Standing Well Back
1880-1890

The IED Technology of Propaganda of the Deed, 1884

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1640-1650

Twin IEDs in 1645

Here’s the story of a twin IED attack on Swedish ships in 1645.  Two senior Swedish officers were in the port of Wismar in what is now Germany. Gustav Wransel, the Swedish Master-General of Ordnance was on board the Swedish vessel the “Lion” and the Swedish Admiral Blume was on board the “Dragon”, both about to set sail for Sweden. Here’s the story:

1770-1780

An American terrorist in England

A friend of mine asked me my opinion on the most significant terrorist attacks in history. Here’s one which had pretty significant implications.

“John the Painter ” aka James or John Aitken, aka Jack the Painter, aka John Hill aka James Hinde was born a Scotsman but adopted America as his cause.  A petty, and not so petty, criminal he made his living as a painter and clearly his daily dealing with turpentine and flammable liquids prompted a thought.  He was also seized with enthusiasm for the cause of Independence for America, having arrived there in 1775. He became a prototype lone wolf terrorist.

In 1776 he knocked on the door of the leading American diplomat in Paris, France, Mr Silas Deane, and with a little encouragement described a plot to set on fire the key naval dockyards in England, thus crippling the British Royal Navy. He showed Deane his incendiary device:

Producing a portable infernal machine of his own invention, he explained his scheme. The machine consisted of a wooden box to hold combustibles, with a hole in the top for a candle, a tin canister, no larger than a half-pound tea can and perforated for air, to cover it; the whole to be filled with inflammable materials—hemp, tar, oil and matches. The candle, having been lighted, would burn down until it ignited the inflammable materials, and these exploding would scatter the fire for yards around.  

Deane gave him a little encouragement and a little money and sent him on his way.  On returning to England, John the Painter successfully burnt down the Rope House at Portsmouth Naval dockyard. He also set a number of fires in Bristol.  This created the public impression that gangs of American revolutionaries were active in the country. The King himself offered a reward for his capture and demanded daily briefings.

 

In an early form of Weapons Intelligence Investigation a failed device of the same design was discovered in an adjacent building to the burnt down rope house and subsequently witnesses attested that John the Painter had had it made in Canterbury.   John the Painter was hunted, arrested and tried – the transcript of his trial is available on line in Cobbett’s State Trials.  The device is described very clearly on a number of occasions by witnesses. An intriguingly thorough trial even down to the calling of a witness from whom he had bought matches.

He was duly transported to Portsmouth where he was strangled at the gates to the Naval Dockyard then hoisted up the 64 foot mizzenmast of the HMS Arethusa [specially unbolted and placed on land for the occasion]  then they eviscerated his body, tarred it, hauled it back up the mast and left him to waft in the wind for years as a warning to all and sundry.

The mast was the highest gallows in England’s history. 20,000 people attended the execution (quite a number, given the population of Portsmouth was 13,000)

So, why was this so significant in its implications? Here’s why:

  1. The fires in Portsmouth and Bristol caused terror across England. Vigilante groups patrolled the streets of ports.  Thus the arson attacks really did terrorize the nation.
  2. The attacks turned the public opinion – there had been significant support for the American revolution, especially in Bristol, but this public support was turned on its head. Had this not occurred, and more negotiated independence may have been achieved. Who knows what that may have looked like?
  3. The public mood allowed the production of the 1777 Treason Act and for years after the death sentence for murder in the UK had been abolished in 1965, the death sentence was still permitted for treason, and explicitly included in the list of treasonous acts was arson in the naval dockyards.

 A newspaper of the time stated:

“Of all bad characters, an incendiary is the foulest. He acts as an assassin armed with the most dreadful of mischiefs, and in executing his diabolical purposes, involves the innocent and the guilty in the same ruin.” 

1870-1880

Alexander Keith and the Crime of the Century bomb

This is another oddity.  Alexander Keith was born a Scotsman in 1827. He worked in Canada for a while and then worked for the Confederate States in the American Civil war as a blockade runner. In one escapade he was involved in what would today be called a chem bio plot to send clothes infected with yellow fever into the Northern cities in the United States.

It appears that he attempted to swindle some colleagues and fled to St Louis and then settled on the prairie. However one of his alleged victims tracked him down and he fled again, this time to Europe, where he assumed the name of “William King Thomas”, and later the alias William Thompson.  As he began to run out of money, in 1875, he concocted a complex insurance fraud that involved blowing up a passenger ship.  But his plans went badly wrong.

Keith hid a large timed IED in a barrel and arranged for it to be shipped across the Atlantic to New York in the steamship Mosel.  As the barrel was being loaded onto to the Mosel, the barrel slipped, fell and exploded on the dockside in Bremerhaven.  There must have been a significant quantity of explosives, and in a massive explosion 80 people were killed.  A witness stated ” “A mushroom-shaped column of smoke rose approximately 200 meters above the harbor. Everywhere people were crying and whimpering beside ruins. The entire pier was covered in soot: it was like the gateway to hell.”    Newspapers of the time dubbed the incident the “crime of the century”.

Interestingly Keith was on the Mosel and clearly understood that his plan had gone wrong. He had intended to sail on the ship, but leave it, and its explosive cargo, when he got to Southampton.  He went to his cabin immediately, and shot himself in the head twice (think about that…) . In the drama of the post blast no-one noticed the two shots from his cabin – only later did someone hear a groaning from his cabin. The door, locked from the inside, was broken down and Keith found lying on the floor, still alive. A revolver was by his side with 4 remaining bullets. His second shot paralyzed him.

Now, as I have written before, placing IEDs on ships was something that confederate agents had done before. (My next blog post will be about confederate “coal torpedo” IEDs used to damage ships) But by 1870 dynamite had become available significantly increasing the potential of an IED. As we know, Confederate IEDs had utilized clockwork mechanisms. Keith needed to obtain one for his plan, and had approached a German clock making company called JJ Fuchs of Bernberg, with a  request for a silent spring-loaded mechanism capable of functioning after a 10 day delay.  Keith refused to explain why he needed the mechanism but Fuchs designed it nonetheless. The mechanism was large and weighed about 30 pounds, and was so expensive that Keith initially refused to buy it. He approached two Viennese clock makers for a cheaper alternative but they failed, so eventually he returned to Fuchs.


The Fuchs timing mehcanism

There remain suspicions that Keith may have been involved in the disappearance of at least two other ships, The SS City Of Boston in January 1875 and the schooner Marie Victoria in 1864.

 


The suicide note

1940-1950

Exotic characters, IEDs and brothels

As the previous post showed there were some interesting characters who could get away with some pretty individualistic approaches to life in World War Two. I’m reading about another just now, Lt Col Billy McLean, an irregular solider who fought with the guerillas in Abyssinia (Wingate’s Gideon Force) and with the partisans in Albania as part of SOE.  Earlier posts discussed how TE Lawrence and Bimbashi Garland, originally based out of the Arab Bureau offices in Cairo took the war to the Turks in WW1 – and it’s clear some of that approach was still extant in Cairo in the Second World War. McLean tells of being trained in IED manufacture at a Commando depot in Egypt, prior to deployment to Abyssinia, and specifically how to blow up trains in the manner of Garland and Lawrence. This, despite the fact that the only train line in Abyssinia, from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, was long since out of service…  But as he says this fact did not dampen their ardour and they happily blew up railway tracks every morning.

He was then taught in the classroom how to make postal IEDs. Their instructor facetiously told them to address their real, but practice, IEDs to someone obvious like Mussolini or Hitler.  One of the sergeants, a fellow student of McLean laboriously addressed the IED to the commanding officer of his own regiment…. : – )

Beyond this, McLean’s experiences in Abyssinia and Albania have some intersting parrallels with modern day SOF operations, in terms of living alongside, fighting with and commanding and mentoring indigenous troops of variable and frankly sometimes doubtful quality, against a mutual enemy.  Such things are not new and there are lessons to be learned, still.  But on the other hand, although public flogging of indigenous troops for wasting bullets might have worked for Abyssinia in 1940, it might not work today.

McLean’s “irregular” traits came to the fore – he was arrested by the military police in an Abbysssinian brothel while “consorting with a particularly attractive inmate who did not smell in the least, apart from a faint tinge of garlic on the breath” but the arresting military policeman turned a blind eye for a moment, and McLean (then a  young Captain) took that as an invitation to scarper into the night.

There are some wonderful throw away lines in the description of Albanian operations such as “Food was in short supply. Luckily one of the mules died and provided them with meat.”

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