the similarity between an IRA mortar of this 1920 period and the British Stokes Mortar of WW1.
Of course there are similarities to this device and Russian grenades, and I believe also to WW1 German trench grenades which I suspect this device is derived from.
Recently I had a dialogue with some colleagues as I researched modern versions of this very early piece of EOD equipment from 1573.
A remarkably similar piece of equipment was in operational use only 45 years ago and I was seeking a photo of the equipment in use in the 1960’s/1970s. I’m still digging on that.
Anyway the dialogue with a few modest practitioners of the art of EOD in the 1970s took me in an interesting direction, and I’ve turned up some interesting stuff from much earlier on the subject of ROVs. The general perception of the world we live in is that the tracked ROV as used in EOD is a very modern invention. Manufacturers produce glitzy videos showing these twin-tracked vehicles performing tricks as the operator remains a safe distance behind, secure from the hazards that their robotic buddy faces. All very High-Tech. I used to work for one such manufacturer, and we have all seen the videos showing the technological prowess of a wide range of differing modern ROVs. Like many, I assumed that the tracked ROV was essentially invented for the purpose of EOD in the dark days of the early 1970s. But it appears that ROVs were around for a considerable time before the 1970s. This does not to lessen in any way the significant innovative effort that went into the development of the “wheelbarrow” series of ROVs and all subsequent EOD “robotics”, but there are some fascinating precedents.
I began by searching for images of the first ROVs in Northern Ireland in about 1972, in the hope that they might also show images of the protective screen I was looking for so I could do a visual comparison. Suddenly I came across a picture in some archives that made me sit up. You should understand that my operational experience was largely in the 1990s so I’m most familiar with Mk8 “wheelbarrow” ROV. But I came across the image which at first glance appeared to show a number of Mk 8 Chassis…. but from WW2… How could that be?
British soldiers with captured Goliaths
US Navy examine captured Goliaths on Utah Beach 11 June 1944
For comparison here’s a picture of a Mk 8 wheelbarrow – note that the main body of the Mk 8 is remarkably similar to the images above in terms of shape and scale.
The WW2 item turns out to be of a system called Goliath. It’s not an EOD ROV, but rather its a remotely controlled demolition vehicle.
When you think that probably there were only a couple of hundred Mk 8 wheelbarrows produced in the 1980s and 1990s, but there were many thousand “Goliath” ROVs produced. The Goliath ROVs were initially electrically powered but later used a small two cylinder engine. Here’s a great shot from the top, showing the engine and the wire spooling from the rear.
I also found reference to a Japanese tracked ROV, also used a a remote demolition tool – called the “I-GO” developed in 1937. How strange that the nomenclature predates the “I-Robot”
Japanese I-GO ROV from 1937
Now in the early 1990s some of the Northern Ireland EOD units developed a deployment technique called the “Rapid Deployment Trolley”. This was a cobbled together wheeled trolley on which we placed the Mk 8 wheelbarrow ROV to transport it rapidly to and from a small helicopter in emergency situations where a full deployment requiring a large helicopter wasn’t possible. So it was with delight I saw that Germans in WW2 also had such a “trolley” for the Goliath – and actually theirs looked much better engineered!. Vorsprung Durch Technic.
Wheeled Trolley for moving Goliath ROVs
A Goliath being moved on its wheeled Trolley, Warsaw
Then as I was researching the provenance of the German Goliath I came across reference to the genesis of this equipment… It turns out that the German Goliath was based on an ROV developed by the French in the years running up to WW2…. Supposedly, as the Germans advanced on Paris the inventor, Adolphe Kegresse threw the prototype into the Seine, but somehow the Nazis got wind of this, reverse-engineered it, and ended up building the Goliath. I have also found reference to the Germans recovering , later, Kegresse’s blueprints for the ROV and reverse engineering their ROV from that.
The French Kegresse ROV, 1940
I then found details of British tracked ROV, developed in 1940 by Metropolitan Vickers, again as a remote demolition tool. Here’s an image – note the interesting inwardly facing track extensions.
Vickers MLM ROV, 1940
50 of these Vickers MLMs were built before the project was suspended in 1944. I have a copy of a Canadian officer’s trial report if anyone is interested. The ROV had a range of 1100 yards and could carry 120lbs of Ammonal. Initiation was either by a command signal or a contact switch (which had a command safety override).
I then found a reference to an American ROV from WW1. This is the Wickersham Land Torpedo, built in 1918, possibly 1917 but patented in 1922. Here’s the link to the patent. They were manufactured by the Caterpillar company, I think.
Wickerhsam Land Torpedo
This ROV looks similar in size shape and design to a modern day Talon EOD ROV, or a Dragon Runner. The Wickersham and the Kegresse ROVs look pretty similar.
I kept digging and encountered 2 more tracked ROvs that predates the American one – both French.
The first of these was the “torpille terrestre electrique” (electrical land torpedo), developed by M. Gabet and M. Aubriot in 1915. It could carry 200kgs of explosive and was wire guided of course. I’m intrigued that the single lever track at the rear looks a little like the lever track on some modern robots.
The second of these was the “Schnieder Crocodile” also developed in 1915 and trialled by many Allied nations, including the British, Belgian, Italian and Russians.
“Crocodiles” Schneider type B.
It could carry 40kg of explosives and looks similar in size, shape and scale to the Allen-Vanguard ROV
So it seems that next year will be the centenary of the tracked ROV…
Roger DaviesHere’s a video showing that the Gemeran Goliath ROV was also radio controlled, and not just command wire steered.