Standing Well Back
1880-1890

IED Response Operations 1880 – 1910

For some time now I have been digging slowly and methodically for details of late 19th century techniques for dealing with IEDs, mainly focused on the activities of the London based Colonel Vivian Majendie. As the Chief Inspector of Explosives he had a broad ranging role, including legislation regarding the industrial production and storage of explosives.  But Majendie was also responsible for the response to anarchist and Fenian revolutionary IEDs which were remarkably prevalent at the time.  Remember that the 1890s, for instance, were referred to as “the decade of the bomb” because of the prevalence of explosive devices.

I have mentioned in previous blogs that Majendie constructed a “secret” facility for rendering safe IEDs. His work there was assisted by Dr August Dupre – a German emigre and highly experienced chemist. This facility was surprisingly just a couple of hundred yards from Downing Street on Duck Island at the bottom end of the lake in St James’s Park, opposite Horseguards.

There is a story that the bomb defusing facility still existed in mothballs in the 1970s. To preserve it, the wooden building and its contents were recovered by the Royal Engineers to Chatham in Kent. The story goes that some RE quartermaster in the 1980s felt it was messing up his stores so it was destroyed and scrapped. Sigh. In such a way is Ozymandias sometimes forgotten.

So for a couple of decades I’ve been interested in what equipment existed there – but Majendie’s OPSEC was pretty good.  I think I know where some official files may be that detail it but time has precluded a visit to those archives yet.

But yesterday I turned up a new lead.  Firstly I found a document that detailed some of Majendie’s thoughts on EOD operations. He discussed moving suspect devices in wicker hand carts to one of three locations strategically placed around London. One on Duck Island – close to the heart of government in Whitehall and sufficiently remote in its immediate environment.  One in the “ditch” surrounding the Tower of London, for IEDs found in the financial centre of London, and one in a cutting or quarry in Hyde Park for devices in the commercial district.  It appears that Majendie won approval for the construction of at least two of these (Hyde Park and Duck Island) and that the Duck Island facility was completed first.  But not much of a clue as to what it contained, other than some sort of mechanical contrivance for dealing with the infernal machines. So a bit more digging ensued. Now, I know from other research that Majendie conducted close relations with both the United States and with France. Anarchist IEDs were almost endemic in France at the time. Majendie makes some remark in the 1880s that he has “adapted the French techniques” and refers to their approach as often blowing the devices up in place – whereas Majendie prefers to move them to his secret facilities to deal with them there.

But then I find an associated reference that suggests that Majendie used equipment of the same kind for defusing bombs that the French used at the Municipal Laboratory in Paris.  A clue, then, and a new avenue.

So, I’ve had some success.

This is a summary of what I have found.  The French authorities established a Municipal Laboratory for dealing with IEDs in some open ground near Porte de Vincennes in Paris and others at 3 other locations elsewhere in the City.  The facility consisted of some earth banks and a series of wooden huts. I think the facility was set up in the 1880s and certainly was still in existence in 1910. This is an image from 1910.

Within this facility was a range of equipment including x-ray equipment (after it was invented) and a very robust piece of machinery called a “Morane Press”.  I think this is that key piece of equipment and I have a hunch (nothing more) that Majendie’s facility on Duck Island was somewhat similar in terms of construction, and Majendie too may have used a Morane press. This is a picture of the “Morane press” taken at he the Paris facility, again somewhat later but the press was still in use in 1910.

I then found a beautiful report from 1906 describing the operational routine of the Paris police at the time. The report describes that the occurrence of suspect IEDs in Paris in 1906 was “not at all an infrequent occurrence”.  Some elements of the report:

  • A “bomb squad’ was based at the laboratory and connected by a telephone to central police headquarters.  The headquarters tasked the unit to respond to a suspect IED. The response is described as being similar to a “fire call”.
  • The lead EOD tech has a fast response vehicle, described as a 16 horsepower “racing bodied” automobile. it is followed by an “automobile bomb van”.
  • Six chemists are assigned to the unit, and one always deploys as the lead operator. They work one week shifts, and five weeks off to “recover from nerves”
  • The lead chemist brings the “bomb van” close to the device, and the operator after inspecting it, lifts it carefully , maintaining its positional attitude and places it in a containment box. Perhaps their procedures had evolved from the 1880s “blow in place” policy.

The photograph below may show the response vehicle and a containment vessel.  I can’t be sure because I think the photo was mislabelled as “Paris police headquarters, 1920s” but I found the photo amongst other photos of the explosive laboratory and to my untrained eye the vehicle looks like a 1906 car not a 1920s car. I think the black object on the floor might be a containment vessel. The operators are certainly steely-eyed.

  • The report describes how many IEDs of the time were sensitive to movement which changed its orientation – the initiation mechanism was two liquids which, if the device was tilted, mixed and caused a detonation.
  • The bomb van is described a “heavy (voiture lourde) double phaeton 12 hp automobile, refitted from the regular tourist trade, with a pneumatic spring device for gentle running and 120mm tires”
  • The “bomb box” or containment vessel is placed over the rear springs, opening by a letdown from behind. It is fitted with shredded wood fibre and into this is placed the IED.
  • The IED is then moved accordingly to the facility in Porte de Vincennes or one of three other such facilities strategically placed around the City ( note the similarity to Majendie’s plan) . The concept is to move the device very quickly in case it is time-initiated.
  • Once at the facility the device is immediately x-rayed after being placed behind an armoured screen. As noted in earlier posts, the French deployed x-ray equipment for security operations within months of the invention in 1896.
  • At this stage, depending on the x-ray, the device may be manually rendered safe. The report mentions a specific IED were the hands of the timing clock could be seen to be stationary from analysis of the radiograph, allowing a manual procedure to make the device safe.
  • The report then describes the “hydraulic press”. It is tucked in behind earthen mounds. Here’s a picture of what I think is the pump that powered the Morane press.

  • And here are the earthen mounds surrounding the facility

  • The press is used to dismantle IEDs, and if a detonation is caused, the effects are contained. The press is robust enough to survive. Quite often there are detonations several times a week. The effectiveness of the press is described as 75% – three times out of four a device does not explode but the components are recovered for forensic examination.  That’s not a bad strike rate at all, given the sensitive explosives used and the initiation types.
  • The report also stresses how many of the IEDs are not publicly reported in order to keep the public calm

In summary then I think that the Paris facilities are a remarkable reminder that IEDs are not new, and surges in IED use have been seen before. The facility seems to have been in use for about thirty years, and despite the different techniques of today’s bomb squads, their technology was surprisingly effective.  We can’t be certain that Majendie was using the same strategy and same technology in London in the 1890s but I think there is a high degree of likelihood he was. Like today, there was a willingness to share EOD technology, and technical intelligence, between different national agencies. The Paris police clearly had a sophisticated and well resourced EOD unit operating across their city, with a thought-through strategy focused on:

  • reducing damage to property
  • returning the situation to normality as soon as possible
  • technical intelligence and forensically-focused render-safe procedures.
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.

Radio Controlled IED

TECHINT and Radio Controlled Bombs

Follow this link here, to a post I have put on another site, but which readers of this blog with an EOD or ECM background I think will find interesting.

1840-1850

The Death of Tommy Atkins

There’s been discussion on the letters pages of “The Times” about the origins of the “Tommy Atkins” reference – the standard typical British soldier with all the phlegmatic character so well described by Kipling. Well, it turns out that Kipling didn’t “invent” the name out of the blue, and the history of Tommy Atkins as a real person is moving, dramatic and a little older.

In 1843, The Duke of Wellington, a national hero, former Prime Minister and Victor of Waterloo was a “Minister without Portfolio”. He was an elderly man of 73 and the Grand Old Man of the British establishment. The previous year he had been re-appointed as Commander in Chief of the Army.


The Duke of Wellington, aged 74

Officers on the Army Staff came to show him a new piece of bureaucracy – a form that soldiers had to sign to claim their allowances. They wanted to create a “typical entry” as a guide for soldiers entering their details. The discussion turned to the name that the guide should use as its example, and they asked the old General his opinion.

Wellington sat back and thought. He recalled one of his earlier campaigns, in the Low Countries in 1793. After a battle he had come across a gravely wounded solider, lying on the ground. That soldier had served in the Grenadiers for 20 years, could neither read nor write, but was the “best Man-at-Arms in the Regiment”. His name was Thomas Atkins.  Atkins was severely wounded, and had begged the stretcher bearers to leave him be, so that he could die in peace.  Looking up and seeing the Duke’s concern, the man uttered his last words. “It’s all right, Sir. It’s all in a day’s work.”

Wellington still remembered that experience, 50 years later, and so the name on the form and for every British soldier since became “Thomas Atkins”.

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