Standing Well Back
19th Century

Massive Command Wire IED in Charleston, USA

In my last post I discussed a massive electrically initiated command wire IED from the Crimean war in 1856. This article is about a massive command-wire device in Charleston during the American Civil War in 1863. I’ve been finding stuff on explosive devices during that conflict for a few years now, but this one is new to me, possibly because it failed to explode.  Importantly I think this IED was the biggest ever seen in the USA – perhaps my US colleagues would care to comment.

This Confederate device was constructed using an entire ship’s steam boiler as a container. It was packed with 5000 pounds of blackpowder (other reports suggest 3000 pounds)  and sunk in 6 fathoms of water 1500 yards off Fort Sumter, just outside Charleston, South Carolina. Insulated electrical cables led from the boiler to an electrical charge generator in the Fort, defended by Confederate Forces. There had been a series of naval bombardments of the Fort over several months. On 8 September 1853 the Federal Navy approached the Fort again to bombard it.  The flagship “New Ironsides” placed itself directly above the device and fired nearly 500 rounds at the Fort. Every attempt was made to initiate the device but it failed to function. After 90 minutes the Ironsides moved off. The device had been in place for 4 months before it was attempted to fire. The man responsible for testing the circuit daily was put in irons, although he claimed he had circuit tested it the previous day. Probably there had been an ingress of water or there was insufficient voltage.   But 5000 pounds of powder exploding a few feet underneath a battleship would have been quite an attack.

Here’s a report on the laying of the device, which suggests that the resulting cable length was over a mile longer than expected – perhaps the power source was insufficient to cope with that:

The torpedo was successfully sunk on the spot located by General Ripley, but while running the cable the steamer (Chesterfield) ran out of steam, and, unable to hold against the tide and wind, went aground near Fort Sumter. On the increase of the flood we had to run back a long circuit reach Cummings Point and land the cable. It resulted from this accident that we played out 2 miles of cable, instead of 1, as expected.

Here’s a couple of diagrams of the explosive device, which I think are contemporary:

The boiler, full of powder, is probably still there…

There is some mention of the use of powder filled boilers being used unsuccessfully on the James River by the Confederate explosive expert Captain Maury at an earlier time during the Civil War. Apparently the boilers were not anchored well and moved in the current, parting the electrical cables. Captain Maury’s electricity generator apparently “weighed nearly a ton” which also made the devices awkward to deploy. Maury was later sent on a mission to England to procure better electrical power sources (in modern parlance, “IED components”)  from the scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone.

Fort Sumter in August 1863, a month before the incident:

 

Here’s the USS New Ironsides, the target of the IED:

I have found some new material on underwater Confederate devices used to prevent Federal ships moving up the James River subsequent to Captian Maury’s boilers, but I need time to check this new material against other records. I’ll put up a post at some time in the future when I have time.

In one of those strange “mirrorings” in history the following year it was Union forces who considered use of a massive IED against Fort Sumter. Union commander ,Major-General John Foster had in mind a plan to level Fort Sumter by way of a large explosive device.  “As soon as a good cut is made through the wall,” Foster wrote to Washington on July 7, 1864, “I shall float down against it and explode large torpedoes until the wall is shaken down and the surrounding obstructions are entirely blown away.”

Later that month Union naval forces had made a “cut” in a protective wall and pushed an explosively-laden barge towards Fort Sumter. But due to miscommunication and bad weather the attack was abandoned.  Other attempts were then made in August 1864 by land forces using improvised rafts, laden with explosives and initiated with timing devices. These were to be pushed into place by boat. Here’s one contemporary report:

On the night of the 28th ultimo, a pontoon-boat, fitted up for the purpose and containing about twenty hundredweight of powder, was taken out by Lieut. G.F. Eaton, One hundred and twenty-seventh New York Volunteers, boat infantry, and floated down into the left flank of Fort Sumter. The garrison of Sumter was alarmed before the mine reached them, and opened upon our boats with musketry, without, however, doing them any injury.

The device exploded, but in the wrong place and too far away to cause significant damage. Then:

On the night of the 31st ultimo six torpedoes, made of barrels set in frames, each containing 100 pounds of powder, were set afloat with the flood-tide from the southeast of Sumter with the view of destroying the boom.  They probably exploded too early and only injured perhaps two lengths of the links of the boom, which are now not visible.

Another attempt was made the following night on 1 September 1864, the device exploded but again causing no significant damage.

Here’s a drawing of the devices being launched:

 

 

I also have found some new interesting technical material about very large submerged electrically initiated devices used in the defence of Venice, in 1859, that appear also to have used Samuel Colt’s “Camera Obscura” command post technique – again to follow when time permits. I continue to view Samuel Colt’s amazing explosive device initiation command post of 1836 as one of the most remarkable things I have ever come across in all my research.

 

 

Uncategorised

Russian command wire device – Crimean war, 1855

I have blogged a few times earlier this year about Russian”stay behind” devices and here.   In these earlier posts I also discussed some evidence that victim operated explosive devices were left behind when the Russians retreated from various places in the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856.

I have just found a contemporary translation of a French report from the Crimean War detailing massive command-wire electrically initiated devices from that conflict, intended to target advancing French and British forces.  So it appears that the Russians were making significant use of both victim operated explosive devices as well as electrical command wire devices in this conflict. I don’t think that has been widely recognised by historians.  Bearing in mind electrically initiated explosive devices were still something of a novelty in the 1850s, this really shows that the Russians had grasped the potential of the use in warfare of such devices and had planned and probably succeeded to detonate several simultaneously. Although the length of the wires are not specified, I think they were fired from a considerable distance, from a central command post. I find the obvious parallels with this concept in 1855 and the F-10 “stay behind” devices used in WW2  by Russia, 90 or so years apart, detailed in my earlier post very interesting, as well as early adoption of this initiation technology. The fact that the command wire ran such a distance , and partly under the sea, and that there were a number of them shows significant technical, tactical and operational capability with this early use of the technology.

The use of the devices was in the Battle for Malakoff in September 1855, which was in the main a French effort, but British forces played a key role in the Battle for the Redoubt. It was a bloody battle, with 20-30,000 deaths and 19 generals killed.

Here is an excerpt from the translation.  Well done that sapper for cutting the command wire to the Malakoff redoubt with his axe!

I have the tale of another quite remarkable electrically initiated device from the 19th Century, from some new research I’ve been doing, up my sleeve, this time an American device that nearly sank a battleship. Watch this space.

Follow up:

I continue to find further hints and comments about the use of command wire IEDs by the Russians during the siege of Sebastopol.  For example this comment in a letter from General Charles Gordon discussing the aftermath in Sebastopol:

“We have traced voltaic wires to nearly every powder magazine in the place”

Also this photograph taken shortly after the battle. Although the image is not that clear the title is surprising. Here we have a Royal Engineer Search Team (REST) looking for an IED command wire, in 1855.

Carronade Battery, flanking the Ditch of the Redan. Sappers looking for Electric Wires communicating with the Powder Magazine

 

20th Century

Palestine 1935 -Arab and British IEDs

I’ve been digging away at a few historical instances of IEDs using artillery shells or other ordnance, either recovered from battlefields or from storage depots. – These were seen very frequently, of course, in the Iraq conflict of the previous decade and still occur today – but I’ve been looking back for earlier instances.

I have lost a reference that I’m sure I had found discussing Belgian resistance groups in WW2 “steaming out” explosive from munitions recovered from WW1 battlefields so I have no detail on that. But I do have some reports from IRA devices in the 1920’s that used stolen artillery shells.  Recently I have picked up threads of some interesting history from Waziristan (now NW Pakistan) in 1937 where the British were involved in a nasty little campaign against the Pashtun in the area (on and off over a few decades actually) – but there are reports of both locals AND the British military using discarded or recovered munitions in “booby traps”.  The British Army were no angels when it came to what we today call IEDs.  I have yet to uncover more details but I then stumbled across a great report from 1935-1936, but from “Palestine”: where British forces were dealing with an IED campaign from the Arabs at the time.

The report I have has some terrific diagrams – in the interests of not teaching the wrong people, I’m not going to say where I found this report and I’m going to blur a bit some of the diagrams and be a little vague about some technicalities. so if the diagrams or explanations don’t quite make full sense, that’s the reason.  The devices are largely what we would today call “victim operated” – i.e. with some sort of switch that an unsuspecting victim would trigger.  If I’m honest I think the author is describing the devices “second hand” – some aspects of his report are doubtful, but interesting nonetheless.

The first device was found and defused by an infantry patrol of the South Wales Borderers on a railway line between Jerusalem and Artuf. They noticed the switch laid on the rail, dealt with the device themselves, threw the components in a wheelbarrow and delivered the device to a Royal Engineer in Lydda station.

Although this device above used HE extracted from “old shells”, a number of other devices used the shells themselves, with a very idiosyncratic methodology of drilling a hole in the side of the shell, and then inserting a plain detonator into it.  The shell was then buried under a rail and a striker pin attached to the rail such that the defection of the rail when a train passes pushed the pin into the detonator. If I’m frank, I find the author’s report here a little unconvincing, as I cant see a safe way of setting the device below. Elsewhere the author of the report, an Engineer officer, doesn’t appear to be aware of the existence of delay detonators – but I may be doing him a disservice – did delay detonators exist in the 1930s?

The report mentions an interesting device rendered safe – a “daisy chain of artillery shells” along the Nablus-Tulkarm Road, with shells spaced out every few feet, a total of ten 6″ shells  buried a foot deep alongside the road – something that EOD operators in Iraq in say 2004/5 would have found very familiar. However the device had been placed by an amateur and did not have a viable initiation system.

Here’s an interesting victim operated device that was successfully made safe. I’ve hidden the key part of the mechanism but those that need to know can work it out, I’m sure. The device was placed on a track used by Jewish settlers.  The device was dealt with by pulling the string causing it to initiate.

I confess this next device described in the report I find a little unconvincing – while it might theoretically work its seems too tricky to manufacture with any ease. The idea of making a circuit with a key in the lock would be difficult to do reliably. Tell me if you disagree

 

The final device, which I won’t show because I suspect it’s a very effective device used a mousetrap and string to trigger an IED protecting a stone “sangar” sniper position near Nur-esh Shems. Interestingly the device was allegedly laid by an Arab revolutionary called “Fauzi Khawaji” from Iraq, who had been formally trained as an officer at the French St Cyr academy.

The report also mentions that the British Royal Engineers, (specifically 2nd Field Coy RE and 12 Field Coy RE) used IEDs themselves to protect the Jerusalem water supply – they booby trapped a number of manhole covers and other British used sanagars. The first victim was a water company official who hadn’t been told…. the official wasn’t seriously injured…  but as a result the RE increased the size of the explosive charges from 2lb to 5 lb!  the initiation system for these Royal Engineer IEDs was a “bare wire loop switch”….which I won’t explain further here.  I find this very strange given the theoretical availability of “proper” switches in the RE inventory.  These “British” devices were used elsewhere too and when they caused casualties the British blamed the victims for having a  device that exploded prematurely.

Given the reports I am piecing together about British use of IEDs in Waziristan, also in 1937, it seems that this tactic was not a one off. Make of that what you will.

The Arabs supply of munitions to use in IEDs were thought to have come from WW1 ammunition Depots in Gaza or Rafah (either Turkish or British)  that were mismanaged after WW1. The task of dealing with these munitions supply dumps after WW1 was given to a contractor (!) who allegedly cut corners, leaving a significant quantity “under sand” which could be easily recovered.

 

 

20th Century

The IED that sank a US Aircraft Carrier

Ships in ports are potentially vulnerable to terrorist attack. Their size and value make them attractive to insurgents, and while ships are at sea they are probably relatively invulnerable. But tied up in a busy port with small boats in large numbers and with the difficulty of establishing secure perimeters around them, they become a real target. Most people remember the USS Cole attack in October 2000, but few remember the successful IED attack on  a US aircraft carrier in May 1964.

There are a number of reasons why this attack is no widely known:

  • The story was “sat” on by the US Defense Department at the time, who only announced that the ship had been damaged.
  • The Aircraft Carrier the “Card” was a WW2 aircraft carrier and wasn’t performing as an aircraft carrier at the time. It was shuttling military equipment as a ferry/transport ship from Japan to Vietnam. It had been redesignated from the USS Card to the USNS Card accordingly.

USNS Card, a WW2 aircraft carrier

  • Although technically it sank , it settled in shallow water in the port and was repaired, and refloated relatively quickly.

Because the story was squashed not much attention has been paid to the attackers and the IED they used. The attack was made by insurgents from the 65th Special Operations Group. The USNS Card had been shuttling heavy equipment into Saigon Harbour for three years – aircraft, armoured vehicles and the like. it and a sister ship, the USNS Core had attracted the attention of local insurgents.

There had been an earlier attempted attack on the Core, in late 1963, which had failed but the IEDs had actually been recovered by the same terrorist that had laid them, without detection. It was assessed that the battery power source had failed. I find it interesting that the attack in 2000 on the USS Cole had been preceded by a a failed attack (that similarly was not detected) on the USS The Sullivans earlier in the year.

For the attack on the Crd the battery power was replaced, and two devices were made, each weighing about 40kg.  Some of the explosive was probably a US military C4 demolition charge stolen or trafficked by the Viet Cong from the South Vietnamese Navy, and the remainder was some other type of explosive, possibly TNT. The devices were transported by a  small boat and then carried through a sewer to the vicinity of the docked USNS Card. A port security boat had stopped the small boat but had been bribed to let the men pass. From the sewer the two insurgents swam to the Card. Their devices must have had some sort of flotation.  One they attached to the ship near the bilges, and the other by the engine compartment.

One report suggests that the power supply, a battery was stuck on a pole sticking out of the water. A timer was then set – I cant identify from reports the specific nature of the timer, but I’m going to guess an adapted watch. I can’t be sure if there was a single initiator system or two seperate ones.

After the explosion the aircraft settled on the bottom of the 48ft deep port, its superstructure remaining above the water. In less than a month it was refloated and taken to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs. although the US Defence Department played down the attack, the North Vietnamese made a thing of it and even issued a stamp commemorating the attack. There are strangely conflicting reports about deaths caused by the attack.

You can find an interesting interview with one of the perpertators here.

 

1830-1840

Command Wire Devices – Land, Sea and Air

I’ve written before how command-wire electrically-initiated explosive devices have been around for a couple of hundred years now. But I want to look at the subject again, obliquely, by highlighting the different environments in which these devices have been used. There are one or two fascinating diversions in this post.

Clearly, command wire devices on “land” have been around for centuries, derived originally from the “string” or “cord” pulled devices of the late 1500s such as the one discussed in an earlier post here.  Then in the early part of the late 1700s/early 1800s (started by Benjamin Franklin who was the first to electrically initiate an explosive (I think) they spread into broader use. See these earlier posts here and here.  In the 19th century, “minefields” were sometimes not  constructed from autonomous victim operated mines, but rather command initiated devices, controlled from some form of command post.  See this one below from the US Civil War era, showing an underground store from which “torpedoes” (buried mines) were initiated on the battlefield in front.

Today electrically initiated command wire land based explosive devices are pretty common as terrorist ambush devices, with the only issue being the potential visibility of the wire or the process of laying the wire between device and firing point.

Various engineers and inventors in the early decades of the 1800s refined electrical initiation and waterproofed systems to allow them to be used for command initiated defensive minefields on coasts or in rivers – these include the German, Siemens, the Prussian Schilling, the Russian Schilder and Pasley, the British Royal Engineer used such waterproofed electrically initiated charges for demolition purposes. By far the most interesting use, however and one which strangely receives scant attention (perhaps not so strangely given the secrecy of the project was Samuel Colt’s 1836 concept of an “Underwater Battery”).  This was an electrically initiated complex defensive array of underwater mines designed to protect ports and rivers.  They key part of this invention however was not the electrical initiation but Colt’s remarkable command system which I’m 99% certain used a “camera obscura” to project a live image of the area in which underwater mines had been carefully placed. The image was projected onto a “command panel” with electrical contacts built in so that when a ship approached the position of the mine the image of the ship was projected onto one of many metal contacts on the  “command panel” . All the operator had to do was to use an electrical cable from the battery stored underneath to the contact where the ship was displayed on the command panel when the live image of  the ship covered it and that device would be initiated.  Rather like a “magic wand” – touch the live image of the  ship you wish to destroy and it will explode  Such a remarkable integrated “augmented reality” observation and command system seems to be 200 years ahead of its time. I have written about the system before here. Someone needs to recreate one of these for a TV show.

Colt’s control panel. Note the convex mirror reflecting the image of the minefield from above.

Colt wrapped his invention in secrecy, but I think its pretty clear to me that his ingenious observation and control system was a first for initiating complex command wire minefields.  Interestingly, a few years later it appears the Austrians used such a system to protect Venice around 1860. How they got hold of Colt’s idea, I have no idea. Here’s how it was described:

Here’s an image of the Austrian command post.

 

I remain  fascinated by this system. A remote, visual, augmented-reality weapon system, invented by Samuel Colt in the 1830’s. Kept secret, then deployed by the Austrians in the 1860s then forgotten about. Wow!  And only a few years ago people were shocked when terrorists in Iraq used a video camera overlooking an IED to know when to initiate a device, but Colt beat them to it by 170 years on the Potomac!

So that’s land and sea, but what about air – surely command wire initiated explosive devices haven’t been used in the air ?  Well, actually they have, over 100 years ago. During the Salonika campaign in 1917, some balloons were used by British Forces as observation platforms.   German pilots decided to take on these balloons and shot down several, one pilot alone claiming 18 balloons .

A German aircraft attacking an observation balloon

Lt Finch of the British Army Ordnance Corps was asked to design a charge to be placed on a balloon, and this was to be detonated electrically when an enemy plane was close. He placed a 500 pound ammonal charge in a  60 gallon galvanised water tank and “the balloon went up” carrying the explosives connected to a 3000ft cable, on 28 November. As a German plane approached, piloted by Oberleutnant von Eschwege, it was exploded, and the enemy aircraft’s wings were blown off, killing him. Here’s some details of the aftermath which is interesting:

There was no celebrating, no cheering. The British official history states:

He came to his end as a result of a legitimate ruse of war, but there was no rejoicing among the pilots of the squadrons which had suffered from his activities. They would have preferred that he had gone down in fair combat.

Eschwege was given a burial with full military honors; six British pilots carried his coffin to the grave. A message was dropped over Drama airfield:

To the Bulgarian-German Flying Corps in Drama. The officers of the Royal Flying Corps regret to announce that Lt. von Eschwege was killed while attacking the captive balloon. His personal belongings will be dropped over the lines some time during the next few days.

The next day a German plane dropped a wreath and a message:

To the Royal Flying Corps, Monuhi. We thank you sincerely for your information regarding our comrade Lt. von Eschwege and request you permit the accompanying wreath and flag to be placed on his last resting place, Deutches Fliegerkommando.

A similar but unsuccessful device was used on the Western front.

So there we have electrically-initiated command-wire explosive devices on land, on sea, and in the air.

To close though, my favourite Salonika campaign story. Nothing to do with explosive devices!    The British army’s  efforts in the multi-national campaign in Salonkia did not go unnoticed. The Serbians, ostensibly the British Allies in the Macedonia  campaign, of which Salonika was a part, were most grateful for the arduous efforts of their allies.  They therefore proposed a glamorous medal be minted, something like “the Glowing and Glorious Order of the Serbian White Eagle”.  They proposed awarding 5000 of these medals to a random selection of the British forces who had taken part as a visible sign of their gratitude.  The superior Headquarters of British Forces in the Eastern Mediterranean was based in Cairo and an overworked staff officer in G1 was tasked with providing a list of the assigned honourees. Somewhere along the line the list was accidentally put in the wrong envelope. As a result, a list of 5000 soldiers across the Near East, many of whom had hardly even heard of Salonika but who “had not yet received a typhoid injection” were surprised to receive a flowery, ornate and shiny medal through the post – and 5000 hardened Salonika veterans probably got another typhoid jab.

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