Standing Well Back
20th Century

More railway IED attacks from history

I have built an exceptional trove of IED attacks on railways, which I’ll blog further about in coming days and weeks. These include:

1. A fascinating and unsolved IED attack on a railway line near Watford, in 1880, using an unusual booby trap switch.

2. A further campaign against the Ottoman train system in Salonika in the early 1900s.  So the Ottoman train system was subject to IED attacks in Salonika (now Greece) in the 1900s, in Arabia in WW1 (Lawrence etc) and in the Dardanelles campaign, WW1 (from submarines).

3. Attacks on the railway system in the Arab revolt in Palestine, pre WW2.  Of interest the British forces in Palestine applied an unusual,and in today’s terms, immoral technique for preventing booby trapped rail IEDs -see the photo below, which shows an improvised armoured rail car behind two Arab hostages.

Also from Palestine, but this immediately post WW2, and prior to the establishment of Israel. the railway lines were attacked extensively by the Irgun/Stern gang.  These groups posed a significant IED problem for the British Forces, which I’ll write about in coming days – a largely forgotten story, with some challenging EOD situations and challenging IEDs.  This device below uses a bell push which is depressed by a bracket fastened to a sleeper.  I found this image in an official British Royal Engineer publication from 1946 describing Irgun devices.   Note that the device contained a hidden anti-handling switch in addition to the bell push. (Details of that not shown, for security reasons).

 

20th Century

The US Navy Sub that destroyed a train, with an IED

I’ve written a few blogs in the past about IEDs placed under train tracks, that the weight of the train triggers. As a reminder:

  • In the US Civil War, in 1864, the Union Army designed an IED (a “rail torpedo”) that initiated when a train ran over a rail , pressing down on a gun trigger that caused the device to function.
  • Another IED design was used in the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, with the rail pressing on an artillery fuse to initiate the charge.
  • In the Boer War, in 1901, Jack Hindon used devices under railways to attack British trains, using an upturned Martini Henry gun lock, with the rail bending under weight to press on the trigger which initiated an explosive charge.
  • In WW1, ordnance specialist “Bimbashi” Garland designed and deployed similar devices, again using an upturned gun trigger, and used by Lawrence of Arabia to great effect against the Ottoman Turk trains in Arabia.

I’m glad to say I’ve now found a similar device, with a great story, from WW2.   The use of the IED was effectively the ONLY US ground combat operation on the Japanese homeland in the entire war. (Noting that the attack took place in southern Sakhalin, which was considered a Japanese home island at the time) .

Late in the war, US Navy submarines began to patrol very aggressively close to the Japanese mainland. One of the subs was the USS Barb, skippered by Commander Eugene Fluckley. The patrol in question started on 8 June 1945 and involved a variety of attacks including, unusually, firing rockets at Japanese targets from the deck of the surfaced submarine. After noting considerable Japanese railway activity on a railway line near the shore, a plan was developed to blow up a train by putting a team ashore at Karafuto from the submarine.

An improvised device was carefully designed.  As far as I can make out it was as follows:

  • The main charge was a 55lb super-Torpex “scuttling charge” held in reserve on the submarine for scuttling the sub in an emergency. The blasting caps used must have been the ones meant to be used with this charge.
  • Power was provided by two dry cell batteries.
  • The switch was a microswitch removed from some electronic equipment on board.
  • The batteries and circuitry were mounted inside an oil-can to protect it from the elements. Included was a “test circuit” to ensure safety.

The crew made careful calculations to estimate the deflection of the railway line  (7/10″, which was adjusted on the operation itself to 1/4″) and made an improvised gauge to help the setting of the switch. They also made improvised shovels to help bury the charge under the rails. An eight man team was put ashore in inflatable boats and made their way (with one or two adventures) towards the track.

The charge was successfully initiated by a 16 carriage train and all the saboteur group escaped unharmed. Commder Fluckley ended the war as the most decorated officer in the Navy.

20th Century

Suffragette Bombs, 1912 – 1914

There’s a lot of talk about the suffragette movement right now, and that’s entirely appropriate.  But there is little about the suffragette bombing and arson campaign.  On these pages I try to avoid political commentary, but just for the record here’s an outline of some of the bomb attacks by the Suffragette movement. There were also a considerable number of arson attacks. This is by no means an exhaustive list of bombing attempts but I think it’s most of them. I have commented on device construction of some of the incidents, where known.

  1. 18 July 1912. Theatre Royal Dublin. several small explosive devices exploded during an attack by suffragettes who tried to burn down the theatre.
  2. 19 February 1913. Walton on the Hill, Surrey. A house being built for Lloyd George was attacked with two crude explosive devices. Only one functioned, disrupting the second. The unexploded device had a main charge of 5lbs of gunpowder.
  3. 4 April 1913. Oxted railway station, Surrey. Bomb exploded in men’s lavatory. Clockwork mechanism and battery recovered.
  4. 14 April 1913. Bank of England, London.  Milk can attached to railings by hat pins in the street outside the Bank of England, opposite the entrance top the Stock Exchange. Relatively large charge. Timing device of a wristwatch and battery, device initiated but did not explode properly, device spotted emitting smoke, policeman carried the burning device to the Royal Exchange and immersed it in a fountain.
  5. 17 April 1913.  Aberdeen Railway Station.  Gunpowder charge, fuse was a lit candle.  A railway porter extinguished the candle.
  6. 24 April 1913. Free Trade Hall, Manchester. Bomb exploded.
  7. 24 April 1913. Crown Court, Newcastle.  Bomb exploded.  2ft long pipe bomb.
  8. 2 May 1913. Piccadilly Tube station. London. A quantity of nitroglycerine was found abandoned at the station.
  9. 5 May 1913. Borough Market Post office, London. Gunpowder and nitroglycerine recovered from a parcel.
  10. 7 May 1913. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Ticking bomb discovered and defused. the device contained a clock, two batteries, and contained nitro-glycerine as the main charge. Nitroglycerine was a relatively rare explosive used by the Suffragettes.
  11. 10th May 1913. Cambridge. a bomb exploded in the changing rooms of the Cambridge University football ground.
  12. 10 May 1913. Lime St station, Liverpool.  A device failed to function in the waiting room. Burning fuse had gone out. The device was packed with improvised shrapnel (nuts and bolts).
  13. 10 May 1913. Empire Theatre, Dublin. A woman discovered a bomb made from 24 cartridges of gunpowder, with the fuse burning i the ladies lavatory in the theatre. She picked up the device and plunged it into water in a  sink, extinguishing the fuse.
  14. 10 May 1913. Reading Post Office. A parcel was found ticking and a postal device connected to a timer was recovered. The explosive charge consisted of gunpowder and nitroglycerine.
  15. 14 May 1913. Parcel bomb sent to Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, a magistrate, at Bow Street court, London.  Device consisted of a tin of gunpowder, and a bullet with a nail fixed to strike the percussion cap, presumably released on a  spring when the package was opened (but not that clear). Device defused. A few days later two persons attempted to push Sir Henry off a cliff near Margate as he was out walking.
  16. 15 May 1913. A small bomb planted outside the National Gallery, London. Failed to explode.
  17. 16 May 1913. a series of bombs at
    1. A library in South London
    2. A church in Hastings
    3. An hotel in Brentwood
    4. At Westbourne Park Station (device failed)
  18. 21 May 1913. Royal Observatory, Blackford Hills Edinburgh. Bomb exploded.
  19. 27 May 1913. Reading station. A bomb was thrown onto the platform from a passing train (the Bristol Express), where it exploded.
  20. 11 June 1913. Post Office, Newcastle upon Tyne. Bomb exploded.
  21. 15 June 1913. Eden Park railway station, Beckenham. Bomb recovered. A clockwork timer had failed to function.
  22. 17 June 1913. Blackfriars Bridge. Bomb thrown from the bridge, exploded on or under the water.
  23. 18 June 1913. Stratford Upon Avon Canal, Birmingham. Large explosion damaged the canal. Remains of a long burning fuse recovered.
  24. 5 July 1913. Cotton Exchange, Liverpool. Bomb exploded.
  25. 7 July 1913. Monsall Road railway siding. Manchester. Device exploded on a  train carriage parked in the sidings.
  26. 19 July 1913. Haslemere station. A bomb was discovered in a box on some steps leading to the platform. It was plunged into a pail of water bya porter. a clock, battery, “fuse” and explosives were recovered.
  27. 11 November 1913. Alexandra Park, Manchester. A large explosion of a pipe bomb, probably gunpowder. Initiation system not known
  28. 14 November 1913. Sefton Park palm House Liverpool. Bomb failed to explode.
  29. 18 December 1913. Holloway prison, London. Two large dynamite bombs below up next to the prison garden wall. The devices had been exploded by two 50ft loing burning fuses run to a nearby House.
  30. 6 January 1914. Crown Point,  Leeds. A bomb exploded at an electricity generating station.
  31. 7 January 1914. Harewod Barracks, Leeds. A dynamite bomb was thrown over the wall of the barracks which was being used by the police at the time. It exploded.
  32. 24 January 1914. Kibble Palace botanic gardens, Glasgow. Two devices were encountered in the Botanic gardens. One was rendered safe by a gardener who cut a burning fuse with his knife. The other exploded.
  33. March 1914. Church of St John the Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster, London. Bomb exploded. (see second attack on this church on 12 July 1914)
  34. 3 April 1914. Belmont Church, Glasgow. Three small devices exploded in Belmont Church, Glasgow
  35. 5 April 1914. Trafalgar Square, London a bomb exploded at the church of St Martin-In-the Fields, starting a fire.
  36. 17 April 1914. Britannia Pier, Yarmouth. Bomb exploded causing a fire which destroyed the Pier.  On the same day a number of fires were started around the country.
  37. 3 May 1914. Upper Windledon Reservoir, Yorkshire. Large iron pipe bomb discovered at valve house, having failed to explode. Fuse was a wax taper.
  38. 10 May 1914. Metropolitan Tabernacle, Elephant and Castle, London. A bomb exploded in the gallery of the church.
  39. 22 May 1914. Glasgow.  Two large explosive devices discovered buried beside a Glasgow aqueduct. Fuses had been lit but had extinguished.
  40. 5 June 1914. Dudhope Castle, Dundee Policeman discovered a pipe bomb at the castle entrance. Burning fuse was wrapped around a candle, which had been lit but had gone out.
  41. 11 June 1914. Westminster Abbey, London. a bomb exploded beside the coronation chair, probably damaging the Stone of Scone. which is built into the chair. Iron shrapnel and been built into the bomb.
  42. 14 June 1914. St George’s Church Hannover Square, London. Bomb exploded.
  43. 15 June 1915. Olympia, London. A suffragette was arrested in possession of a bomb at a horse show.
  44. 8 July 1914. Robert Burns’s cottage , Scotland. Two people were spotted placing large explosive devices against the wall of the cottage, an historic building. One person was detained, the other escaped. two devices were recovered, each containing about 4kg of blasting powder, each with a 20ft burning fuze.
  45. 12 July 1914. A postal bomb exploded while in transit on a train between Blackpool and Manchester causing a fire. A guard was severely injured in the flames
  46. 12 July 1914. device left under a pew in the Church of St John the Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster, London during a service. Perpetrator Annie Bell arrested as she left, having been under surveillance. device consisted of a large charge of 5.5 lbs of gunpowder with a lit candle inserted.  Device was extinguished by the congregation.
  47. 13 July 1914. Rosslyn chapel, Edinburgh. Bomb consisted a a tin of gunpowder and a long burning fuse, was set on a window ledge and exploded.
  48. 1 August 1914. Lisburn, Northern Ireland. Bomb exploded outside Christ Church Cathedral, leaving a crater 4 feet deep

Churches targeted: 11

Railway targets: 10 (including a postal device that functiond on a train)

Devices defused by passers by/first responders: 10

Devices failed to function as intended: 10

19th Century

Attacking Railway Lines with IEDs – 1870

Readers of this blog will know I have written on a number of occasions about the use of IEDs against railway lines.  In one of the “threads” I have followed, I worked backwards from the use of such devices by Lawrence of Arabia in WW1, established that they had been developed and used in Arabia , by “Bimbashi” Garland, Lawrence’s explosive mentor, a former Ordnance Corps Laboratory technician, and traced the design of these devices back to the Boer War where they were used by Boer guerrillas led by Jack Hindon against the British. Devices under railway lines were also used by Russian Narodnaya Volya terrorists in 1879 and in many attacks since then.    In digging around the provenance of the Boer devices I found a vague reference to the experience of a Boer who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War 30 years earlier, that the Boer’s utlised.  Here’s a list of previous posts on the matter in the order I wrote them.

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/5/15/bimbashi-garland.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/6/6/garlands-first-ied-attack.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/6/ied-triggers.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/6/8/martini-henry-and-other-ied-initiation-systems.html

I have been digging around reports on the Franco-Prussian war for some time, hampered by my sadly limited language skills, looking for something that might indicate where the Boers had gained their experience of blowing up trains using a pressure switch activated by the weight of a train. At last I have found something that fits and it’s pretty interesting. In 1870 a young Royal Engineer officer, Lt Fraser, was observing the events of the Franco-Prussian war, a habit that many armies followed in the 19th century. Lt Fraser wrote a paper, published, in the Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Vol XX in 1872. The paper is entitled  “Account of a Torpedo used for the Destruction of a Railway Train on the 26th of October, 1870.”  As a reminder the word “torpedo” was used at the time to describe a much wider variety of explosive devices and munitions than is applied today.

Here is a brief extract from a third party source, as I await a hard copy of the publication in the post which I hope will contain more detail:

Learning that a Prussian troop train was to pass through Lanois (on the line between Reims and Mons) on October 26, 1870, they resolved to effect its destruction. How they operated is told by Lieutenant Fraser, R. E., who arrived on the spot shortly afterwards, and heard the story from some of the men engaged on the work. 

 

Any obstruction placed on the line would have been seen. Hence a different course had to be adopted. Selecting a spot where the line ran along a 12-ft. high embankment, to which a well-wooded slope came down on one side, the franc tireurs took up a pair of rails, removed the sleepers, cut a deep trench across the line, laid some pieces of iron at the bottom of the trench, placed on the iron a box containing thirty kilos (2 qrs. 10 lbs.) of powder, and fixed into the lid of the box a French field shell in such a way that, when the rail was replaced over the box, the head of the fuse would be just below the lower flange of the rail. In restoring the line again in order that there should be nothing to attract attention, the franc tireurs omitted one sleeper so that the weight of the locomotive should in passing press the rail down on to the head of the fuse. The party—some seventy-five strong—then withdrew to the shelter of the woods to await developments.   

 

In due time the train of forty coaches approached at the ordinary speed, the driver not suspecting any danger. When the engine reached the spot where the “torpedo” had been placed, an explosion occurred which tore up a mass of earth, rails and sleepers, threw the engine and several carriages down the embankment, and wrecked the train. Those of the Prussian troops who got clear from the wreckage were shot down by the franc tireurs under the protection of their cover. The number of the enemy thus disposed of was said to be about 400.

I think there is a clear link to the device I report in the my previous blogs about the depressing rail activating a pressure sensitive switch albeit in this case an artillery fuse, and not the trigger of a rifle breech as seen in the Boer War and used by Garland and Lawrence in Arabia.  The device too has a link to the earlier pressure sensitive devices, using artillery shells with contact fuses adapted to initiate on pressure used by General Raines in the American civil war in 1862.

20th Century

Going Around and Coming Around

During World War One there was an extensive IED sabotage campaign run by German agents and diplomats in North America.  I have written in previous posts about some of these bombing incidents. See:

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

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/1/17/new-yorks-ied-task-force-1905-1919.html

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

One of the protagonists, or “players” in this great game was a young aristocratic German military officer, serving as diplomat on the staff of the German Embassy in Washington., His name was Kapitan Franz von Papen.


Von Papen in 1914 (public domain)

Von Papen was a man who clearly enjoyed intrigue. As well has involvement in the German sabotage campaign in 1915, he was also involved in discussions as an intermediary to Irish revolutionaries looking for a  supply weapons for the Easter rising of 1916, and was involved in liaison with Indian nationalists as part of the Hindu German Conspiracy.   In December 1915 he was declared “persona non grata” by the US government because of alleged complicity on the Vanceboro Bridge bombing .   Travel home to Germany was challenging, but Von Papen received a diplomatic document, a Laissaiz Passer, meaning he travelled via Falmouth in England knowing he could not be detained by the British under diplomatic law.  To his horror the laissez passer did not cover his luggage and in front of him on the dockside at Falmouth the British officials opened his bags finding code books and incriminating documents.

 

Documents were found which detailed the payment of over $3Million to the German agents involved in the sabotage campaign.   Transcripts of the seized documents are available here and make fascinating reading.  His cheque stubs were annotated with significant detail such as “for the purchase of picric acid”  “for dum-dum investigation” and exposed several agents who lived in England but were offering services to the Germans.   Of note is the Germany authorities in Berlin asking him to find out details of how Mexican revolutionaries were blowing up trains in 1914, “in order to form an opinion whether, in the event of a European war, explosions of this kind would have to be reckoned with”.

One can imagine the apoplectic Prussian officer watching as the British officials simply opened his bags and took the documents out.   Further documents linking Von Papen to the Bombing Campaign in the US were discovered in a Wall Street office he rented. Other documents incriminated the Austria Ambassador who was collecting munition shipping data for the Germans.  One might have thought that Von Papen would have learned his lesson.  But no….  In a later parallel, while serving with the Ottoman Army in Palestine the following year, he left behind a suitcase in a room he was using in Nazareth as the British advanced. In it, papers were found belonging to him incriminated several agents he was running locally.  All in all then, Von Papen’s spy-craft was pretty shoddy.

In 1916, an US indictment was issued against him for plotting to blow up Canada’s Welland Canal, based on the seized documents from Falmouth.  He remained under indictment as he rose in the ranks of the German inter-war political scene, becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1932, at which point the US charges were rescinded.   There is this rather nice quote about Von Papen at the time by the French Ambassador “His appointment to Chancellor of Germany was met by incredulity. He enjoyed the peculiarity of being taken seriously by neither his friends nor his enemies. He  was reputed to be superficial, blundering, untrue, ambitious, vain, crafty and an intriguer.”   He was subsequently easily out-manouvered by the Nazis.  He was then made Ambassador to Austria, in the run up the the Anschluss.

In 1939 he was appointed as Ambassador to Turkey, where the intrigue of the war years suited his inclinations, if not his expertise. The Turks initially objected pointing out that his previous diplomatic activity had involved sabotage in the US and subversion in another (Austria). but he was appointed.  In 1942 a peculiar incident occurred, an act of intrigue against the man with so much experience of it himself.  There are conflicting version of this story but it would appear that the most convincing is this:

The Russian intelligence service , the NKVD, decided to assassinate Von Papen.  After an abortive attempt to incorporate a Czech officer, they found a Yugoslav born communist, now Turkish,  to conduct the mission. The perpetrator was told to shoot Von Papen who regularly strolled along a particular avenue with his wife, then cover their escape by triggering a “smoke bomb”.  But with NKVD subterfuge the smoke bomb wasn’t a smoke bomb at all, but contained a large amount of high explosive. The perpetrator fired one shot at Von Papen, which missed then immediately triggered the smoke bomb’ which exploded blowing the shooter to pieces.  His penis was found in a tree and a distinctive wart on the skin near an eyebrow was also recovered from the scene.   The NKVD had also , allegedly planted documentation in the device packaging suggesting the perpetrators was from the German Embassy itself. Another version suggests that this was “reported” by TASS as disinformation.   Then idea was that the assassination would occur and the perpetrator would be blown to bits to reduce the risk of the incident being compromised as an NKVD operation.

Von Papen and his wife survived the attack, shaken but largely unharmed. For what it is worth Von Papen suspected the British. The Russian embassy hinted that the Americans “knew” it was the gestapo who were responsible.  The turks arrested the “station chief” of the NKVD (officially listed as an “archivist”)  at the Russian embassy . This occurred amongst diplomatic uproar as the Turks surrounded the Russian embassy for two weeks demanding he be handed over.   Two other emigre Yugoslav communists (from the Muslim community) were also arrested.  These latter two confessed that the Soviets had ordered the assassination.   They claimed that the Russians had given the perpetrator, Omer Tokat, a revolver and the supposed smoke bomb. all defendants were found guilty. Things got complicated in subsequent appeals (too complex to explain in a short blog).

After the war Von Papen was convicted at the Nuremberg trials , released in 1949 and died 20 years after that.

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