Standing Well Back
1910-1920

Mystery Sabotage Device, 1918

This post is a bit of a puzzle, that I may need some help with. I’ve blogged before about the German sabotage campaign on the east Coast of America in 1915 here:

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2013/9/17/kurt-jahnke-the-legendary-german-saboteur.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/1/22/massive-explosion-in-new-jersey.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2013/2/12/booby-trap-ieds-on-the-battlefield-1918.html

And indeed I’ve built up a bit of a presentation on German sabotage in 1915-1917 which I may get round to posting here.  In brief summary, German agents either operating out of the German Embassy or operating undercover developed a systematic and effective sabotage campaign to disrupt munitions and other cargoes being shipped to the European Allies of France, Russia and Great Britain, before the US entered the war.   There is documentation that certainly 35 ships were firebombed, and an additional 39 suffered suspicious fires.   Many sabotage events were downplayed or not reported so the number could be significantly higher.  A number of munitions factories in the US attacked. Five US Navy warships suffered fire damage, and the USS Oklahoma and USS New York, two new battleships under construction were almost completely destroyed.

Most of the cargo ships sabotaged in 1915 were attacked with small incendiary devices, the size of a cigar. These contained sulphuric acid in one small compartments separated from picric acid or potassium chlorate, by a copper disc.. The copper disc was dissolved over time (usually several days) and then the sulphuric acid was in contact with the other compound causing a violent ignition.  Typically a number of these “cigars” were secreted in the cargoes in a ships hold by stevedores of German or Irish extraction in US East Coast ports. Some devices were made aboard German ships, interned in US ports when the British blockaded them.  One in particular, the “SS Friedrich der Grosse” of the NordDeutschland Lloyd line was docked in New York and German agents ferried the devices from the ship to the dock workers to hide on board munitions and cargo ships.  Other cigars or “pills” as they saboteurs described them, were made in the laboratory of the designer, Dr Scheele at 1133 Clinton Street, Hoboken, New Jersey.

The “cigars” were to a design develped by a German sympathiser, Dr Scheele, and are reported to have been about 4 inches long. Once initiated they ejected white hot flames from both ends.

Now, there appears to have been more than one design.  In a diagram produced by another saboteur, Frederick Hermann, the construction of the incendiary appears a little more complex, than simply two compartments in a lead pipe separated by a copper disc.  It is hard to interpret the diagram below but I note that the compound to which the acid mixes is described as chlorate and sugar, which will make a difference to its explosive effect, depending on relative qunatities of the mixture. The diagram appears (I think) to show an upper reservoir of sulphuric acid, a “neck” halfway down labled “c” (for copper, presumably a copper plug and not a disc), and below that the chlorate with sugar. Wax probably closed both ends.

It should be noted that to work effectively the cigar needs to be positioned vertically, to allow the acid to dissolve the copper and then fall into the chlorate-sugar mix.  Only a proportion of the devices functioned and some were recovered by French and British governments in ports in Europe.  In 1915 this activity was being led by two officers from the German embassy , Karl Boy-Ed, and Kapitan Franz von Papen. Later in 1915 a secret agent of the German Navy Franz von Rinteln was sent to encouage the sabotage campaign.    In a range of investigations led by the head of the NYPD bomb squad, Thomas Tunney, who was seconded to Military Intelligence, the German sabotage cells were largely disrupted. By 1917 the US had entered the war,  Rinteln was captured and imprisoned in England and the others had been arrested, expelled or in the case of Dr Scheele, escaped to Havana.

Given that history  it was intriguing to find a report on the Australian War Memorial blog about an incendiary device recovered from a  ship in 1918, possibly in Liverpool, from a ship arriving from the US. By 1918 most of the German sabotage cells had been rounded up, also the design of the incendiary device is somewhat different.

These images are included on the AWM blog and I’m grateful for their kind permission to reproduce them here.

 

Working from the photographs alone, it appears that the knurled steel “head” appears to have two openings in it, closed by bolts.  I would have perhaps expected only one, to simply fill with acid.   The main body appears to be copper and the strange shaped base appears to be aluminium (?), corroded by a galvanic reaction.  The base is an odd design.  This device, bigger than the earlier cigars would have been more difficult to smuggle aboard and its dimensions would have made it more difficult to conceal in a cargo. The description accompanying the images suggest that rather than acid eating through a reservoir wall in this case the acid ate through a wire which retained a spring action to an initiator…. that’s a quite different initiation mechanism.  This device would have taken more skill to construct and the threaded and knurled head, the apparent 3 sections of copper pipe and a neat fitting of the copper pipe to the aluminium  base indicates a higher level of engineering….  Something about the base design rings a bell, but I can’t put my finger on it.  The design of the base must have a reason and there must be a reason for it to have been different from the copper…but I cant work that out. Any suggestion gratefully received.

The blog from the AWM also has set me off on a new thread. The device appears to have been forwarded to the Australian section of the British “Munitions Inventions Department” in Esher, for examination. The Munitions Inventions Department had been set up earlier in the war to coordinate the wide range of scientific and military engineering developments required by the Allies to win the war.  It was really the forerunner of later government defence research departments.  Teams of ingenious, pragmatic and capable engineers had been co-opted into developing a wide range of innovative weaponry. By all accounts the Australians were masters of such craft and contributed significantly to a wide range of innovative munitions.  I’ve started some research on that and will no doubt blog about some of the wilder and more interesting inventions in the future.

 

 

And here’s one after it is burnt out showing a broad base on which the rope is mounted and a central core:

 

The design of the magnesium incendiaries evolved quite quickly – here’s what they looked like by the end of WW1 and pretty much through to WW2, with only minor changes:

 

1860-1870

Augmented reality and explosive initiation – an historical mystery

There is much focus today on “augmented reality” technology and a fair proportion of this is in the defence world. Systems like the Google Glass project and a number of others can be used or adapted to add visible data and tactical information and analysis to a soldier, overlaying that data on what he is seeing. Very hi-tec. So I was surprised when during some research I came across the details of a genuine Augmented Reality technology being used for a defence fire control system in the 1860s over a 150 years ago.

During the 1860’s a room-sized camera obscura was used to conduct military research in Belgium. The system was set up to project a “live view” of the River Scheldt in which an electrically initiated underwater mine had been placed. That view was projected onto a large table. The operator of the camera obscura marked the position of the submerged mine on the viewing table, in effect as a data overlay with the image. An enemy ship passing over the mine could therefore be seen and as it approached and when in the optimal position, the mine could be exploded by remote control. The experiment was repeated in Venice in 1866 by Austrian engineers who then held the city, with more elaborate steps to pinpoint the location of the mine, and in this case a series of mines.  As a small boat laid each mine, the operator recorded that position and marked it on the image table.  The boat then did a full circle, I’m guessing 20ft around each mine position, and the operator recorded that circle on the viewing table, in effect becoming a specific kill zone, for each individually activated mine, presumably numbered,  overlaid on the live image.  This ingenious arrangement was never tested in action.

Doing some more digging on this subject I have found oblique references to the connection with Samuel Colt the American inventor. Colt did indeed develop systems for initiating observed river mines in the 1830s, and this poor diagram, dated 1836 labeled “Submarine Batary first thorts 1836”, drawn by Colt, seems to indicate a reflecting lens which might project an image onto some form of viewing screen. To me that looks like a version of a camera obscura.

This second diragam, an overhead diagram, might be interpreted as a viewing position with a lens in the building at the very top, which projected a view of the scene over a set of terminals for initiation.

This third diagram, again by Colt begins to make sense, perhaps. Note the large lens in the upper right, I think reflecting the camera obscura image onto the actual reflective control panel.  Thus the image is projected onto the switches. I think….

Colt was incredibly secretive about his inventions, but I think there is a very good possibility Colt had invented something similar to (and possibly more sophisticated than) the 1866 Austrian camera obscura system, but 30 years earlier, or at least had the concept in his head. Due to Colt’s obsessive secrecy I can’t be quite sure.  It is possible that as well as protecting the commercial rights to the system with this secrecy, Colt was also very aware that the observation towers housing the “camera” had to be placed on prominent, well visible, high ground – making them potential targets for the dastardly British fleets which his systems were designed to combat. There were plenty of good reasons to keep the observation system secret.  So it is intriguing to wonder how a system, somewhat similar ended up on the River Schelde some years later.

It would be interesting to replicate Colt’s augmented reality fire control system of 1836, wouldn’t it?

1910-1920

Extensive IED Campaign in the USA

During the period 1914 to 1932 in the USA there was a violent and extensive campaign of IED attacks from the anarchist group the “Galleanists”.  This IED campaign is largely now forgotten but there are important lessons. The issues are slightly hard to discern because of aspects of the crimes that remain unsolved but with 20/20 hindsight it seems sensible to attribute key attacks to this group. We should also remember that this period in history was complex and also saw IED attacks in the US from German saboteurs, from local home-grown labor disputes and from organised crime.

The politics of the time were heated and radical. The leader of this particular Anarchist group was the Italian Luigi Galleani, and he was active in the US between 1901 and 1919.

Galleani very much pushed the idea of “propaganda of the deed’ as described a couple of decades earlier by Johann Most. Galleani was a powerful orator and writer with an international reputation before he got to the US in 1901, aged 40. His intense activity continued, and he wrote and published anarchist and revolutionary literature extensively. Galleani always championed “direct action” and praised those who committed violent acts. Galleani published a bomb making guide, oddly called “Health is in You!”, which sold for 25 cents.  The guide is interesting reading though with a technical error that allegedly cost the life of at least one enthusiastic student bomb maker making nitro-glycerine.

Galleani was deported to Italy in 1919 but continued his revolutionary work. His followers mounted a number of IED attacks and some significant IED campaigns in the US from about 1914 onwards. Here’s an outline summary:

  • 1914 – Several IED attacks in New York including St Patrick’s Cathedral and the placement of an IED in Tombs Police court under the chair of a Magistrate.

  • 1914 – Premature explosion on Lexington Avenue in a bomb making facility. killing four anarchists.

  • 1915 – Another Plot to blow up St Patrick’s cathedral in New York, intercepted by NYPD Bomb Squad commander Thomas Tunney
  • 1916 – Mass poisoning attempt with arsenic, Chicago. The perpetrator was never caught.
  • 1916 – Bomb attack on a Boston police station
  • 1916 – Galleanists now believed to have been responsible for the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing on 22 July, which killed ten people.  Local labor activists were convicted but decades later pardoned and the evidence against them discredited. No other perpertrators were brought to justice. Many historians now attribute blame to the Galleanists.  The device was reported as dynamite or TNT packed into metal pipes in a suitcase with a clock as a timing component. However examination of the evidence years later suggest much less certainty about the construction of the device.
  • 1917 – A bomb placed in a church in Milwaukee was recovered to a Milwaukee police station where is exploded killing 9 policemen and a female civilian. The perpetrator was never caught
  • 1917-1918 Other bombings across the US attributed to the Galleanists.
  • 1918 – A number of IEDs placed in the homes of Philadelphia public officials
  • 1919 – An IED being placed by four Galleanists in a Wool Mill exploded prematurely killing four of the perpetrators.
  • 1919 – Further bombings
  • 1919 – In late April 1919 a total of 36 dynamite IEDs were posted to a number of high profile individuals across the US in the mail. The bombs were intended to be delivered on May Day.  No-one was killed but a senator’s housekeeper was badly injured opening one of the packages. No-one directly charged with the offence.  The postal 36 IEDs were described as follows:   The package was wrapped in brown paper. Inside the brown paper the package was again wrapped in green paper, stamped “Gimbel Brothers – Novelty samples”. This contained a cardboard box containing a six inch x three inch x one inch block of hollowed out wood, which held a stick of dynamite. A small vial of sulfuric acid was fastened to the wooden block next to three mercury fulminate blasting caps. Opening one end of the cardboard box (marked “open’) released a spring which broke the vial of acid, which dripped into the blasting caps, causing a detonation.  I note that in some senses the initiation mechanism is similar to the acid initiated devices of Harry Orchard in 1903.
  • 1919 – In June, the Galleanists exploded eight large IEDs nearly simultaneously in several different US cities.  Each utilised about 25 pounds of Nitroglycerine, and was packed with shrapnel. Only two people were killed, – one a night-watchman and the other an anarchist who was laying a device when it exploded.   Police traced the printer who had printed flyers left at the scene of the bombs. They arrested two men, Andrea Salsedo and Roberto Eliam. Salsedo was questioned (some reports suggest he was tortured).  He then either jumped from a 14th floor window or was pushed by Elia. Elia refused to talk and was deported. The investigation stalled and the police used more aggressive tactics, including, allegedly, warrantless wire taps.  No direct suspects were indicted but several hundred suspects were exported.

  • 1920 –   The Galleanist Mario Buda is believed to have built and detonated the Wall St bomb on 16 September, killing 38 people.   The perpetrator was never brought to justice. 
  • 1927 – More bombings of court officials
  • 1932 – Another bombing of a court official

To us, sitting here in 2014, some one hundred years after these bombings started, the concept of a radical revolutionary IED campaign, and significant violent industrial disputes in the USA is hard to fathom.  I’m intrigued too that the revolutionary fervour of the times wasn’t “underground” as it would be today.  Here’s useful evidence of that. In 1914 there was an explosion in an apartment occupied by anarchists in Lexington Avenue New York. Four anarchists died, after the IED apparently exploded as it was being constructed. This image below shows a very well attended public demonstration in New York in support of the dead anarchists. Bizarre by today’s terms, I think.

But the threat posed by the Galleanists was real, and while complex and occurring at the same time as other threats, there was clearly a public concern about their capabilities.  I think that the logistics of planting 8 devices across the country is significant.  I’m also surprised so few perpetrator were properly brought to justice.

The Galleanist campaign reinforces once again the fact that the USA, of all nations, has had a significant domestic experience of IEDs throughout its existence. Those who suggest that the USA only really came to terms with IEDs in the last decade are simply wrong.

1800-1810

USS Intrepid – Another ship-borne massive IED

I’m indebted to John C Wideman, author of an excellent and detailed study of US civil war IEDs for information about another ship-borne IED similar to those mentioned in an earlier blog post.

The USS Intrepid was a ketch, originally named the Mastico, captured from Tripoli (now in Libya) in the First Barbary War. The First Barbary War has its origins in interesting parallels with modern piracy.

In 1804, the Intrepid was converted into a “floating volcano”, to be sent into Tripoli harbour and blown up amidst the corsair fleet adjacent to the walls of the port’s fortress. The ketch was loaded with 150 artillery shells and 100 barrels of gunpowder. Burning fuzes with a 15 minute delay were attached.  a crew of 11, led by Lt Richard Somers manned the vessel.  On entering Tripoli harbour, it cane under intense fire, and was unable to manoeuvre towards the intended target.  The 15 minute fuze proved unreliable and the ship detonated prematurely, killing the crew who had intended escaping by row boat.


USS Intrepid exploding in Tripoli Harbour

So, it can be seen, the explosively laden ship has been a repeated tactic, since 1584:

1584 – The explosion of the “Hoop”, Antwerp, against the invading Spanish Army. This incident remains, in my opinion the IED that has killed most victims in history, with 800 – 1000 killed. Tell me if I’m wrong.

1693 – The “Vesuvius”, used by the British under Admiral Benbow against St Malo

1694 – The Dieppe Raid, and raids against Dunkirk using the same technique

1804 – The Intrepid used by the American Navy against Tripoli, North Africa

1809 – Two explosive ships used by Admiral Cochrane, against the French, in the Basque Roads. Notably these had 15 minute fuses which exploded prematurely.

1864 – USS Louisiana, used in the US Civil war against Fort Fisher, Wilmington, N Carolina.

1918 – Zeebrugge raid, by the British Navy, using a submarine packed with explosives

1942 – HMS Campbelltown rammed into the dock gates in St Nazaire by the Royal Navy.

1880-1890

The IED Technology of Propaganda of the Deed, 1884

There’s a lot of attention given these days to the dissemination of such things as “Inspire” the extremist jihadi online magazine about how to build bombs and such like.

The truth is that this, like terrorism itself, is nothing really very new.  In 1884 the anarchist Johann Most published “Revolutionare Kreigswissenshaft”, a self proclaimed scientific handbook for would-be revolutionaries.  Johan Most popularized the concept of “Propaganda of the deed.”

While the modern day jihadist spreads his technology concepts by such things as “youtube”, “web forums” and “on-line magazines”,  Johann Most used “printing presses” and “bookshops” and “newspapers” to the same effect.

Most and his work are an interesting tale.  Most was born in Germany in 1846, and lived in England for a few years from 1878. Some of those English years were spent “at Her Majesty’s pleasure” in prison.  He was an ardent and open revolutionary. Finally he moved to the USA 1884, and was employed by an explosives manufacturer in New Jersey, building some small degree of technical expertise.  He published his book in 1884 and it is still available today still. I ordered mine openly from Amazon and I think I can justify it to the authorities.

The context of the situation in 1884 is important to understand.  My American friends will, I hope, forgive me when I say that it was a pretty easy place to build IEDs. A number of US citizens were openly involved in building IEDs for profit and training people to use them.

Here’s one example of a bomb maker from Philadelphia of the same period.  And another here from an earlier blog post on this site. .  I have records of several others including a man in Des Moines in the 1880s who was manufacturing IEDs to be sent to support the Fenian bombing campaign in London. Iowa was a hotbed of anti-British “Fenian”  feeling!   Then in 1886 was the Haymarket bombing in Chicago, which I have written about in an earlier post.

The Haymarket bombs were of a type described by Most in his handbook published two years earlier. There is a link, allegedly with Most promising to send the Haymarket conspirators dynamite. He really pushed the “classic” anarchist IED of a black sphere with a burning fuse projecting from it.

The truth is that Most’s understanding of explosives is nowhere near as good as he thought it was.  Perhaps that too is like modern extremist publications available on-line. The handbook has numerous technical errors but is all the more interesting for that. Clearly I’m not going into those errors here, but it’s pretty interesting to see his revolutionary ardour overtake technicalities. I would also add that most copies available are translations and I think there are some peculiar spelling errors and possible technical misunderstandings of the translator. For instance in the copies I have seen, Most describes “Oraini bombs”, which should I think read “Orsini bombs”. Also the translator clearly has no technical background – at one point complaining irritatedly that Most’s phrase “Cloral de pottage” doesn’t appear in any of the University of Arizona’s French Dictionaries. It clearly means Potassium Chlorate to anyone with a smidgen of understanding of the chemistry of explosives.

Most describes the manufacture of the chemical impact fuzing system that was in the IED used to assassinate the Tsar in 1881.

Interestingly Most advises that it is easier to obtain nitro-glycerine or dynamite legally or illegally than it is to manufacture it.   Amusingly, as a revolutionary, Most doesn’t describe it as “theft” but “confiscation”.   But then describing the manufacture of nitro-glycerine he views with disdain some of the safety measures that are normally advised for such projects.   Most’s instructions are not detailed or specific enough and are subject to dangerous misinterpretation, especially , I suspect, the translated versions, translated by a non-chemist who I don’t think has much technical understanding.

Most describes a way in which explosives should be used to cause damage to buildings and railway lines, but most of this seems to be a “cut and paste” job from Austrian military handbooks of the time. Again, somewhat like certain extremist sites of today who recycle conventional military handbooks.

Most does occasionally have some very pertinent ideas about such things as disguise of devices.

Most describes the manufacture of a range of explosive charges and also primary explosives and incendiary devices. There is an odd, and somewhat silly section about poisons, but no sillier, I suppose than some of the nonsense on extremist websites today.  I can’t really imagine copper acetate is a serious poison for the serious terrorist.   He also has ideas about operational matters such as organization of an operational terrorist group.

Most takes an interesting view on the question of the right to bear arms, which he equates directly with the right to possess explosives.  He attacks US lawmakers of the era who were trying to make the possession of explosives illegal, which he viewed as a first step along the road of making weapon ownership illegal.  “How then would the American revolutionary be able to shoot the lawmaker?”, he asks indignantly. Finally, Most describes some very “modern” OPSEC procedures.

So the history of disseminating terrorist technology and tactics goes back an awful long way.  Most was doing exactly what “Inspire” is doing now, just with a different level of media.  You’d be surprised at the similarities.

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