Standing Well Back
Railway IEDs

Strategic IED campaign on railways 1899-1902

I continue to uncover remarkable details of the Boer IED campaign against the British in South Africa.  I have detailed some of these in previous posts and railway attacks here in particular.  What I hadn’t quite realised was the scale of the campaign, which is huge, and indeed provides a template not only for the Russian partisan campaign against Nazi railways of WW2, but also in a sense the insurgent campaign in Iraq in 2003/2004.  Also see my other posts on railway attacks by clicking on the link of subjects in the right hand column – quite a few over history, including Lawrence of Arabia, the German East African campaign of WW1 and others.

The details I’m going to show you highlight that this was very much a strategic campaign targeting the British Military’s ability to move around South Africa. It also goes to demonstrate a comprehensive range of operations by the British military to respond to these IED attacks, by repairing the railway system, maintaining it, and implementing a range of C-IED security measures, not least being the “blockhouse” concept where small detachments of soldiers established patrol bases at frequent intervals along the railway.

I think it’s important to mention that the Boers were particularly effective at targeting the railway in a number of ways:

  1. By taking out key bridges. The number of bridges destroyed and then either repaired or replaced by the British Army is staggering. The Boers had significant numbers of personnel familiar with using explosives, and no lack of explosives.
  2. By blowing numerous culverts were the railway line crossed them.
  3. By damaging rails.
  4. By attacking trains and rolling stock either moving on the line or in sidings. sometimes by explosives and sometimes by simple sabotage such as removing key components, or by fire.
  5. By attacking supporting infrastructure such as watering points and water supplies. Coal supplies were set alight in depots.

There were of course plenty of Boers from the mining community with the experience to set and lay simple charges, and the IED technology evolved over time. My guess is that with no great shortage of explosives, a knowledge of what explosive placement and quality to use evolved rapidly over time – certainly the images below suggest sufficient expertise (or sufficient quantities of explosive) to blow large structures.

A variety of devices initiation methods were used:

  1. Simple burning-fuze time detonation for bridges, and track where no enemy was present.
  2. Command wire attack in an ambush situation on a train coming down the line, so the Boer’s were in sight of, but a tactical bound away from the site of the explosion.
  3. Victim operated devices placed under rails which were initiated by the train (as discussed here)

I’ve obtained a copy of the report written by the British Army Royal Engineer responsible for running and repairing the railway, where he details a lot of the repair work undertaken – from these I can derive details of the successful IED attacks over quite a period. To be clear, this account doesn’t focus on the IED attacks themselves in particular but the running of the railway as a system, and with the repair process as a part of that but we can draw useful analysis of the IED campaign against the railways from it.  So here’s some summaries and exemplar detail. I should mention that the name of this Engineer officer is Édouard Percy Cranvill Girouard. (!) Or rather Lieutenant Colonel EPV Girouard KCMG, DSO, RE, to give him his full title.

  • Largely because of the distances involved, the British Army, relied extensively on the railway system for strategic movement and routine logistics. There were 4600 miles of track in the system in a series of interconnected networks.
  • The British Military took over the operation of the railways completely in 1899, retaining local staff were possible. There were, of course, challenges were railway works were Boer sympathisers. This was a managerial challenge. A huge “lesson-learned” for the Royal Engineers was the need to develop competency in complex railway systems management.
  • Repairs to the railways were often carried out under fire, or at least in the presence of the enemy
  • Water is a crucial component of running a steam railway and the Boers realised this and disrupted water supplies too. The British on occasions resorted to running “water trains” to supply water for other trains. At one point the entire water supply for the railways around Bloemfontein was cut by the Boers from April 1900.
  • The number of bridges damaged by explosions is significant. here’s a summary of bridges reconstructed following an attack – divided into two lists depending on whether they were built originally in imperial dimensions or metric:

So that’s a total of 278 railway bridges requiring reconstruction following attack by the Boers with explosives.  After these were repaired, military posts were set up to guard every span over 30ft – leaving only smaller bridges,  culverts and regular track as the target for Boer IEDs. As you can see, that’s quite a manpower bill in itself in terms of a counter-IED strategy. Later, blockhouses were set up providing a blockhouse protected against rifle fire and surrounded by barbed wire every 2000 yards along the railway lines, each manned by a small number of troops (about ten each) – quite an investment in resources, but crucial to keep logistics functioning.

Here’s just a few of the bridges damaged by Boer IEDs, and subsequently repaired:

The Modder River Bridge:

The Vaal River Bridge:

The Colenso Bridge over the Thukela river with two parallel Royal Engineer replacement bridges being built (often under enemy fire)

The Orange River bridge, with replacement bridge alongside

The Norvalspont Bridge: This bridge was repaired in 14 days, or at least a secondary Laine installed (see the rails at the base)..

The Bridge at Fourteen Streams

I could post many more pictures of IED damaged bridges, but I hope I’ve got my point over that this was a strategic IED campaign, and required a strategic repose from he British Army.  The files I have obtained detail the amazingly short periods of time it took the Sappers to temporarily rebuild many of these significant bridges.  Here’s an excerpt of just one page of dozens more, note the speed of the engineer operation:

 

As well as these major bridges, many smaller bridges were also blown along with probably hundreds of culverts. Lines and points were damaged either by pulling them up or damaging them too with explosives. To give an idea of intensity of IED attacks, this is an excerpt listing just one month of attacks on just one part of the network:

With the adoption of the pressure sensitive IEDs used by the Boers, train engines were armoured to protect the crew and then trucks were pushed ahead of the engine on every “first train of the day” as sacrificial elements to initiate any IEDs ahead of the train.

One particular counter-measure against IEDs that I have discovered fascinates me and returns to the theme of Remotely Operated Vehicles. An “inventor” in England suggested deploying a carriage powered by a heavy electric motor some distance ahead of the engine, to which it was connected by long electric leads. So a wire controlled ROV on rails, in effect. This was trialed in theatre (like sometimes such ideas still are!) but found to be impractical, for the following reasons:

  • It was sacrificial and was expensive in itself to be replaced.
  • It was difficult to control, keeping the wires sufficiently taut so the train didn’t run over them or have the leads pulled from the controller.
  • The wires caught in any trackside object (including trees, blockhouses, telegraph poles etc.
  • It couldn’t cope with curves without causing more problems.
  • The Boers had already started using electrically initiated command wire IEDs anyway, so could ignore the ROV.

Nonetheless this demonstrates, that even in 1901 that innovative ideas were being sought to deal with IED threats. And .. it’s another early ROV.

With regards to other innovations, this next one is a bit peculiar too. Over time the “blockhouses” placed 200 yards apart were added to so there was even less distance between them. The gaps between were under observation (in some cases at night with the use of searchlights) to prevent insurgents placing IEDs on the rails and patrolled frequently. Do this was a strategic effort to observe all of the communication routes used by there British.  Another innovative concept implemented, I kid you not, was the use of specialised bicycles.  These “war cycles” consisted, at first, of two bicycles, fastened on a common frame with wheels adapted so that the cycles ran on opposite rails.  two sliders would pedal between blockhouses providing route coverage. The adapted wheels enabled the cyclists to use both hands to fire weapons , and progress was relatively stealthy.  Later, a larger “8 man” war-cycle was built proving more firepower. a lot of these machines were made in Cape Town and used by the Royal Australian Cycle Corps.

Other innovative responses to attacks included this fabulous add-on armour to a train (admittedly not necessary against IEDs). British soldiers, almost inevitably, came up with the nickname:

The conflict also prompted innovative use of other battlefield technologies such as armoured vehicles, and use (by both sides) of wireless radio communications – perhaps a first in a conflict.

To summarise, I think we can see in this conflict:

  • A strategic and extensive IED campaign by the Boers as a part of an insurgency campaign. The patterns of similar strategies with later campaigns up to the modern day are clear, and in particular the Russian inspired partisan campaign against the Nazi rail system in WW2.
  • A coherent response of sorts from the British Army, in terms of resourcing appropriate management control of the crucial national rail network
  • A component of that response included resourcing repair teams and military engineering capabilities of sufficient size and flexibility to respond to the intensity of IED attacks
  • A manpower intensive (but ultimately successful) security operation to protect the exposed logistic capability
  • A search for innovative counter IED methodologies and ideas, some of them implemented successfully but time wasted on others. Sounds familiar.

 

 

1910-1920

More “Stay behind” devices

In a couple of posts over the last few months I’ve discussed “stay behind” devices.

In this post I discussed Russian stay-behind devices in the Crimean War in the 1850s .  The Russians, in ceding Sebastopol to the French and British, were able to predict where attacking troops would be – whether that be to seize high profile buildings or munition dumps, and lay “booby-traps” which caused significant problems.

In this post I discussed Russian stay-behind explosive devices in WW2, used to attack the invading Nazi army. In particular the Russians in many instances were able to predict the sort of buildings that the Wehrmacht would be attracted to use as headquarter buildings – typically large imposing buildings with large rooms suitable for converting into the various facilities needed by a military headquarters. Using both long delay mechanical timers and radio-controlled F-10 devices they had considerable success in Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa, targeting incoming headquarter units , in many cases several days or weeks after losing the territory.  In many cases, including a device personally emplaced by Ilya Starinov,  deliberately “poorly concealed devices” were laid “on top” of the deeply buried device. EOD troops inspected the proposed building, and cleared the obvious device in the cellar  (not realising another much larger device was hidden under it). Three weeks later the massive device was detonated, successfully taking out an entire headquarter staff.

With all that in mind, I have found another use of a very similar tactics, but used by the Germans against the Allies, in WW1. Booby trapped explosive devices were used extensively by the Germans in WW1. In this example, the tactic used by the Russians, against the Germans seems to be identical.

On about the 18 March 1917 Bapaume, a small but strategic town was captured from the Germans. After taking the town, an EOD unit found a mine of some sort in the cellar under the Town Hall, a prominent building – whose cellars were deep enough to provide shell shelter – so an attractive structure for forces “moving in”.  It is believed that the Germans may have expected or hoped that a Divisional Headquarters may have decided to use the place.  I think that in an earlier part of the war the Town Hall had been  indeed previously used by a British or French headquarters.  As it happens that did not occur but about 30 Australians had “moved in” along with a tea stall from the “Australian Comforts Fund”. On the night of 26 March, so about 8 days later, a timer, set before the Germans retreated, caused a massive device to explode, killing most of the occupants.  I have found reports that the charge could have been as large as 10,000lbs, (but I think that unlikely, more likely maybe a couple of hundred lbs) and had two independent “time pencils”, of the type where the delay is provided by acid eating through a steel thread holding a striker under spring tension.  Interestingly there is a suggestion that the German Pioneers who laid the devices defecated on the ground above it, to dissuade careful inspection.  I also understand that the German withdrawal from Bapaume was part of a carefully planned operation to fall back to the Siegfried Line, which will have given time for the preparatory effort.

UPDATE:  I have learned from Ian Jones that the details of the incident aren’t quite as I described. A large, easily found device was discovered and made safe in the cellar. a somewhat smaller device carefully hidden in the tower of the Town Hall was the device that exploded, collapsing the cellar trapping people in there.

Shortly later a German was captured nearby and interrogation of him suggested there were other devices in the area.  Before this warning could be circulated, at 12.37 p.m. On March 26th, the luxurious dugout system on the edge of Bapaume, in which a headquarters had been set up was entirely destroyed by a similar mine. Several other similar devices appear to have been used in the area.

Here’s a diagram of a German delay switch. I think the Germans also had mechanical clockwork delay switches.

German WW1 Boob-traps are very well explained in Ian Jones’s excellent book “Malice Aforethought”   Anyway, I think its interesting that a tactic perfected by the Germans in WW1 was used by Russians against the Germans in WW2.  There are lessons here too about “predictability” of the target’s behaviour in terms of choice of location for an explosive device, and also in terms of disguising stay-behind devices. Of course, booby traps were used by the British, French and Australians too.

Sabotage During World Wars

Colin Gubbins – Gamekeeper turned Poacher

As part of my research into the use of IEDs for sabotage in WW2, I wrote an earlier piece about Colonel Ilya Starinov, the key person in developing Russia’s sabotage activity in WW2.  More recently I’ve been looking at Britain’s role in encouraging sabotage efforts using IEDs in the same war.  Of course there are differences but the parallels between Ilya Starinov, and his counterpart in Britain, Colin Gubbins are actually pretty interesting.

Steely-eyed Gubbins. 

Gubbins is well known for his role in leading the SOE during WW2, but his influence I think is broader than that. He was also responsible for implementing the ideas of Churchills “Auxiliary Units”, a plan to mount partisan operation in England if the Germans had invaded in the early part of the war.  His 1939 pamphlets on how to conduct partisan warfare were distributed across Europe during the war.  I was interested how this apparently traditional Artillery officer became such source for partisan warfare ideas, and it’s an interesting story, and some of the things I have found are startling, to me anyway.

As a young man he was already a German speaker and perhaps comfortable with the concept of living in a foreign country, having lived for a short time in Heidelberg before the war started.  His WW1 career was fairly standard for a Gunner officer fighting at Ypres, the Somme and Arras.   He was wounded and gassed.   It was only in 1919, after the end of the Great War did Gubbin’s experiences slightly leave the norm.

  • In 1919 he served for a time on the staff of the British Forces in the North Russia Campaign. This was a peculiar and unusual campaign by any standards. Gubbins would have been aware of activity by Bolsheviks to sabotage railways as part of their battles with the Allies who supported the White Russians. He would have also been aware of British encouragement (by MI6) of IED use by their agents and white Russians in Petrograd,
  • At the end of 1919, Gubbins was then posted to Ireland as an Intelligence officer, during the busy years of 1920 – 1922. During that time he attended a three day course in guerilla warfare. Most of his duties will have involved understanding the threats faced by the British Army by the IRA, who were operating a guerrilla campaign. The 18 months or so of this experience as an intelligence officer against an insurgent campaign seems to have sparked a longer term interest in irregular warfare , and started his thinking, in the reverse of poacher-turned gamekeeper. Gubbins was to think hard about gamekeeper-turned-poacher  in coming years.
  • In 1922 he continued his intelligence career in Signals Intelligence in India, before a range of staff, training and policy posts.
  •  In the late 1930s, as a Lt Col, Gubbins started to crystallise his irregular warfare thoughts by being the author of key pamphlets such as “The Partisan Leader’s Handbook”. This is actually a fascinating document, for a number of reasons. Firstly it shows that at least someone, in 1939, in the War office was thinking about irregular warfare. secondly I think I can see hints that the author, Gubbins, had studied earlier campaigns and drawn from not only his own experience in Russia and Ireland but also other campaigns I have discussed in earlier blogs such as the efforts of the Arab Bureau in Arabia in 1917 and the German WW1 Lettow-Vorbeck campaign in East Africa. I also sense that his advice on OPSEC is drawn from his experience as an intelligence officer “from the other side of the fence”

As a small diversion in this blog post, I’d also like to highlight a couple of other aspects of the Partisan Leader’s pamphlet that I think are worthy of attention, and that’s to do with the utter ruthlessness prescribed by Gubbins, which in modern eyes are startling.  Here’s a couple of examples, but remember this is a pamphlet produced by a Lt Col in the War office in 1939:

  • One method of sabotage that is recommended is the contamination of food by “bacilli, poison”.  So here is the British War Office advocating biological warfare by partisans in 1939
  • Gubbins is equally ruthless on the subject of “informers” within partisan groups. Informers must be killed “immediately ” or at “the first opportunity” and “if possible a note pinned on the body stating the man was an informer.  Having personally once had to retrieve such a body that’s a bit shocking as a British document.

Then later in 1939 Gubbins was posted to be Chief of Staff to one of this blog’s favourite characters, General Carton De Wiart, as part of a mission to Poland just before the Germans invaded and war started, advising on Polish partisan tactics.  He was with de Wiart as they crossed the Romanian border escaping from the German advance.  After that he went on to form commando units which deployed to Norway, and after was tasked  to set up the Auxiliary Units in preparation for a German invasion of England, and clearly applied much of his irregular warfare thinking into that.

I find it fascinating to look at a time line of Gubbins’ career with that of Starinov, from about 1918 to 1945. Both experienced in Russia, but on different sides. Starinov starting more lowly but with stronger technical skills, but importantly both learning from their experience and deriving very similar irregular warfare policy developments. Putting aside political differences, both came up with similar solution sets of irregular warfare based around explosive sabotage.  Both put huge effort into developing “stay behind” guerrilla operations against invading forces – for Starinov it was the plan to operate partisan groups in Ukraine if it was invaded, developed as a detailed plan by Starinov in the mid 1920s – 1930s, for Gubbins it was the Auxiliary units developed in 1940 to counter German invasion.  Gubbins formed the first British Commando units, Starinov formed the first Russian Speztnaz units.   Both men ended WW2 running very extensive partisan operations against the Germans. One can’t but help see certain symmetries. One can’t but help see their influence in all sorts of conflict types since WW2.  2003 in Iraq is just one example that could have been based on either man’s plan.    I wonder if they were aware of each other?

Gubbins in retirement

(Note: Copies of Gubbins’ partisan pamphlets and other Auxiliary Unit material including a fantastic explosive demolitions document, disguised as a British Farmers Diary, 1939, are available. Ping me and I might tell you where from). Here’s a couple of pics – some of you will work out the link to “Highworth”.

1940-1950

Belgian Resistance IED attacks

I continue to trawl through some fascinating WW2 stuff – and I am amazed at the prevalence of IED attacks and the development of IED technology during the war- this is something I and perhaps others, have never been aware of.

Here’s just a glimpse, and an interesting example.  The Belgian Resistance to Nazi occupation is very interesting – at times many of the 43 resistance groups in the country received virtually no support from the allies, and reverted to manufacturing their own home made explosives, or obtaining it from other sources. Some examples:

  1. “Group G” a resistance group based around the University of Brussels co-opted students with technical skills. Another group involved a chemist to create a complex underground Nitroglycerine/Dynamite manufacturing facility in the cellars under a school.
  2. Another group recovered unexploded ordnance from World War One battlefields and removed the explosives to then use as explosive charges in IEDs.

More German troops were killed in Belgium in 1941 by the resistance then in the whole of France that year. One Belgian group developed small tablets containing abrasive grit which when added to the oil tank on an aircraft engine caused catastrophic damage. On the night of 15th January 1944, Group G sabotaged the entire national electricity pylon infrastructure, effectively cutting electricity to the whole country by using explosives on power pylons in a series of coordinated attacks.

I think the Belgian sabotage campaign in the summer of 1944 is particularly remarkable because it is almost unheard of in the history books. It pretty much matches Russian partisan IED campaign of 1943 against railways that I mentioned in my earlier post on Ilya Starinov.   In 1944, as the Allies invaded France, Belgium’s strategic position for the movement of German resources into Northern France became crucial. Between June 1944 and September 1944, 95 railway bridges, and 285 locomotives were attacked with explosive devices. Over a thousand railway wagons and 17 railway tunnels were attacked. Power lines, telephone lines and canals ere also attacked in this period.  In one single incident 600 German troops were killed as they train they were in was blown up as it crossed a bridge over the Ambleve river.  As the Allies approached the Belgian Resistance took 20,000 German troops prisoner.

Sabotage During World Wars

Lord Rothschild and the German-American Saboteurs -1942

I have written before about “Mad Jack Howard”, the Earl Of Suffolk who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for his EOD activities in WW2. (and I’ve also written in more detail about his adventures in Europe as the Germans invaded France where he rescued a large amount of Heavy Water)

There was fellow Lord, Lord Rothschild, who was also an EOD specialist, (amongst many other things) and another remarkable character undertaking specialised bomb disposal operations in WW2. Rothschild was awarded the George Medal of defusing a German sabotage device recovered from the hold of a ship, hidden in a crate of Spanish onions.  At the time he ran a small department within MI5 responsible for examining the threat from German sabotage devices. They conducted sabotage threat assessments and investigated sabotage devices. I’m waiting for permission from the Rothschild estate to publish an excerpt from his book, a transcript of a telephone call he made, live, to his secretary, describing the render-safe procedure of the “onion crate” as he went through it, together with some photos..

Beyond that I’m digging into the work of his section (and some other interesting UK WW2 organisations with related activities) and will post when I have enough material.

Rothschild, like Suffolk, was a remarkable polymath and a very interesting character.  As well as his EOD work in the UK, he interrogated suspected Nazi saboteurs, and travelled to the US to examine captured explosives and interrogate captured German spies. His detailed report from this US trip is a fascinating read – another case of shared Weapons Technical Intelligence between the UK and US.

One of Rothschild’s key findings in this report on the German saboteurs in the US, that he obtained from interrogating the saboteurs commander, Jansch, was that the Germans had decided for future operations that rather than infiltrate complex sabotage devices into the US by submarine, they were moving to a strategy of inserting one or two saboteurs with minimal equipment (just detonators/blasting caps). The saboteurs were instructed to improvise the explosive devices from locally obtained components. So this was by 1943 becoming a real “IED” strategy.

Although the sabotage mission being investigated by Rothschild, at the invitation of the FBI, was well equipped with explosive devices, Rothschild’s interrogation identified that the German saboteurs were trained to improvise devices. For example, they had been trained to create timing mechanisms using such raw material as dried peas, lumps of sugar and razor blades. Rothschild was disturbed by this as it avoided strategies he had put in place in the UK to identify suspicious purchases which could be used for explosive device manufacture such as clocks and certain chemicals. (The latter point presaged modern efforts in the UK to identify purchases of hydrogen peroxide – in those days it was sulphuric acid and potassium chlorate, amongst other material.)

Rothschild’s report makes clear that, like their enemies the Russians, the Germans too had extensive training in sabotage, albeit in this case the saboteurs were a little undercooked. The Abwehr had identified aircraft manufacture as the key strategic capability to be attacked in the US, and consequently their saboteurs had been given special training in understanding the production processes in aluminium and magnesium alloy plants.  Interestingly I have also found an SOE manual that provides guidance for systematic sabotage of certain industrial machines and I think there is some interesting and peculiar correlation between, Russian, German and British sabotage guidance for machinery. That too a subject for a future post.

I try to avoid much comment on modern political motivations in these blogs – but I’m struck by the parallels with the German saboteurs in the USA and modern jihadi terrorists:

  • Many of the German saboteurs or their families had emigrated to the USA between 1910 and 1930, so in the decades well before the war, so they had intimate knowledge of the USA, and were quite comfortable operating within the USA. Most of them were naturalized US citizens.
  • Many joined radical political organisations in the USA, mainly the German-American Bund. So perhaps they were “radicalised” at this point, in some cases.
  • Some of them returned to Germany when Germany went to war in 1939 with a motivation to support Germany’s war efforts.
  • To some degree the saboteurs were often incompetent.

The German Sabotage School conducted a three week training course, followed by a series of visits to German industrial sites to discuss vulnerabilities to sabotage. Rothschild’s report is fascinating in its detail, even including the pay, pensions and allowances that each saboteur had agreed with the Abwehr.

Rothschild details the home-made explosives and incendiary mixtures that the saboteurs had been trained to put together. They had been specifically instructed in mixes using ingredients that could be purchased from chemist shops in the USA. However it seems that some of the saboteurs forgot some of the mixes, such was their incompetence.

One item of particular note was their instructions to create improvised detonators and the specific mix to achieve such a material. I won’t republish here. Suffice to say it involves peroxide and hexamine, material not unknown to modern terrorists.

Several improvised timing switches are discussed in detail, as is a number of pressure switches. The report also includes diagrams by one of the team. This is an example, (with my redactions) which I’m not going to explain in this forum or clarify the blurry annotation, suffice to say it is an initiation I have never come across before:

I’m happy to forward the details and all of Rothschild’s report to accredited EOD techs if you ping me. If I don’t know you or your organisation, don’t ask.

I was a little thrown by one technical comment in the report by Rothschild – he lists the explosive components smuggled into the USA by the saboteurs and one is described as follows:

Mercury Fulminate in det cord? Surely not? I welcome any comments. Has anyone come across such a thing? I can’t recall such a thing but there are readers of this blog who may know – please comment.

 

 

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