Standing Well Back
19th Century

The Felix Orsini Bomb

The Orsini bomb was a remarkable terrorist IED in the form of a hand grenade used in 1858 by Italian Felix Orsini in an assassination attempt on the French Emperor. The bomb or IED was originally designed by a Hungarian artillery officer.

 

The IED casing was made by English gun maker Joseph Taylor In Birmingham and tested in Sheffield and Devon. Taylor claimed he thought the the device a genuine piece of ordnance. The grenades were then smuggled into France as “gas machinery” components.

What is important in terms of IED design and explosive history is that the entire fill of the device was primary explosive, mercury fulminate.  The protuberances mounted crushable percussion caps, as used on small arms of the time.

In one of those peculiar coincidences of history, Orsini decided to attack the target as he went to the Opera. Readers of this blog will know the story of a previous IED attack on the “original” Napoleon in 1800, while he too was on his way to the opera, some 58 years earlier.

Three of the Orsini bombs were thrown, killing 8 people and wounding 142 (including Orsini himself).  But the Emperor Napoleon and his wife were both unhurt.  Here’s a description of the plan from a participant:

 

 

Here’s another odd thing – an Orsini grenade was dug up in a field in Arkansas in the 1950s  – discussed here, which includes a beautiful photo of one of the devices. I know a lot of improvised grenades were used in the American Civil War – perhaps Orsini’s designs were copied?

If you think that improvised grenades have advanced much, technologically, in the 150 years since Orsini, then I suggest you take a look at this from CJ Chivers excellent blog, showing some Syrian improvised grenades.

 

Update on Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 8:08PM by Roger Davies

There’s an interesting follow up to Orsini’s colleague, De Rudio. (De Rudio is quoted directly in the report above)  He was sentenced to jail, not execution. He then escaped, fled to Italy and thence to the US. Eventually he joined the US Army, fought in the Civil War, and then joined the 7th Cavalry under Custer. He fought and survived the battle of Little Big Horn,died in 1910 and is buried in the Praesidio in San Francisco. I kid you not.  Perhaps the Orsini grenade found in an Arkansas field in 1953 fell out of his pocket?  ; -)

Update on Sunday, December 30, 2012 at 8:19PM by Roger Davies

The William Tell Connection. In the assassination attempt outlined above, the target Emperor Napoleon III was en route to the opera with his wife, to see a performance of Rossini’s “William Tell”.

In Barcelona in 1893, some 35 years later, an anarchist called Santiago Salvador threw two “Orsini bombs” into the audience at the Liceu theater, killing 22 and wounding 30.  He threw the grenades during the second act of an Opera – and the name of the Opera was — Rossini’s “William Tell”.

19th Century

The Russian Jacobi Fuze – 1854

I’ve written before about the “Jacobi” fuze, used in Russian sea mines and early land mines in the Crimean War in the 1854s. Although called a “Jacobi” fuze, they were I think actually designed by Immanuel Nobel (father of Alfred Nobel).   I’ve found some clearer diagrams of the sea mine and the fusing mechanism.

19th Century

Confederate IED organization

Careful reading of the excellent book “The sinking of the USS Cairo” by John Wideman, has allowed me to piece together some of the Confederate “IED” organization in the US Civil War and pull together some threads of incidents I’ve previously blogged about. Here’s a simplified summary with a series of links to the relevant posts

The leader of many such IED activities was Brigadier Gabriel Raines. Raines’s interest in IEDs went back to the Second Seminole Indian war in Florida, where he deployed IEDs against the Seminole Indians in 1840.

Gabriel Raines

Later, when the US civil war began he rapidly proposed the use of similar devices, and used them successfully in the retreat after the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862.

This book is a reprint of Raines technical notes about a number of munitions and IEDs.

Raines oversaw the Confederate use of such devices from the Confederate War department’s Torpedo Bureau (“Torpedo”) being a term that then covered a range of land and sea explosive devices).  At the beginning of the war, Raines’s devices were very much improvised, but eventually volume requirements and industrial processes evolved such that eventually many can be considered manufactured munitions.  Within the confederate forces the use of explosive devices was broad ranging and what follows is not the sum total, but there appear to have been two units.

The first was the Confederate States Navy submarine Battery service, under Hunter Davidson which appears to have been responsible for coastal defence sea mines and the like, often electrically initiated.  In  particular this unit had significant success on the James River. Later in the war attention turned to spar torpedo boats (boats with an explosive charge attached to a long spar which were used to ram enemy boats) . Hunter Davidson is an interesting character who I’ll write about in the future.  Here’s an angry letter he wrote in 1874 when some impertinent Brirtish Engineer officers claimed to have invented electrically initiated sea mines

The second unit, was commanded by the one-armed perpetrator of the sinking of the USS Cairo on the Yazoo River, Zere McDaniel

Zere McDaniel was responsible for

  •  Riverine IEd operations such as the sinking of the Cairo
  •  “Land torpedoes” in defence around Richmond, that used artillery shells adapted to detonate when stood upon (designed by Raines)
  •  “Behind the lines” IED and associated sabotage and intelligence operations.

The latter enterprises were as head of a Confederate secret unit “ Company A, Confederate secret service. The unit was formed in 1864 according to instructions that can be seen on this web page – a lovely document!

Some examples of the “behind the lines” operations included the explosion at City Point by Maxwell who reported directly to McDaniel and who used a time bomb or “horological torpedo”

Attacks on trains by Zere McDaniel himself using an IED which I’ll discuss in a future blog once I have found more detail.  Suffice to say that the initiation mechanism appears to have been an improvised wire hook which protruded from under the track and “hooked on” to the front of a passing train, probably pulling a friction initiator.

The confederate use of IEDs appears to have been positively encouraged and a secret law was passed awarding a bounty to confederate supporters who designed IEDs and used them to attack Union forces, awarding the designer 50% of the value of the target. McDaniel himself tried to claim for his attack on the Cairo, but failed in his appeal.   In 1864 McDaniel reported that his unit were engaged in continuous active operations , with elements operating “behind enemy lines” in Kentucky, Virginia and elsewhere

I see interesting parallels between the innovative use of munitions and explosive devices in the US civil war and the remarkable inventiveness of Syrian opposition forces in today’s Syrian civil war.

17th Century

Prince Rupert’s IED

 

As promised some time ago, here’s the story of an attempted IED attack in 1650.

In 1650 the second part of the English Civil War was taking place. A key Royalist commander and former cavalry chief was Prince Rupert. Prince Rupert is a very interesting gentleman, with a keen scientific interest in explosives and invention. With significant experience as a general in the 30 Years War in Europe, his dashing exploits as a cavalry commander in various battles, including Edgehill, and as an extremely ruthless Royalist leader gave him a bogeyman status amongst the Parliamentarians. By 1650 he was commanding a Royalist fleet of vessels, being pursued by a Parliamentarian fleet.

 

In 1650, his fleet took refuge in the River Tagus, near Lisbon in Portugal. The opposition fleet also lay at anchor not far off with the Portuguese enforcing some sort of ceasefire between the two fleets while they competed for support from the Portuguese king.  Trade between the merchants of Lisbon and the two fleets was natural, and Prince Rupert tried to take advantage of this.

Prince Rupert designed a large improvised explosive device in a barrel, dressed a member of his crew as a merchant and employed two locals to row a small boat, amongst other trading dinghies, down towards HMS Leopard, the key enemy warship. They entered into a trade to sell the “barrel of oil” with the quartermaster of HMS Leopard, and after agreeing a price the barrel was being hoisted aboard when the Leopard’s crew became suspicious. The three man crew were seized and the barrel investigated. It was found that a large explosive filled shell had been placed inside the barrel. A string from the merchant’s boat led in through the bunghole, to a pistol. Pulling the string would fire the pistol and ignite quickfuze leading to the shell.  It was clear that the plan was to initiate the device once it had been swing aboard, killing as many of the crew as possible and damaging the ship.

Ten years later, after the war was over Prince Rupert became one of the three founders of the Royal Society. The Royal Society took great interest in research into explosives and related inventions, and Prince Rupert himself published a paper at the Royal Society on an improved recipe for gunpowder in 1662.

Of course, students of modern day terrorism will see the instant parallels with the USS Cole attack in Yemen in October 2000, which again involved perpetrators approaching a warship with an IED, disguised as a local boat in a port.  The investigation after the USS Cole attack noted the following failures:

  • There was no co-ordinated effort to track the movement of small boats in the harbour;
  • The Cole’s own small boat, which should have been used to investigate the approach of any suspicious craft, was not ready for launching.

It appears that HMS Leopard was pretty much the same, but luckier.

1840-1850

Pull Primers

In my chronology of initiation systems, a couple of posts down, I omitted the evolution of the “pull primer” as a means of initiating charges, including artillery pieces.  I think it’s worth a look at, especially since they were clearly used to initiate the IED used to sink the USS Cairo, below.

  • Originally in cannon, bags of gunpowder were stuffed in the muzzle and pushed to the far end of the cannon.
  • The bag was then pricked so the priming fire could reach the main charge, by inserting needle like device through the vent hole into the bag charge. The vent is a small hole drilled at the rear of the cannon that led to the inside of the barrel where the bag of gunpowder sat.
  • Then loose gunpowder was poured in to the vent.  That loose gunpowder was then ignited with a slow burning fuse, red hot iron, or other flame like a portfire to the touch hole, or top of the vent. At one stage a paper tube was inserted that held a preloaded quantity of powder to allow a pre-loaded quantity of powder.
  • That method was a little crude, and in 1765 an improvement was developed, which was to insert a tin tube containing blackpowder into the vent.  This ensured that the end of the powder train in the tube was in the right physical position to ignite the main charge, increasing reliability.
  • Later the tin tube was replaced with a goose quill.
  • In the late 1700s a flintlock mechanism began to be used to initiate the vent powder.
  • In 1846 a Hanoverarian artillery officer invented the pull primer. This consisted of a tube (usually copper) which contained blackpowder as before, but also a friction sensitive match compound. Inserted into the tube was length of flattened, serrated wire, which when pulled through the match compound created enough heat from friction to cause the match compound and then the powder to ignite.  This became a reliable, weatherproof, initiator for artillery pieces, and the post on the sinking of the USS Cairo below demonstrates how such a mechanism can be used for IEDs as a command initiation system from a distance, or as a component of a booby trap pull switch.

 

In typical pull primers the base of the tube is closed by varnished paper, and the top by shellac putty and varnished paper. A ring is attached to the top of the wire that protrudes through the shellac putty.  The operator used his “lanyard” to clip onto the ring and pull from the side – lanyards now are an archaic part of a lot of military uniforms.   The match composition was usually a mix of potassium chlorate and another compound.

Friction primers were eventually replaced by percussion primers, which essentially were a percussion cap fitted to the top of the tube, which a mechanism on the gun struck.

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