Standing Well Back
Russia

Russian Partisan EOD search, 1942

I’ve found an interesting book, “The Partisan’s Companion“, a guerilla warfare manual produced by Russia in 1942. There’s a small section on EOD search for German mines and booby traps which is interesting.

Remember the fascists use mines widely and employ them with cunning and trickery. Quite often they leave various lures in plain sight and connect them to mines. You should be careful and wary of them.

Do not enter a house which has been left by the Germans until you have inspected the ground around it, The stair steps of the porch, doors, windows, floor boards and various household objects – all of them could be connected to mines.  Any attempt to move them or even a simple touch could produce and explosion.   Use long rope and a grapnel to open the door of such a house.

After entering the house – thoroughly inspect it. First, do a visual inspection, looking for the revealing signs of mines: fresh spots in the wall’s plaster, evidence of disturbing the bricks in the walls or stove, fresh scratches on the floor. Also check the electrical wires – see if there are any devices connected to them. If you find suspicious areas- check them more thoroughly.

Try to avoid all kinds of twine, rope and wire in the forest, on the roads and in the houses. They could be linked to mines. Be careful around places which show some disturbance to their uniformity.For example: small lumps of dirt on grass warn you about digging at that site. Be careful not to pick up a rifle or other weapon left behind by the Germans, especially if it is in a highly visible spot. Remember that the Germans sometimes even put mines on the corpses of their soldiers and officers.

The manual then goes on to describe an interesting technique for finding buried clockwork timed mechanisms attached to mines, using a “water stethoscope”.  A water bottle is filled almost to within a few centimeters from the top, and a glass tube inserted through the stopper. Put a rubber hose onto the outside of the tube. Then plant the bottle in the ground, with the surface of the water in the bottle level with the ground. Place the end of the hose to your ear and if there is a buried clockwork device nearby you will hear it.

That sounds like an interesting technique – I’ll have to give it a try.

 

 

1850-1860

Report of IEDs in the Crimea, 1855

I have written before about Russian use of IEDs in the Crimea, here and here, but recently I came across another report referring to IEDs in Sebastopol, left behind after it was taken by the British in September 1855. Before evacuating the city, Russian forces had prepared and set thirty to forty victim operated IEDs (“booby traps”).   Lt Col Frederic Dallas wrote “ the Russians, outside all their works, have Machines, our men call them “Man traps”, which explode when you touch, or rather tread upon them, and they are a frightful source of accidents”.

The Illustrated London News war artist wrote an account of one such incident on 28 September 1855 describing an explosion that had taken place.  He also describes the initiation mechanism of these IEDs which is clearly the so called “Jacobi Fuse”, actually designed by Alfred Nobel’s father, Immanuel Nobel for Jacobi who was head of the Russian munition design bureau.  Here’s the report:

Yesterday, as I was sketching in the west of Sebastopol, an explosion shook the buildings around and reverberated through the roofless and untenanted edifices of the place. The Arsenal Creek was filled with a heavy black smoke, and showers of large stones fell into the water, lashing it for a moment into sheets of foam. The centre of the fire was a battery on the left flank of the Creek Battery. This was one of the works erected by the Russians to sweep the approaches of the Woronzoff road; it was built of stones taken from the houses around it, faced with earth externally, and without a ditch. The magazine was in the foundations of a house which had once stood there […]. The Russians had placed a fougasse over it, and an accidental tread upon a wooden peg driven into the earth broke a glass tube of inflammable matter which communicated with the powder below […].

Three of the men in the work were blown to atoms; and a large number were buried in the ruins; whilst sad havoc was at the same time committed on parties of workmen leading mules along the road close by. Two soldiers of the guard in the Creek Battery were killed by stones projected with great violence into the air, and launched with fatal force upon them. Several mules and horses were killed in this same manner, and every point within 200 yards of the spot was visited by the terrible shower. The crater left by the explosion was about twenty feet deep and twenty wide; and in its crumbled sides were found some of the wounded, who were speedily conveyed to hospital.

After this incident , troops searched carefully for others and found one in a nearby battery . The devices left behind in Sebastopol prevented the British and French form occupying the city properly. It did not prevent them from undertaking appalling looting however.

Technology Development

How gun locks were used in IEDs for over 250 years

When I started my research into historical IEDs a few years ago, I came across references to “gun locks” used as initiation mechanisms. The “gun locks” are from firearms such as wheel-locks or flintlocks re-purposed to initiate a larger explosive charge.

However I have continued to encounter these mechanisms at every turn of my research. The deeper I dive into historical documents the more I think they were much more common than I had realised. In fact I think they were a usual way of initiating IEDs for about 250 and even for as long as 330 years. I think that’s surprising and worthy of explanation   The wheel-lock and its successors, the snap lock, the snap-haunce and the flintlock are essentially spring loaded levers operating around an axis which contrives to place a spark ignition system in direct proximity to gunpowder. In a firearm the “trigger” is pulled by the person aiming the firearm – the pull of the trigger releases the spring-loaded mechanism. In general terms in an IED the trigger is pulled or released by another mechanism such as a lever or a cord. But it is the same mechanism.

The developments of gun locks for firearms were paralleled and linked inextricably with the development of household locks for doors and chests, and the same people made both.  There is also a distinct parallel in technological development terms with clock making which saw some significant developments in about 1580 with the development of spring driven rather than pendulum driven mechanisms, and one sees this being a mechanism that enables mechanical timing mechanisms in IEDs for the first time at around this date.  But the clock is only a component to release a spring loaded lever, allowing the flint, for example, to strike and cause sparks.   One can still see the influence of clock making in fairly modern fuzes, and I think that’s an area for future research, to explore the early parallels of lock mechanics with fuze mechanics. Indeed the language of clocks and explosive fuzes is very similar in describing components – ”fuzes” and “trains”.

I’ve discussed before some of this , in relation to the invention of detonating systems,  but here I want to concentrate on the locks and the derived implications to IED design.

Here’s an outline of the technology:

Prior to 1500 firearms were fired with “match locks”. Pulling a trigger caused a slow burning cord, (a “match”)  held on an “s” shaped lever to be pushed into contact with the gunpowder charge. In about 1500 the wheel lock was developed as a sophisticated mechanism to initiate a firearm without a pre-lit match.  The wheel lock is a spring loaded steel wheel which acts with friction against a piece fo pyrite to produce sparks, pushed against it by a spring loaded lever or “dog”.   The resultant sparks land upon the beginning of the gunpowder train. (think of a Bic cigarette lighter, yet the thumb which turns the steel is replaced by a spring).  A simple “detent” safety catch is easy to include which prevents the spring loaded mechanism being moved until the device is set up in place.  Thus the wheel lock is:

  1. Safer than using a matchlock where a slow burning fuse (“match”) is introduced to the gunpowder train (not a good idea with a large charge of gunpowder immediately adjacent)
  2. Able to be left in place for as long as the gunpowder doesn’t deteriorate
  3. Able to facilitate its containment and concealment (partly due to its small size) within an enclosure, which again a matchlock is not suited to.
  4. Able to prevent the give-away smell of  a burning match and the sight of a glow.

So in IED terms the wheel lock and its successors enable ease of use, concealment and safety, all key aspects for someone wanting to use an IED.

Pyrite is used in wheel-locks rather than flint because flint is too hard and the wheel would wear away rapidly. The wheel-lock is quite a complex piece of engineering and therefore expensive, which would have been a discouragement for the “one time use” within an explosive device.

The snap lock was introduced in the late 1540s. The key to its design is that it is simpler, with less moving parts – simply a spring loaded lever holding a flint that falls on a steel or “frizzen”. There is no wheel to wear out, and much less complexity, meaning that it is cheaper and therefore more likely to be “thrown away” in an IED.

The snaphaunce LINK developed in the 1550s and the flintlock LINK developed in 1620, were basically improvements on the snaplock design , allowing the pan to be covered for safety and to keep out the weather – the essential difference between these latter two is the mechanism by which the pan of gunpowder was uncovered.

So, between 1500 there is a period of 120 years of technological development to get from the original matchlock to the safe, flexible, cheap, easy to operate flintlock. Here’s a video showing in a bit more detail how a flintlock on a firearm works.

From about the 1540s it may have become an economic option to use a gun lock in a “one time use” IED – perhaps from a broken firearm.

The next issue to address is how the trigger is pulled or released to allow the gun lock to fire.  There are essentially three principle modes of initiation for IEDs, all based around the fundamental idea that the perpetrator does not want to be near when the device explodes –  and the firing lock can enable each one of these three:

  • By command from a distance.  Simply by tying a cord to the trigger of a gun lock a device can be initiated from a safe distance.
  • By a victim’s action.  By tying a cord to the trigger and attaching the end of the cord to an attractive object or some other thing likely to be moved, the perpetrator can cause the initiation by a victim.
  • By timer. if the firing lock trigger is attached in some appropriate way to a clockwork mechanism, then after a set time, the trigger will be pulled.

The following examples detail use of these three technique from the period between 1585 to 1918 – a significant period of history

In the 1570s the somewhat exotic inventor Ralph Rabbards describes contrivances that require some sort of spring loaded mechanisms to initiate explosives, and at the same time Samuel Zimmerman of Augsberg described explosive devices set off with hidden springs and string.    Zimmermann discusses “booby trapping” a chair that will initiate a device when sat on, and booby trapping a “purse of gold” left lying in the street.    I’m pretty certain that these devices would have used a gun lock initiator – how else would they have been initiated?  The technology was there and there are no other apparent mechanisms available to the bomb designer of the time.

In 1581, the Polish besiegers of the City of Pskov sent a jewelled casket to the occupants of the city of Pskov. The device exploded when it was opened by the Russian defenders.   This booby trap mechanisms must have been initiated by a gun lock , adapted and contained in the casket.

This link here, tentatively dated to the 1580s shows 4 command initiated devices, initiated by operators pulling a cord from a distance. One has to assume that the cord was attached to the trigger of a firing lock buried in the barrels on the route of the target convoys. Not much changes does it?

In 1585, Giambelli’s clockwork Hellburner was triggered by a clock provided by Antwerp clock maker Jean Bovy.  Now techncialy, that could have been a lever, activated by the clock, which moved a burning match.  But I think a gun lock is more likely.

In 1628 Cornelius Drebbell (the inventor of an early submarine) developed floating devices used (unsuccessfully) by the English Navy against the French in La Rochelle. I have found this description of Drebbels explosive devices, written by Charles Bernard in 1628 in the Mercure Francois:

`During the night between Sunday (Oct. 1st.) and Monday, the English shot ten or twelve floating petards for the purpose of setting fire to the royal French fleet. The body of these petards is of white iron filled with gun-powder and floats on a piece willow wood, through which a spring is made, which when it encountered the bows of one of the royal ships, took effect, which consisted simply in this, that it threw water into the ship with much power; all the others were captured as they floated on the water and did no harm.’

So, my assessment is this – the iron cased charge is mounted on the floating wood platform, some form of spring powered lever acts on the device when it comes into contact with the enemy ships.  I think the most likely technology of the time which could have utilised that spring action is to release the trigger of a gun lock. I’m happy to consider other solutions but to me I’m now fairly certain.  One historian has suggested that Drebbell, who was known to have dabbled in alchemy, may have used the first ever high explosive, the primary explosive Gold Fulminate (discovered in 1602) – but I remain unconvinced. Occams Razor suggests to me a gun lock.

This diagram below from about 1630, shows a clear representation of a booby trap with a basket of attractive objects , within which is a firing lock tied to one of the top objects – lift the attractive object, pull the cord and the firing lock will cause the device to explode. Look carefully and you’ll see the lock at the bottom.

In 1645 we have this description of two IEDs, each clearly using a firearm lock attached to clocks.

In 1650 we have this device, using a pistol firearm lock, initiated by the pull of a string.

In 1764 we have a postal device that utilised a booby trap using a firearm lock.

In 1776 and 1777 The American revolutionaries used systems that instinct suggests to me were similar to Drebbel’s devices of 1628, but develped by David Bushnell. Buchnell also followed Drebbels lead in submarine vessel ideas.

Here’s part of the timing mechanism that Bushnells famous “Turtle” submarine was meant to fasten to the bottom of HMS Eagle. The timing mechanism’s gears ultimately tripped a flintlock mechanism to fire a gunpowder charge. (Photo John Wideman)

Bushnell also used floating explosive charges with levers on the outside designed to be pulled when they came into contact with ships, very much like Drebbels devices of 1628.

This image is a replica of a Bushnell IED that was floated down a river towards the British ships. The lever on the outside causes a flintlock on the inside lid of the barrel to be activated when the external lever comes into contact with the side of a ship, or a cable is pulled in some manner.

This image below is of an original revolutionary IED, the inside of the lid of the barrel, showing the flint lock mechanism held in place, to be activated by the lever on the outside. The flintlock shown appears to be from a British made “Brown Bess”.

(My thanks to John Wideman for allowing me to reproduce these images from his book “Civil War Torpedoes” where these pictures provide context for his very detailed and excellent work of later devices.)

In 1805 Robert Fulton, an American working for the British Navy, (after being rejected by the French) designed a range of explosive devices using gun lock initiators. This diagram, produced by French technical investigators who captured and defused at least one of the devices following an attack on St Malo, shows clearly the firing lock mechanism adapted by Fulton as the explosive initiator. This diagram is one of my best finds.  This is a very sophisticated device and a very sophisticated technical exploitation of the device by the French. The red annotations are mine, part of a lecture I give on historical technical exploitation.

In 1812, during the war with the British, Robert Fulton (who switched sides again, back to his mother country) used gun locks in a number of attacks using explosive devices on the British.  This attack on HMS Ramillies which was blockading American ports, used a very simple device, and nbot one of Fulton’s designs, but nonetheless used firing lock.  It is described by Benjamin Lossing (thanks again to John Wideman for finding this)

In the hold of the schooner Eagle, John Scudder, junior, the originator of the plot placed ten kegs of gunpowder , with a quantity of sulphur mixed with it, in a strong cask, and surrounded it with huge stones and other missiles, which in the event of an explosion might inflict great injury.  At the head of the casks, on the inside, were fixed two gun locks with cords fastened to their triggers at one end and two barrels of flour at the other end, s that when the flour should be removed the locks would be sprung, the powder ignited and the terrible mine exploded. Thus prepared, with a cargo of flour and naval stores over the concealed mine, the Eagle sailed … . she was captured as expected and desired by armed men sent out on boats from the Ramillies.  The crew of the Eagle escaped to the shore at Millstone Point, and anxiously awaited the result. The wind had fallen and for two hours unavailing efforts were made to get the Eagle alongside the Ramillies for the purposes of transferring the cargo to that vessel. Finally boats were sent out as lighters, the hatches of the Eagle were opened and when the first barrel of flour was removed the explosion took place.  A column of fire shot up into the air a full nine hundred feet  and a shower of pitch and tar fell upon the deck of the Ramillies . The schooner, and the first Lieutenant and ten men from the flag-ship on board of her , were blown into atoms and most of those in the boats outside were seriously and some fatally wounded.

Although not involving flintlocks I have details of Fenian IEDs using high explosive initiated by pistols connected to timers in the 1870s, and Lawrence of Arabia’s railway IEDs in WW1 were initiated by adapted martini rifles firing mechanisms – which themselves were an idea copied from the Boers in South Africa in the Boer war.  However all these latter devices were in one sense different – they each actually fired a bullet into high explosive rather than igniting low explosive gunpowder.

I am by no means saying that every IED between 1540 and WW1 used gun locks – but gun locks enabled a simple and reliable way of initiating explosive charges and were used frequently and quite widely during the period.  A gunlock could be used easily to initiate a device, by those three key ways – by command, by the victim or by timer. A gunlock enables concealment and surprise.  I think these facts are crucial to an understanding of how IEDs were used in history.

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.

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