Sabotage During World Wars Archives

standingwellback 19th January 2022 20th Century

Description of 1944 Render Safe

I’m taking a bit of a gamble with this story. Usually the stuff I post is out of copyright. The excerpts below are from a book published in 1977 by the then Lord Rothschild. I have contacted his estate to seek permission to quote this small excerpt but received no reply. I think this story is worth telling and shows the man in a good light so I’m going to take a chance and copy some images here. I will remove if anyone objects and make a donation to a suitable charity if it causes concern.

Lord Rothschild (1910-1990) was one of those larger than life characters, a real polymath if lived a life to the full.

During WW2 he worked for MI5, advising on the vulnerability of British industry to sabotage, and in one or two other related “spooky” activities related to explosives, much of which there is little or no public record of. In 1944 there were some sabotage devices sent from Spain, I think, to the UK hidden in cases of onions. One arrived, somehow in Northampton and Lord Rothschild went to deal with this German sabotage device which used 21 day timers. I have no other details of this German operation. Below is an extract from Rothschilds telephone conversation with his secretary as he rendered the device safe. It reminded me very much of the Earl of Suffolk, another Lord involved in Bomb Disposal in the Second World War who I have written about before – he too conducted his RSPs while talking to his secretary on a field telephone.

I understand that it was mainly for this operation that Lord Rothschild was awarded the GM. Good job. No doubt his secretary then asked “So, how do you think that went?”

This excerpt is from “Meditations of a Broomstick” By Lord Rothschild, published in 1977 by Collins.

standingwellback 25th February 2021 1940-1950

10,000 explosive attacks a night

I’ve written over 30 posts in the last few years about explosive attacks on railways – you can see these from the categories link on the right hand column below. For this post, I’m returning again to Russian partisan sabotage attacks on the Germans. One of the reasons for my focus is the belief that the intensity of the attacks in Eastern Europe is largely underestimated. The more I look at these attacks the more intriguing it gets. I don’t claim to be anything other than a very amateur historian and I’ve learned a lot about the Eastern Front that I never knew, in general terms. Whereas I normally focus on tactical aspects of device design, this post is very much focused on the strategic. This post is less about the technicalities of the attack but more about the level of coordination and intensity of the attacks and comparing them to railway sabotage in Western Europe at a similar time.

I would suggest, if you haven’t already you read the earlier post on Ilya Starinov, one of the most important people in explosive sabotage history and probably THE most important individual. I see his fingerprints on much of what follows. I’d also recommend the post on Boer War railway attacks – which in WW2 terms are a most instructive historical campaign on a strategic level, with many similarities.

Now, as I have discussed before, railways make ideal targets for explosive sabotage. Here’s just some of the reasons why:

Railways are an infrastructure target which can impact on a whole economy or military capability, in some cases with strategic effect.
The scale of railways are too big for defensive forces to provide adequate security. Fundamentally a large railway system cannot be protected.
The railways then provide high value targets (trains) at predictable times, (and no trains at predictable times too) making operations easier to plan.
The kinetic energy of a train can be utilised by an attacker to increase attack effect. Remove just one rail or even the connection between two rails and a speeding train will do the rest of the damage for you.
Railways offer either time and space for command initiated devices to be emplaced and initiated or known and repeatable mechanical opportunity to use a train-triggered switch.
Responses post-attack are predictable and usually aligned geographically to the railway.
Failed attacks can cause almost as much disruption as successful attacks, as devices need clearing.

I think the apogee of explosive attacks on railways came in three bursts on the eastern front of the Second World War, as the Soviets faced the Germans. The numbers of the attacks were quite remarkable, even if you view Russian claims very sceptically. The three key railway attack efforts were:

Operation Rail War
Operation Concert (sometimes referred to as Operation Concerto)
Railway sabotage attacks as part of Operation Bagration.

I’m going to summarise these in turn. Each of these sabotage efforts were part of a strategy to disrupt German advances and also make the German defences much weaker. But first it’s important that we place the importance of the railway system in Eastern Europe in context. Railways in Eastern Europe were much more important than in Western Europe because there were few roads capable of taking significant traffic. If you wanted to do anything logistically “strategic” in Russia and Eastern Europe, you did it by rail. I’m going to give a link here to a fascinating article about how the Russians and Germans ran their railways in the war – you might think that would be dull dull dull, but by golly it’s an eye-opener. Of particular note are these things:

There is a myth that the Nazis were the ones who got the railways running properly. This linked article demolishes that completely – it was the Russians who optimised the railways system so much better, and with a simple robust methodology.
It is fascinating that when the Germans advanced into Russia they took over 40% of the Russian rail network – but only 15% of its trains. And that’s a big problem if you then have to find hundreds of trains and carriages (also with a different gauge).
It’s important to understand the logistic manner of functioning with “depots” serving areas of track – the locomotives stay attached to the depot and shuttle backwards and forwards – the carriages are passed like a baton.
Russians ran their trains slower, all at the same speed – conserving engines and carriages and train lines. This also allows for simpler control mechanisms (even if it’s a man with a flag). The Germans tried to run their trains at a variety of speeds, leading to more wear and tear and a much more complex control system to allow for “overtaking”.
The numbers of people involved in railway logistics on both the Russian and German side is stunning.

Russian partisans were made up, in broad terms, from the following:

Soviet soldiers who had been bypassed by the German advance. All soldiers were instructed to undertake sabotage operations in these circumstances.
Captured Soviet soldiers who had escaped
Civilians from the overrun population, usually communist party functionaries. Some of these formed more formal “Destruction Battalions” including retired soldiers and factory workers. Their prime mission was originally securing the Soviet rear area and destroying infrastructure as the Russians retreated, but once overrun they became partisans in effect, with at least some sort of command and control, and relevant training.
NKVD or military personnel brought in by plane and parachute.
Other partisans of all sorts of backgrounds.

The command and control system was flexible and changed as the war progressed – becoming more organised as time passed. So let’s look at the three key Russian rail sabotage efforts.

Operation “Rail War”

This operation occurred during the Battle of Kursk as over 100,000 partisans tried to disrupt German rail activity, disrupting German reinforcements and logistic supplies. This was in July and August 1943. This operation built on the experience of an increasingly effective partisan campaign over the previous year – in the previous winter 225 German trains were derailed, and much other infrastructure attacked. Coordination was handed over from the NkVD to other Russian command structures and became much more coordinated. In Belorussia alone 123 partisan detachments were assigned to demolition activity – often, but not always, with explosives. Literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of track were either blown up or removed. As a cross reference, in July 1943 alone, the Germans reported at least 1,100 separate railway attacks. Then, during the nights of August 3rd and August 4th, the German Heeresgruppe Mitte reported 4,100 railway demolitions. A German source puts the figure even higher for the whole front suggesting 10,900 demolition charges were laid on the night of 2-3 August alone, with over 8000 functioning as intended and the remaining rendered safe by German EOD, many of them “daisy chains”. That’s an incredible number. It seems some attacks were carried out by Red Army demolition units of 30 men each (probably sent by Starinov) flown in to support Partisan activity during the Operation. Is this the first effective use of Starinov’s “Spetznats”? These latter groups seem to have focused on undertaking attacks with more complex devices.

Operation “Concert”

This was a strategic offensive to against German rail communications and logistics during the Battle of the Dnieper and Russian Operation Suvarov, an attack in the direction of Smolensk. It took place immediately after Operation Rail War, from 19 September – 1 November 1943. This was a wide ranging set of attacks from the Baltics to the Crimea. According to Russian sources it involved 193 partisan units, totalling more than 210,000 men. Railways were disrupted across a 560 mile front, to a depth of 250 miles. One source suggests that German logistic movements were restricted by 35 – 40% , In Belorussia alone, partisans claimed to have destroyed or damaged 90,000 individual tracks, 1,061 trains, and 72 railway bridges during this 6 week period. Two examples of the intensity of explosive sabotage operations during this time are as follows:

On one 30 mile stretch of the railway to Minsk, there were 643 explosive demolition attacks on a single railway. On another 40 mile stretch there were 580 attacks.
At one stage on this Minsk line the situation got so desperate that reinforcing troops were off loaded from trains and stationed at 20 ft intervals to guard against the attacks.

Sabotage in support of Operation “Bagration”

At least 150,000 partisans took part in sabotage operations in support of Operation Bagration, the major assault that occurred roughly the same time as the Allied attacks on Normandy. In many ways Bagration was much more successful than the Normandy attack in terms of the advances made, albeit at heavy cost. In the West we think of “Normandy” as the key battle in WW2 – but if you look at the number of troops and the distances involved, Bagration was a much bigger affair. Partisan disruption of German logistics, by explosive sabotage on railways, played a crucial role. On a single night the night of June 19th 1944, there was more than 9,500 explosive attacks on the German occupied railway infrastructure. The Soviet offensive with conventional forces started three days later, and they were able to overcome German defenders who had no supplies and no reinforcements. It is interesting to consider this three day gap, which perhaps allowed the Germans to catch their breath. I don’t quite understand this pause. One explanation might be that the partisans simply used up all their explosives on the first night. Another might be that the Russians expected the Germans to denude their front lines of infantry units to guard the railway lines. In any event, two and a half months later, the Soviets has advanced almost 600km and most of the German occupied Soviet Union was retaken. (By comparison by that time the allies had got to Paris, about 25okm.) It is clear too that the ability of the partisans, in terms of setting and emplacing explosive devices had improved, probably due to Starinov’s influence in training and device design. Similarly, coordination, control leadership and planning had improved too, making partisan operations more effective, but perhaps not fully optimised.

As the war progressed and particular after responsibility was passed from the NKVD to other military structures, Russian support and coordination to the partisans improved, in terms of direction and resources often airlifted in to the vast spaces of Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere in Europe

Partisan style attacks of course occurred in Western Europe and it is useful, where possible, to compare these against the scale of the Russian partisan efforts.

During October and November 1943 (a comparable time period to the Russian Operation Concert above) the Vichy French police reported more than 3000 attempts made by the resistance to attack the railway system. The biggest comparable effort was “Plan Vert” by the French resistance movement, in support of the forthcoming Allied Normandy Landings and subsequent battles. Around the time of the landings in Normandy, 486 attacks were made on the French railway infrastructure by the Resistance preventing German reinforcement on a number of lines. This, while significant, appears to be an order of magnitude smaller than the Russian efforts. Of course, the two theatres are not directly comparable in terms of the importance of the railway infrastructure. In Northern France the optimum logistic infrastructure were the roads. Throughout the whole of the “OB West” administrative sector (which equate to the Western Front against the Allies,) 500 locomotives were destroyed by sabotage or air attack during March 1944, but there were 500 sabotage attacks on railways in France in April 1944, much of which had an impact on the supply of concrete and steel to build the Atlantic Wall. In the West, the Allies relied predominantly, but by no means exclusively, on air attack to disrupt the railways. From all sources, however rail traffic was reduced by 60% from 1 March to 6 June 1944. There were, according to some sources, 1,800 sabotage attacks on French railways between 1 March 1944 and 6 June, and 2,400 rail targets hit by Allied bombers. But compare that 1,800 figure over a 4 month prior to the 10,000 plus on one night in August 1944 on the Eastern front, (and that’s a German figure), and I’m not saying that the French railways were a similarly important target – but whatever the measure, the Russian partisan attacks in the East were remarkable in their number, and I suspect in their effectiveness.

Of course there were other successful rail attacks on the German forces elsewhere in Europe, but these are relatively few and far between and simply get reported better than the thousands of attacks on the Eastern Front. In particular there were quite a number of attacks by Polish resistance forces, who on one occasion cut all railway lines to Minsk, and who carried out “hundreds” of explosive sabotage operations on the railway during the war. Of course the Polish attitude towards the Russians was complicated which affected their operations.

It is also important to recognise that not all sabotage was by the use of explosives. Unbolting tracks, adding grit to lubricants, allowing boilers to overheat, allowing trains to travel too fast or too slow, or making deliberate mistakes with railway points all count towards a broader sabotage effort.

In general in the West we assume , wrongly, that the sabotage by the French resistance was a large scale operation, and we note other individual attacks across Europe or historical campaigns such as those of Lawrence and Garland in Arabia in the First World War. The truth is, though , that they are nothing, a pinprick compared to the huge efforts of the partisans in Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1944.

Assessment

So my assessment is that the sabotage attacks on German rail infrastructure was significantly greater than in the West and the impact of this is probably largely underestimated. The partisans showed that if necessary they could mount 10,000 explosive attacks in one night, and maintain many thousand attacks a month across most of the Eastern front. I can think of no other sabotage or explosive campaign in history with that level of intensity. It might have suited Russian propaganda to downplay the scale and proportional effort and effectiveness of rag-tag partisans rather than more formal Russian forces, just a much as they might exaggerate the effectiveness of individual local partisan detachments. Quite often though I have found German sources to present even higher numbers, which leads me to believe that this incredible level of operational activity was genuine. And, the Germans were better at record keeping than the Russians. But we should also remember that in the East the rail systems were much more crucial to military success, and circumstances allowed a much more “permissive environment” than in Western Europe. Other factors leading to this success include:

Significant numbers of partisans available, often from overrun Soviet Army units, in the area behind German front lines.
A huge geographic space where large numbers of partisans could “disappear” into, and regroup, resupply unhindered by occupying Germans who were focused on the front. The imperative driven by Hitler himself was to throw any and every German unit into the formal front rather than focus on securing rear areas. This gave the partisans a freedom of movement. The Germans simply didn’t have enough troops to secure their rear areas and supply routes and guard the railway system consistently. Furthermore, most of the troops securing rear areas did not have transport. Nor were there enough troops to guard prisoners or feed them. If you were one of a thousand Russian troops being guarded in dense woodland by three second-rate Germans with bolt action rifles and pocket full of ammunition and one horse between the three of them, and you weren’t being fed, would you sit tight in the snow or simply walk away and become a partisan? That’s the reality of the situation.
Russian roads being so poor that it was impossible to move any amount of supplies by road, meaning the railways were even more important. The railway lines where everything – what else was there for the partisans to attack if it wasn’t actual military units? So the most efficient form of attack was an attack on the railway that risked less.
The temperature – German locomotives converted to run on Russia gauge tracks, or tracks changed to suit them, were not designed to operate in the winter temperatures of Russia. Damage to German run trains was harder to fix.
A Russian “tradition” of partisan warfare going back to Napoleonic times.
Poor German logistic management of railways, in some respects.
Ilya Starinov himself.

Overall, it is clear to me that partisan explosive attacks on the railroads significantly enabled the defence of the Soviet forces in the summer of 1943 and their subsequent advances. Partisan attacks were intense in number, flexible and by the latter part of 1943 well controlled and supported from Russia. It seems to me that in general they often had an 80% successful rate in terms of devices that exploded versus rendered safe by EOD. That’s pretty high. This wasn’t always the case, and in some areas that ratio was reversed, probably due to poor training. I have no doubt they enabled the success of Soviet Forces in the East. German responses to the explosive threat to the railways was occasionally innovative but hampered at every turn by the fact they were deep in occupied territory, on an extended supply chain with locals who if they weren’t unsympathetic to start with became increasingly so as the war progressed and they suffered from the fundamental flaws inherent in a fascist invading army. The Germans were never able to find the military numbers to secure the railway. I have no doubt that the partisan sabotage efforts shortened the war in Europe and allowed the Russians to reach Berlin well before the Western Allies. But that’s not because the Western allies failed to attack the rail infrastructure on “their side of Europe”, it’s just because railways were much more important in the East and the Russians realised that and exploited it.

One of the sources I have used for this post also includes some very interesting assessments of German counter-sabotage efforts – well worth a read if you have the time, here. You should note it is drawn mainly from German sources. I’m also looking at similarities between WW2 sabotage operations and what the US/UK and UK faced on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. If you read the lessons learned in the document linked above about the experiences of the Russian partisan efforts, while bearing in mid what occurred in Iraq in 2003/2004, it will make you wince, so clear are some parallels. The parallels between aspects of the counter-sabotage operations and engagement or otherwise with local forces is particularly pertinent. It’s not nice to see similarities between certain Nazi strategies and operations and your own, but there it is. Do you think what happened in the Anbar Awakening and the “Sons of Iraq ” was an innovative idea? Think again. The Germans used White Russian cossacks in attempts to secure certain areas, and there were a number of other strategies which seem only familiar for an invading Army. If I were to be really cynical, (and I can be) there’s also some similarities in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

Although this post is all about strategy and not my usual focus on technical matters, I found a few intriguing technical references that I intend to follow up on.

The first is from the period of the summer of 1943, about the period of Operation Rail War. There is talk of the Germans encountering a new “small” explosive charge provided from Russia to the partisans, which is “daisy-chained” along a length of railway in a series of charges – one report suggests as many as 500 charges in a single daisy chain…. very intriguing and I’ll hunt out details in coming weeks if I can.
The second is reference to a specific counter measure – the Germans apparently in response to pressure sensitive explosive devices on the tracks filled a couple of spare carriages with rocks and placed them at the front of their trains, as sacrificial carriages.
Some other countermeasures. During Operation Concert one countermeasure used by the Germans was the use of searchlight units set up at intervals along vulnerable tracks – the exact technique had been used by the British Army to counter Boer IEDs on railways in South Africa 40 years earlier. In other areas some sort of “alarm” system was set up but as yet I have no details, but the impression I have was this was electrical, I think utilising microphones because the oblique report I have seen suggests they were linked to “listening posts”. Anti-personnel mines were laid by the Germans in places alongside railways where they expected attacks. It would appear that the Germans booby trapped some telephone line poles, that they expected partisans to fell, but the technique is not clear. In another similar approach to the British countermeasures in South Africa 40 years earlier, the Germans manufactured “bicycle trolleys” for troops to patrol tracks.
A reader of this blog has also flagged to me that Starinov co-authored another book, in 1961, about the campaigns above called “Mines against the German rear area”. I don’t think it has been translated but I suspect it’ll contain more interesting detail. I’m searching for a translation.

standingwellback 31st August 2020 20th Century

Starinov, Krushchev and the radio-controlled explosive device

In my last post I promised a little more on Ilya Starinov, the Russian explosives expert and the godfather/grandfather of sabotage explosive attacks. In the blog post on the F-10 explosive device I recounted how Starinov himself was directly involved in planting the F-10 radio controlled device that killed German General Braun in Kharkov in 1941, and this story relates to that incident directly.

The Russian retreat from Kharkhov was carefully planned. Hundreds of “stay-behind” explosive devices were left and Starinov was directly involved. Some of the explosive devices were on timers, some of them with victim-operated switches, and a good handful of F-10 radio controlled devices, these usually with very large charges associated with them. Furthermore there were large numbers of deliberate indications left behind that the Russians created to give the impression of yet more devices to further slow the German progress into the region – holes in the ground, disturbed earth, and hoax devices where no device was actually planted, and sometimes devices laid on top of other hidden devices. According to Soviet sources, 30,000 anti-tank mines were laid in and around Kharkov, about 1000 victim operated devices, and 2000 timed devices.

This anecdote relates to Starinov’s role in this and I cannot be certain it is true, but it is a story worth telling anyway. A key individual in the Soviet forces in the region was Nikita Khrushchev, who apparently worked closely with Starinov. It is clear, with our view of history, that the Russians expected a significant German EOD effort – by November 1941 the pattern of “stay-behind” devices had been set, including the use of F-10 devices hidden in likely headquarter buildings to be occupied by advancing German forces in Odessa and Kiev in previous months.

Here’s a pic of an F-10 device being removed from the Opera House in Kiev in October 1941, by a German EOD team. The distinctive construct of the F10 receiver is clear.

-and below is a fascinating Nazi propaganda film showing towards the end the explosive charges and German EOD team’s removal and inspection of the F-10 device itself recovered from the Kiev Opera House. Quite remarkable footage.

So Starinov was instrumental in the dummy devices, and the efforts to overwhelm, fool, distract and out-think the Wehrmacht engineers. In the run up to the German advance, Krushchev’s headquarters was in a building in Dzerzhinskiy Street on Kharkov, in a building identified by Starinov as likely to be soon used as a German headquarters. Learning the lessons from Kiev, according to this story, two F-10 devices were planted, one hidden carefully below the other in the basement. Interestingly Krushchev did not move out from the headquarters immediately, as he felt this might give an indication to the advancing Germans that the building was prepared with F-10 devices. So clearly Krushchev and Starinov met and there was a degree of trust between the two. But remember, the political atmosphere within Soviet forces was febrile and senior officers were frequently “purged”, accused by Beria’s secret police. In some ways Starinov had been lucky to escape, but here we see perhaps a clue giving one reason he had evaded the purges.

As the Germans entered Kharkov, they did indeed , as Starinov expected, have some success at finding and rendering safe quite a number of explosive devices. Nazi propaganda was quick to trumpet these successes and their success against the “dastardly Bolshevik devices”. This apparent success was noticed by Beria’s secret police, who saw, perhaps, that the devices were being found too easily, giving the German’s success and suggested that something had been so planned by Starinov. The Nazi propaganda from the previous month of the device being found in Kiev would perhaps have added to their suspicions. Then General Braun’s staff made an announcement that they had “easily cleared the major part of the mines”. The secret police prepared a case against Starinov, but Krushchev got to hear of it. He advised Starinov to detonate the two devices in the Dzerzinskiy Street Headquarters now, as predicted, occupied by General Braun.

According to the source I have found the “top” F-10 explosive device planted in the cellar had, as expected, been found, made safe and the initiation mechanism presented to General Braun, showing the headquarters was made safe. The now safe initiator sat on a desk in a main room. Accordingly Starinov, warned of the expected investigation by the secret police, ordered the first device initiated – and in the main hall of the German headquarters the receiver “clicked”, to the delight of the Wehrmacht. Five minutes later the second device, still hidden deep under the building and with a massive charge attached to it received the necessary transmission… and General Braun and many of his staff perished in the explosion. Thus , Starinov’s investigation was dropped by the secret police, and he continued his career.

I should state that other sources slightly contradict this story – saying the “top device” designed to be found was a time delay device. But perhaps the story as detailed above makes a better story – I found it in a 1963 edition of Izvestiya, and it too may well be propaganda. The best stories often are. I do note that the Izvestiya report gets the wrong date attributing it to 1942 and not November 1941.

Here’s a picture of Starinov I have found. I’m not sure when this was taken but I suspect it was some years after the war. Starinov is the older man in civilian clothes pictured with serving Russian soldiers, perhaps those he was training in the late 1960s or 1970s.

Here’s another picture of Starinov taken, I think in the late 1980s.

And here, as young man being introduced to Marshal Klim Voroshilov.

The efforts of the German Wehrmacht EOD/Engineer units in dealing with the significant explosive threat in places like Kiev and Kharkov in 1941 probably deserve some attention.

standingwellback 27th August 2020 1940-1950

The Russian IED connection

Last year I wrote two important blog pieces. The first was about the Russian IED expert Ilya Starinov – certainly the most important person in the history of explosive sabotage. The second post was about the Russian F-10 radio controlled demolition device, used successfully by Starinov in WW2.

Since than I have been digging to find more details of Starinov’s devices, which I have finally successfully done, and there are some very interesting findings. I’ve also uncovered other anecdotal stuff about Starinov and indeed about the broader history of IEDs which I’ll post in coming days and weeks. I also have more technical detail on the F-10 to discuss in future posts.

Now, firstly, a caution. Some of the material I have found regarding the construction and design of certain IEDs could be abused by people with ill-intent. All the material I am going to post is unclassified, but I’m going to obscure parts of it and discuss things in some vague terms to make it much less useful to those with criminal intent. If you want to know the source and you know me or can prove you have a legitimate need to see the sources I am using, then get in touch. Otherwise I make no apology for being deliberately non-specific about some of this material. Now, I found the source of this material on line, and others may be able too, but I am going to limit my helpfulness towards those who shouldn’t have this detail. If you want to challenge my assessments and why I draw the conclusions I reach below, I’m very happy to do this off-line. This means, perhaps, you are going to have to trust me on some of my assessments. Or not! Finally I should also point out, sadly, that there is no shortage of detailed technical instructions for miscreants to find how to make bigger and better IEDs then these here discussed in an openly available 70-year-old document, discussing devices from the Eastern Front in 1942. The horse of IED knowledge bolted a long time ago. Close the stable door if you can – I can’t.

The document I found was developed not from Russian sources, but from US sources, who clearly in the immediate post-war period of 1945-1950 had access to German Wehrmacht engineers reports. These engineers had conducted thousands of successful EOD operations. By gleaning reports of Soviet demolition activity, dealt with by the German engineers in WW2, the US military tried to gain a greater understanding of Soviet capabilities in the 1950s. So this was real technical intelligence on Soviet explosive technology, and explosive sabotage tactics, as the Cold War span up. So here we have, in 2020, the opportunity to examine 1950s US military technical intelligence, derived from Nazi German technical intelligence from the period 1940-1945, about Russian explosive devices. So this isn’t exactly a primary source. But some of the detail I’m going to show you makes me convinced this is worthwhile, valuable historical material, and there are certain aspects which surprised me.

Firstly to remind you of the context. It is apparent that the Soviet soldier of WW2 was pretty familiar with improvising explosives charges, either using his own munitions or captured German munitions. The Germans state that the Russian soldier is “particularly ingenious in installing improvised mines and booby traps“. During the latter part of WW2, the Russian use of sabotage explosive devices went way beyond anything seen before or since. Furthermore partisans in Eastern European countries were trained to improvise yet further. Thousands of railway lines, trains and vehicles were attacked explosively by Russians or Russian sponsored partisans in eastern Europe. Much of this was coordinated by Ilya Starinov, who also designed explosive devices , trained the perpetrators and on many occasions planted key devices himself. Starinov survived numerous purges, and went on to develop spetzntaz units and tactics, and taught revolutionaries around the world in the 1950s and 1960s.

In this first post, I’m going to highlight some very interesting similarities between Soviet sabotage devices from WW2 and (get this) IRA devices of the 1970’s, 1980’s and even 1990’s. These similarities go beyond just application of general explosive/sabitage principles – there are significant design similarities in aspects of the devices. Here’s some examples, and a final, highly technical device that I won’t comment on too deeply.

Firstly there is the use of specific component items. In the 1970s and into the 1990s, many PIRA devices encountered in the UK had firing or arming switches as part of the circuitry. In the vast majority of cases, in what was termed “Time and Power Units” (TPUs) this switch consisted of an adapted wooden springed clothes peg help open with a wooden dowel. Here’s a demonstration circuit showing the “IRA technique”.
The clothes peg was wired so that a switch closed when an insulator was removed from the jaws of the peg, arming this device. In the 1950 document I have found. German engineers describe this exact concept being found in Russian devices in the early 1940s. Here’s a pic:

3. In the late 1980s, PIRA developed the “Mk 12” mortar as British Forces called it. This was followed in 1993 by the smaller “Mk16” Mortar. These were missiles that had a shaped charge in its front end, a hollow pipe behind it containing a fuze and tail fins to stabilise in flight. This wasn’t really a mortar but a horizontally fired missile typically fired at vehicles. It had a shaped charge warhead and a fuze set in the hollow tube behind, with simple fns to stabilise it in its short flight. Here’s a picture of a PIRA Mk 12 Mortar. disassembled:

4. In WW2 Russian partisans developed a device that is remarkably similar. Not tube-launched but built for a similar purpose and with almost identical design principles. Here’s the pic from the 1950 report:

5. The Russians also concentrated significantly on additional circuits or mechanisms to booby trap charges. By introducing anti-handling and anti-lift charges, several of the devices used by the Soviets appear remarkably similar to what the British EOD community of the 1970’s refer to as “Castlerobin” devices. I’m not going to discuss this further here. But clearly there is a thought-process going on to prevent the render safe of devices, and target the EOD operator. The parallels in design are clear.

6. The creation of devices which target EOD activities went a step further with the introduction of a RF sensitive switch designed to initiate an explosive device when certain mine detection equipment was used. This was fielded in December 1943. Some of this equipment was captured by the Wehrmacht in January 1944, and rapidly exploited. 70 years later , technology which is triggered by the RF signature of certain EOD equipments would be regarded as a very high threat indeed – yet, here the Russians were in the early 1940s developing such technology. The device responded to a frequency of 800-2000Hz at short range, emitted by German EOD equipment. What is more, the Germans recognised the importance of such an advance, examined the Russian technology, identified some flaws, and developed their own version of the equipment. They also developed technical solutions to the threat. I find that remarkable, and some of you will share my surprise for reasons we won’t go into. Here’s an excerpt from the report showing the circuit to prove it is what I say it is – (I have obscured part of it for reasons explained earlier).

To be clear in my assessments: I’m not saying that the IRA devices of the late twentieth century were designed by the Russians – just that there are some odd parallels, that may be coincidences. Direct influence is possible but so, theoretically, is the potential for the IRA to have got hold of the American report written in the 1950s. It’s not secret. But we shouldn’t underestimate the fact that Starinov was training revolutionaries from around the world. I do think that these parallels once again highlight the importance of understanding the history of IEDs. The fact that Russian devices were so focused on countering EOD action is interesting and significant and deserves wider understanding. The general under-appreciation of the extensive, WW2 Russian sabotage campaigns using improvised explosive devices is barely recognised and deserves a much greater level of attention. Frankly it makes the efforts of the British SOE or American OSS look very paltry in comparison.

In future blogs related to all this I will address the following:

Some Russian devices designed specifically for targeting railways – further to my series in the subject. Some were designed by Starinov himself.
More technical details of the Russian F-10 radio controlled device.
Some more details and photographs of Ilya Starinov, and an interesting story about the F-10 radio-controlled devices he deployed to assassinate German General General Braun in Kharkov in November 1941, and the role of a young commissar called Krushchev (yes, that one) in the operation, protecting Starinov from being arrested by Beria’s agents and “purged” before the device was detonated.
An odd and fascinating series of parallels between this 1950s American report and another American report written in 1865 showing almost identical devices. History repeating itself again. Some of the Russian devices of WW2 are identical to Russian devices of the 1850s, and some other Russian devices of WW2 are very similar to American revolutionary devices of 1778.

All in all, this document is a bit of a treasure trove when put within the larger context of the history of IEDs over several centuries.

standingwellback 30th June 2020 Ship-Borne IEDs

The Operation Chariot IED

Sometimes doing historical research on IEDs, you get stuck finding out technical detail and the post dies. Just occasionally the subject matter is really interesting and deserves telling anyway – but with some caveats. This is one such incident but there’s a fair bit of speculation from me on some technical matters. I’m very happy (as always) to be corrected, and happy if more technical details surrounding this incident come out – and then I’ll update. I’m very grateful for Norman B and Ian J for their valuable inputs on technical matters – there’s no-one who knows more about explosive devices of this time than these two gentlemen.

I’ve written before about a fascinating historical trend of ship-borne IEDs used in ports on the Northern coast of Europe since the 1580’s – follow the link in the connections on the right hands side of the page to ship-borne IEDs. One I have mentioned, if only in passing, was the most recent – The St Nazaire Raid – Operation Chariot – that took place in 1942. This is an interesting story and if some of the details are a little grey, then that’s the way it is.

If you don’t know the story of “the greatest raid” you should google it and get your head around this audacious operation – designed to prevent the Tirpitz from using the Atlantic, by taking out the huge “Normandie” dry dock in the German-held port of St Nazaire. The characters involved all have individual tales that are quite remarkable, but this is a blog about explosive devices, so I’m going to concentrate on that. The crucial part of that raid was a large IED hidden deep within the hull of “HMS Campbeltown” which literally was rammed into the gates of the huge dry dock at the St Nazaire Naval Base.

Once the ship was lodged in the gates, the stern of the ship was flooded to prevent the Germans perhaps pulling the ship out from the gates, and so the stern was stuck and the ship, for the time being, was going nowhere. The occupants of the ship either died in the approach action or fought their way ashore, many of them with missions to blow-up the dry dock infrastructure. Unknown to the German forces though, the fuzes in the ship had been set, and in a few hours the explosive device would indeed detonate to destroy the dry dock gates. So let’s explore what that device consisted of, and here are the caveats:

We can’t be sure exactly how the device was fuzed, because the man who perhaps designed it and who set the fuzes died. Or alternatively the secrecy procedures of the time simply kept it all under wraps and it wasn’t discussed and recorded as we’d hope.
Most of my sources, at this stage are not primary sources, so I’m left scrabbling for odd unreferenced mentions relating to the device that I can’t fully confirm. These are open to interpretive filters by those “swinging the lamp”.
Some of the limited technical details about the device and its components vary between sources.
Even if I had all the facts of the device design some of the reasoning behind the design is going to be open to interpretation anyway.

So, despite all that, here’s what I think may have been the idea. I suspect the design of the device was a collaborative affair. Lt Nigel Tibbits DSC RN was the naval officer detailed by the captain to oversee it, and he probably had the key role in deciding where the main charge was placed, and the concept of its use. I’m unsure as to his level of expertise – some sources describe him as an explosives expert and others that he was the ship’s navigator. I think he was maybe unlikely to be both. I suspect he had some form of assistance from two Royal Engineer demolition officers who are vaguely referenced, and also I suspect, from the SOE, who provided, perhaps/maybe/probably, some of the fuzes and possibly some ideas regarding concealment of the components. The device itself seems to have some of the characteristic fingerprints of an SOE sabotage device in terms of its components and its concealment. I suspect Tibbits came up with the idea of placing the device in the fuel tank, and the demolitions officers placed the charges and initiation system, and the SOE may have provided advice on concealing the initiation system and provided some key components.

Lt Tibbits DSC RN

The main charge was to consist of 24 Mk VII depth charges, each containing 132Kg of Amatol, giving a total of over 3000 kg. Amatol was a commonly used explosive in the first part of WW2, and in crude terms was a mix of TNT and Ammonium Nitrate. It’s a reasonably stable, quite effective, explosive, better than straight TNT because the “oxygen deficiency” of TNT is made up with Oxygen ions in the Ammonium Nitrate.

To give you an idea of scale, here’s a single Mk VII depth charge being lifted:

The remainder of the explosive components used were from a stock probably delivered to the ship before the operation, I think from the SOE and detailed in one report as follows:

10 x 2.5-hour waterproof delays
20 x 2.5-hour pencil delays
10 x underwater initiators for Cordtex leads
20 x 8.5-hour AC delays
20 x Bickford fuses.

I believe that quite significant attempts were made to disguise and conceal the presence of this large device. On HMS Campbeltown a main fuel tank is located deep in the hull, behind the forward gun, just forward of the bridge super-structure and about 12 feet down under the main deck, under the Petty Officers’ Wardroom. The top part of this fuel tank was sectioned off to create a compartment. Into this the depth charges were placed in 4 columns, front to back, of six each. The spaces between were then filled with concrete, and a steel lid with (disguised?) access holes placed on top. I assume that the holes was accessed from the deck of the petty officers wardroom. I think any reasonable explosives specialist would fit a cordtex ring main around at least the central depth charges if that were possible.

The device was carefully constructed before the operation and I have found the attached photograph of the ship at this time of preparation, in Devonport.

A few things strike me about this photo. This was taken during the preparation for the operation – additional bolt-on armoured shielding is being put in place. But there are several other interesting things in this picture which shows the key deck space above the charge (between the superstructure and the forward gun). Firstly, I think those cylinders at the feet of the seaman are Mk VII depth charges – just at the moment of being loaded aboard – I think I can see six. So that’s interesting. Secondly, so are two of the characters on the picture. Just behind the seaman and the officer are two men dressed in civilian clothes – trilbies and overcoats. They can’t be dockyard workers, as such clothing would be inappropriate. I wonder if they are SOE explosives specialists visiting the preparation to advise on device construction, which one assumes is going on below. Forgive me a little speculation on that! The SOE had a department, at the time called “ISRB” (Inter Services Research Bureau) who conducted research and development of some of the stranger weapons of war. ISRB supported SOE directly but also, and significantly, they supported “Combined Operations” the organisation, under Mountbatten, who coordinated and planned Operation Chariot. ISRB played a key role in developing the AC Time delays, time pencils, sand underwater initiators, so the “shopping list” of components listed earlier looks like they were from ISRB. So I think it’s reasonable for us to assess that the firing system had very significant input from ISRB, who also where masters at disguising and concealing devices. A number of the central depth charges were under the access holes, allowing the charge to be primed. There was a variant of the MkVII depth charge, that had a built in detonator adaptor to allow initiation from a detonator or cordtex , but it’s not clear if this was available to this mission, or indeed if it was developed as a result of this mission’s requirements.

The fuzing of the system is where we have to make a few speculative assumptions, and where there are only a few facts. What follows is a bit of a ramble through the technical aspects.

The charge had at least two separate initiation systems, and it is very likely indeed that some of these were duplicated to ensure detonation.
Both the primary and back-up initiation systems employed time delay switches. The challenge here is that many sources contradict each other on the lengths of time delays available, and then after that they are all dependent to a greater or lesser degree on the temperature. I’m conscious that in discussing some of the timings, there are queries over the “2.5” hour time pencil delays and “8.5” hour AC time delays that I have not resolved completely because of conflicting information.
The primary initiation system was designed to function some time after the ship had been evacuated, probably 2.5 hours after the crew “disembarked”. It probably used at least one (and probably/almost certainly more than one) 2.5 hour pencil delays.
The planned time between disembarkation and detonation was the reason that the device needed to be concealed.
I have found one reference (not all that well sourced) that suggests that the primary ignition system (the 2.5 hour time pencils) were hidden, somehow, in the leg of a wardroom table. I’m going to assume that this is the wardroom above the main charge, and that from the time pencil (or much more likely, multiple time pencils) was a detonator(s) and then an explosive link of cordtex that went down the table leg, through the deck below, and into the main charge. But it is possible that the time pencil was connected to Bickford fuse and that the detonator was at the end of this, perhaps inside the false fuel tank attached to cordtex ring main.
The 2.5 hour time pencils had a white-coloured safety strip. Now 2.5 hours seems like a long time to me, but I think this was because of the other explosive demolition operations planned for the pumping house and other dock facilities – these would explode first, the commandos clear the area, and then the main charge in the Campbeltown would destroy the gates. Exploding the Campbeltown first may have compromised the ability to destroy all the supporting mechanisms. So the concept of operation assumed that the device would be undiscovered for 2.5 hours – (in the middle of the night, during a battle, with raiding parties all around so not unreasonable). The main part of the raid was expected to take no more than 2 hours.
Now, time pencils are a bit fiddly. They need some inspection during the process of initiating them, involving checking in sight holes, crushing a copper vial, crimping on safety fuze or detonator, inspecting again, and then removing the safety pin. So the hidden compartment would need to allow fairly easy access. We know nothing more of this concealment. I sense the hand of ISRB in this concealment design. It is also possible that they fitted some sort of mechanism to aid the ease of initiation of the time pencils to reduce the fiddly process at the height of battle. here’s a pic of the the pencil:
I suspect that the plan was for Tibbitts or one of the Royal Engineers to set these immediately after ramming the dock gates. It would have been sensible to assign back up personnel to this task given the expected battle.
The “back up” initiation system seems to have involved the use of “AC” delay devices. These involved acetone dissolving a celluloid barrier, and different concentrations of acetone varied the timing. Here’s a picture:

And a photo of one:

9. The delay is varied in these igniters by inserting different coloured ampoules of acetone. They are set by removing the safety pins then screwing the top in to break the ampoules The ones supplied to the Campbeltown were supposedly “8.5 hour” delays, but other convincing sources don’t offer that as an available time delay. So that’s an anomaly I haven’t resolved. These, attached to a detonator, were embedded in the main charge or a ring main (I suspect there may have been a booster of some sort or some cordtex in the mix there to ensure the explosive train). This 8.5 hour timer (if that is what it was) then has the consequence that the charges needed to be set several hours before the final stages of the operation commenced. But there’s some interesting maths here and some challenges.

10. The operation planned for the Campbeltown to ram the dock gates at 0130 hrs. (it did so 4 minutes late, at 0134 hrs.) . The plan must(?) have been for the main delay mechanism. in the wardroom table leg, to be set at that point – with a 2.5 hour delay then the explosion was to have been at 0400. The back up initiation system, to coincide with that, should therefore have been set, theoretically, at 1930hrs the previous evening. Given that that was long before the approach to St Nazaire, and these fuses were known to have reliability issues, I think they would have been set later – hence the delay in initiation until next morning. Added into all of this the AC fuses were known to have quite a range of variation in timing – by as much as 20% due to variables such as the temperature, and also variables in the concentration of the acetone due to poor quality control during manufacture. So some leeway would be given, as well as a fudge factor. As it was , I understand from one source that the AC delays were “set” at 2330 hrs – but I can’t be sure what time zone that’s in – “British” or “local”. Either way, at some point in the night, during passage towards St Nazaire, Lt Tibbits (if it was him) set the AC time delays, I think by reaching somehow through the wardroom floor/deck, setting the devices, (remove the pin, screw the head in) then concealing the access hole with a wooden bung.

11. Then of course battle ensued and things went wrong, as they always do in battle. At some point during the attack, the wardroom was struck by a German shell. Fire ensued, and brave attempts were made to extinguish it. In this picture, taken after the ramming but just before the ship exploded, I think you can see the resultant fire damage to the hull on the outside of the wardroom, just under the forward gun. If you look carefully perhaps you can see a hole where the shell hit.

12. It was probably due to this shell that the primary initiation system was damaged and un-usable. It must also be luck that the device wasn’t initiated at this time, early. So then the attack was relying on the back up AC delays deep in the hidden compartment. The hit on the wardroom also probably made a compete mess of the interior of the wardroom and perhaps added to the reasons why the charge was not found in the ensuing hours. But imagine crewing this ship, sat above (literally) a 3 ton explosive charge, knowing that there’s been a hit and a consequent fire around the initiating systems. Wow. Encouragement to get off as soon as possible I think. Here’s another picture showing how the sea cocks had been opened at the stern to prevent a rapid tow away by German forces.

13. The AC delays finally caused initiation, the main charge having been undetected, at about 10.30 am, perhaps 10 or 11 hours after the 8.5 hour delay (if that’s what they were) had been set. 40 senior German officers and civilians who were on a tour of what they supposed was the captured Campbeltown were killed. Hundreds of others in the dock nearby were also killed or injured. The charge, as you can see from the photo above, was probably 12 – 15ft behind the dock gates, which were blown apart by the explosion. The dock remained unusable until 1947. What remained of the Campbeltown came to rest in the dry dock itself.

I think this photo (taken after the war, I think when the dock was being repaired) shows the immense scale of the Normandie Dry dock, with the little Campbeltown‘s remains occupying the space that would otherwise have held the mighty Tirpitz.

I have taken some liberties here with my sourcing and interpretation of the device design, and I’m very happy to be corrected. some of my assessments contradict some sources. (for instance one source suggests that the device was to be initiated at 4.30 am, others after 0500 am). I put some of this down to the confusion of battle and also confusion over time zones. I think I’d make the following points in summary:

This attack has so much in common with a number of earlier ship-borne IEDs that occurred on the Channel or Atlantic coasts in the previous 400 years.
It was fortunate it succeeded, particularly in terms of the enemy fire hitting the place where the primary initiation system was hidden.
Disguise of the device was clearly a major factor in its construction. The disguise and concealment worked. If one regards this “ship IED” as essentially a large vehicle-borne IED, the key features of a VBIED are all here – mobility, disguise, speed, size of container. As others in history worked out for themselves, (and as you can read on other pages of this blog), as vehicle-borne IEDs go, there are none bigger than ships.
Exploring the “tactical design” of any IED attack is always fascinating, and the same is true here in spades. Too little time is spent understanding this process (both by perpetrators and by investigators). That complex interrelationship of the mission, and the way that technical resources can be moulded to fit the mission, or the mission tweaked to take account of the technicalities of device design and construction is fascinating. If you were in Tibbits’s shoes, how many back-ups would you have? How would you protect them, from enemy fire and from discovery? What alternatives can you envisage? What other resources did he have available? Complex attacks sometimes require complex devices. Simplicity usually works. For simple, routine sabotage type operations the availability of explosive components leads to the design of the mission. But for complex operations such as this, the components have to be adapted to suit the required characteristics, and that can pose challenges. For those developing components for use by saboteurs, such as ISRB, they have to cover all angles they have to allow as much flexibility as possible and you can see that in the range of timers and initiation types available. There are some interesting parallels, as ever, with modern terrorism.
The reliance on somewhat unreliable time delay devices is perhaps surprising in modern terms. The whole concept of operation screams for a mechanical rather than chemical timer, or in modern terms an electronic timer.
We’ll probably never know the actual design, or if there were additional fallback initiation systems.
IEDs are not always the sole provenance of the enemy. Often viewed with disdain, sometimes depending on your perspective, their use can be heroic. What a strange phenomena they are. Of course you may not regard this as an IED at all, but I do.
Checking out a large vehicle or ship for hidden explosives is damned difficult if the device is well hidden.
Bloody hell, it was a close run thing.

I think most of all about the challenge faced by Lt Tibbits. As the Campbeltown approached St Nazaire docks, its guns blazing , under heavy fire from everything the Germans could muster, he replaced two helmsmen, both killed by incoming enemy fire, and he was at the wheel, the skipper by his side, as it rammed the dock gates at full speed trailing the royal ensign that had replaced the ruse de guerre of a German flag minutes before. He knew his primary initiation was gone – so he may have felt significant pressure to somehow ensure detonation. Dare he rely on the back up charges? Given the decks were strewn with injured, that would have restricted his options. Would the device be discovered? What choices were open to him? In any event he was cut down by machine gun fire a few seconds after disembarking and he died there on the dockside and that, I’m afraid, was that for Lt Tibbits.

In future, I may do a similar piece on the WW1 Zeebrugge raid which has a lot of similarities, including another big IED. If I can get enough facts together. One wonders too, that if earlier in the war Operation Lucid had succeeded, would the Germans have paid more attention to the likelihood of explosive charges. Or if they had access to the history of explosive ships along this European coast would they have dug a little deeper into the hull of HMS Campbeltown.

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