I have been hinting that I had found an early printed book containing interesting matters with regards to ordnance, military engineering and explosives. Having worked initially from second-hand reports of the publication and an original manuscript version (a digital copy) which I couldn’t read at all, I finally tracked a printed copy down and literally got my hands on it, in the British Library, last week and so it’s time to start discussions of it.
The book is “Inventions or Devices” by William Bourne, or to give it it’s full title as it appears in the British Library catalogue ” Inuentions or Deuices, Very necessary for all Generalles and Captaines, or Leaders of men as well by Sea as by Land”, written and printed (I think) in 1578. Here’s the cover page:
Bourne appears to have been a well-travelled Naval gunner and mathematician with experience in of wars in Europe. The book is an odd list and description of military ideas and “inventions”, mostly practical or pragmatic. Some are startlingly obvious but others are quite fascinating and a little bit obscure. On one level he offers advice that a modern munitions specialist or ordnance officer would recognise in terms of “proofing” and inspection of ordnance. These ideas include safely unloading a fully loaded breech-fast projectile stuck in a cannon, methods of checking the barrel of cannons and a device for consistently assessing the power of a sample of gunpowder with a mechanical testing device. Other matters include various naval matters and the sapping and mining of castle walls, counter-mining and the design of assault ladders.
I’ll go through a number of these in future posts because the ideas are worth exploring and this is a very early publication, I think, for some of the technical ideas discussed. For now though, to start us off, here’s his description of a large grenade-like device. I’m going to post a couple of images of the actual pages then attempt to translate some of the archaic language. This is the earliest description I can find in a primary source about the design, manufacture and use of a metal cased grenade. The method describes using a mould for a 5″ cannonball to make a hollow grenade by using a clay insert in the casting. The case of the “grenade” is bell metal or brass, with iron nails providing the spacing to the void (and adding to fragmentation) which is filled with good quality gunpowder and a fuse.
Here’s my attempt at a translation:
The 55th Device.
As diverse Gunners and other men devised sundry sorts of fireworks for the annoyance of their enemies, yet as far as ever I have seen or heard, I never knew nor heard of any good service done by it, neither by sea nor by land, but only by powder, and that hath done great service, for that the force of it is mighty and commeth with such a terror. But for their other fireworks, it is rather meetest to be used in the time of pleasure in the night then for any service. And for to make this kind of ball, do this: Prepare the mould of a double culvering shot (a sort of cannonball) that is five inches high, and then take clay, and make it round in a ball, as much as a minion shot (another smaller size of cannon ball) that is three inches, and let it be dried as the Founders (Those who work in a foundry) do use to dry their moulds, and then stick that clay round about with iron nails, leaving the nails an inch without the clay, and then put that mould of clay into the moulde of the culvering shot, and look that the nails do bear that the ball of clay do stand right in the middle of the mould of the culvering shot, and also make the mould of clay so that it may have a touchhole to come into the clay, and then take bell metal or other coarse pot brass, and then fill the mould of the culvering shot with that metal, and that being done, then it is finished and so make as many as them as you list, and then that being done pick out the clay again that is in the ball, that was cast in the culvering shot mould and then fill that with good corne powder (good quality gunpowder), and then that being filled near full, then take some receite (? fuze?) of soft firework that will not burn too hastily and fill up the rest of the ball, and then it is perfectly finished. And then in the time of service, either by sea or by land, it is very good to throw in amongst your enemies, where they do stand thick, as they be very good to defend a breach or such other like causes, as this, to take it in his hand and to fire it, and then throw it amongst your enemies, and as soon as the firework is burned into the powder, the ball will break in a thousand pieces and every piece in a manner will do as much as an Arquebus shot (a bullet) so that there is no kind of firework comparable to this kind of ball, for service in the time of need.
This publication predates the adoption of such things (grenades) by armies several decades later in the 17th Century.
More of Bournes “Devices and Inventions” will follow in later blog posts.
I have written before about French EOD capabilities developed in Paris in the latter part of the 19th century. One of their techniques was to recover IEDs to one of 4 laboratories scattered around Paris. It was a practice copied by Col Majendie in the UK for a while but fell out of fashion here for a number of technical reasons.
Here’s a reminder of Majendie’s hand cart used to transport IEDs to Duck Island in St James’s Park in about 1880. At other times Col Majendie (the UK’s first official bomb disposal expert), simply hailed a cab and told the driver to drive carefully.
I’ve just found this picture dated 1906 of the French EOD vehicle in Paris used to transport the IEDs (called “engines” in this picture):
A few years later this vehicle here was used by the Paris bomb squad. Note the container on the floor, which was loaded onto the back:
The concept remained in use in a number of places, not least the USA. In 1941, following a bomb incident that killed two detectives at the World’s Fair, Mayor LaGuardia funded development of a bomb containment unit made from woven steel cables. Vehicles like this remained in service for a number of decades, and indeed a vehicle delivered to the NYPD Bomb squad in 1965 was identical in terms of the containment structure, albeit mounted on a modern truck.
If this story is true, (and it may not be), it changes what we have thought about the origins of thermobaric weapons. It also could have changed the course of WW2 in one instant. Bear with me as I explain.
Thermobaric explosive weapons came to the general attention of the defence community in the 1990s. They are still widely misunderstood. The explanation is also not helped by slightly odd nomenclature and descriptions. “Thermobaric” is one such descriptor. Sometimes “Fuel Air Explosives (FAE)” is used, sometimes “Vacuum bombs” even if the words have somewhat different meanings. Sometimes thermobaric weapons are infantry weapons, engineer demolition weapons and at other times artillery weapons. Sometimes they are deployed by Chemical units. All these lead to confusion, as do amateurs who also comment that where terrorists add gas cylinders to IEDs they are creating thermobaric or fuel air explosives, when generally that is not the case. If you need to, you should read up elsewhere on thermobarics but please go beyond the rather simplified wikipedia efforts.
Here’s a very simple summary. The ability of a fuel when mixed with air and initiated in the right mixture can cause explosions. This is well known and accidental things such as coal dust explosions in mines, and even dust in agricultural or industrial situations has been known to cause significant destruction. It is possible to artificially, rather than accidentally, cause such explosions to occur, although it is not necessarily easy. Chucking gas cylinders on top of an IED pretty much doesn’t work whatever people may tell you. The oxidisation of the fuel in the explosion and the progress of a blast wave through the fuel and air is very complex and affected by a large number of variables. What is important is the effect of such an explosion. Traditionally military weapons, at least in the West, have concentrated on attempting to reach as high a peak pressure for the blast wave as possible, on the assumption that the higher the peak pressure the higher the damage to the target. Thermobaric weapons however don’t follow that logic. On a graph of pressure over time, the energy imparted by the explosion is represented by “the area under the curve”. Thermobaric explosions give a lower peak pressure but the duration of the pressure is much longer, so there is much more energy involved. The long pressure pulse also has horribly strange effects in terms reflection, reinforcement and effects on targets, structures, and the human body. Long pulses knock buildings over very effectively so thermobaric weapons were seen as useful against structures and some of the “peculiar effects” that themobarics have in some environments made them “good” at killing people and even against armoured vehicles. That’s about all I’m going to say on that aspect of subject for now, do your own research. But they make dramatically different weapons with “new” destructive capabilities and should not be underestimated.
Some sweeping statements now, which I’m then going to hit with relatively new information:
Thermobaric weapons first came to my attention in the 1990s, like most people, I think. The story was the Russia had invested in some new technology and weapons like the shoulder launched RPO-A were the first example. Translation often (in those days and still today) classed these as “flame weapons” which confused the issue but all of a sudden people seemed to realise their effect against targets and the West sat up. More and more thermobaric/FAE weapons have been produced over the years, including RPG variants, and artillery variants. Perhaps the most dramatic variant is the TOS-1 “Buratino”, a Russian armoured multi rocket launcher that has the ability to attack a large area (such as towns, villages, armour start lines, forming up points etc) with a barrage of thermobaric weapons. It has an apparently remarkable effect. Google it. The weapons have been used in Chechnya and indeed the Middle East (probably) and now they are on everyone’s radar. The technology was presumed to have been Russian, and relatively recent. But if you did some research you might have come across a passing reference to an unsuccessful attempt by Nazi Germany to use thermobaric weapons to attacks formations of Allied bombers, with a missile system called “Taifun” – Germany for Typhoon.
A few days ago an old colleague, Paul H., pointed me in the direction of two books. The books are interviews with German soldiers who were in France around the time of D-Day in 1944. As I understand it the interviews were conducted in the Mid 1950s by Dieter Eckhertz and the books have been edited by his grandson and finally published in the last couple of years. WW2 history, like most war history, is written by the victors, and the books are fascinating because they give the perspective of the losing side, from apparent primary sources. The Germans, not surprisingly, often have a different take. On their own, the books are fascinating. There are two volumes, both available on Amazon :
But it is at the end of the second book that really made me sit up. You really need to read the chapter yourself and I don’t wish to take away from the authors right to be rewarded for publishing it. So here only in startling outline is what is said.:
Germany had an apparently large effort developing thermobaric weapons in WW2.
The interviewee, K L Bergmann,was a specialist weapons officer with thermobaric weapons. He eventually died in the early 1980s.
The design evolved and was used at various stages of WW2 along the development line, that perhaps were very crude to start (not much more than “flame weapons” and got increasingly sophisticated.)
A version of the Taifun weapon (Taifun A) was used very effectively, allegedly, against Russian Bunker structures in Sebastopol wit dramatic effect.
A Taifun system of some kind was allegedly used against the Warsaw Ghetto.
The interview clearly implies that the weapon was “tested” against captured Russian soldiers as human targets to examine the effect on the human body.
By the summer of 1944, the system had evolved in to Taifun B. It was mounted as an MLRS system on a number of tracked vehicles (Stuka zu Fuss type vehicles) Interestingly (and very importantly) the interviewee who had taken a detailed part in the development program describes the contents of the Taifun B system as containing a burster charge with a fill of kersoene like liquid with the addition of carbon and aluminium particles. I think that’s a pretty credible thermobaric material, in outline. A second missile system fired after the main charge caused initiation of the dispersed cloud, but eventually the initiation was integral by the summer of 1944.
Taifun B was deployed to Northern France with the intent it be used against any port seized by the Allies as the focus of the invasion. The intent was to simply destroy the port with a barrage from Taifun B and the officer in command appears to have had no doubt it would have that dramatic effect.
The fact the Allies didn’t land at a port such as Dieppe or Calais for the D-Day invasion and instead landed on beaches surprised the German command and meant the Taifun-B system wasn’t deployed quickly. There is some discussion by the interviewee about the effect the system would have had on the Mulberry harbours.
Eventually the Taifun B system was deployed to counter the expected US breakout from Normandy, under General Bradley, Operation Cobra. Taifun was deployed to the correct place, and the very densely packed tanks of General Bradle in its form up location was set up as the target. However just before the fire order was given the Taifun B vehicles were hit by counter-battery fire (maybe accidentaly as part of a rolling barage), and the launch of the missiles was prevented.
Bergmann believed that the use of his thermobaric wepaons would have destroyed Operation Cobra, and could have changed the course of the war. Also he believed that the effective operational use would have convinced the German command to use it again and again.
My assessments:
The word “Taifun” seems to have been used to describe a number of weapons systems that were part of the Thermobaric program. They evolved over the war.
I note that some commentators have dismissed some of the interviews in the books as fiction because they don’t match “established facts”. To me the interviews seem authentic but I’m no professional historian. I again point that usually it is the victors who write the history and it doesn’t surprise me there are anomalies from these German interviews. I find the description of the chemical content of the Taifun B system convincing as is the effect of artillery on a loaded Taifun B Stuka zu Fuss vehicle and its rockets. The description of a thermobaric effect is also convincing, as is the evolution of the system, which is logical. Elsewhere separate interviews such as the operator of the Goliath RCVs ring true to me.
I need to research more on possible Taifun usage against Russian bunkers in Sebastopol in the 1942 offensive. This is slightly hampered because the Germans used “Taifun” to describe a very wide strategic military operation in Russia.
Ditto Taifun use against the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 needs more research. There is an odd discussion here: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=106078 which describes it as a demolition device using a fuel air explosive to destroy tunnel systems.
I think anti-aircraft Taifun systems may have been an entirely different system and may or may not have been thermobaric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifun_(rocket) Again the use of the word Taifun may be confusing matters
Research is hampered by a number of things. a. Secrecy of the original project. b. Confusion over the nature of “flame weapons” and thermobaric weapons, with historians and perhaps the military conflating the two, perhaps understandably. c. The use of Taifun to describe a much broader German invasion of Russia and d. the fact that Taifun thermobaric weapons evolved over a period of time. e. A lot of amateurs on the web who while clearly understanding nothing about thermobarics feel able to offer detailed comment.
To me there is a striking similarity between the Taifun B concept allegedly deployed in France in 1944 and the TOS-1 system of todays’s Russia. I think earlier Taifun A, was possibly simply an engineer demolition tool using a fuel gas pumped into tunnels and defensive structures. Taifun B appears to have been much more advanced system delivered by rockets. Early version of this rocket delivered system required a second barrage to initiate the cloud, but by the summer of 1944 this had been integrated.
This is still somewhat of a mystery, and I’m not yet fully certain it is true – some have raised doubts about the veracity of the author. Let me know what you think.
Here’s a pic of a possible launch vehicle showing large calibre rockets (added Sep 2020)
In a previous blog post 18 months ago I described how the IRA in 1920 designed and used an improvised mortar. I’ve now found some context for that development and found out where a damaged mortar tube from 1920 exists today. Some of the below is a repeat of the earlier post and some is new information.
A number of IRA members had fought in the British Army in WW1 and had experienced trench mortars, either as a user or recipient. The IRA funded a secret delegation to visit Germany and buy arms on the black market , including a German trench mortar but this mission was unsuccessful. As a fall-back they asked their engineers to develop a home made mortar based on the British “Stokes” trench mortar. I’m not sure how closely they followed the design, but the IRA version appears to have been of same calibre as the Mk 1 Stokes mortar (3 inch) and projected an 11lb mortar bomb, again the same as a Mk 1 Stokes mortar. It appears that the IRA was able to obtain British Army manual for the Stokes mortar. The tube was made by Matt Furlong’s brother, Joe, at a railway workshop, and Matt (who later died testing a version of the mortar) made the bombs for it at 198 Parnell St, Dublin.
Some early Stokes mortar bombs are “armed” on launch by use of a grenade lever spring which is released when the lever arm is free to fly off as it leaves the barrel. I can’t be certain but i suspect the 1920 IRA mortar bombs used this principle too, and not the more sophisticated fuze design used in later WW1 Stokes mortars. Here’s a British Stokes mortar handbook from 1919 showing the later fuze types. Here’s an image of a Stokes mortar with a fuse fitted with a fly off lever.
The propellant charge was a 12 bore shotgun cartridge with shot removed and more propellant (black powder) added. The impact fuze was adapted from a grenade fuze, (as was the early Stokes mortar bomb fuze). The mortar bomb weighed 11lbs. I don’t have exact details but have a pretty good idea and those of you with an EOD background can probably make the same assumptions about arming on launch as I have. For the rest of you, tough.
The IRA conducted some extensive trials, under Matt Furlong of this improvised mortar system in October 1920 in County Meath. First a number of dummy mortar bombs with propellant only were fired, to establish ranges and calculate the propellant charge needed for a range of 100 yards. Then three bombs were fired without a main charge but with an impact fuze fitted to test initiation. The trials established that the bomb tumbled through the air, but despite that, the fuze appeared to work however it struck the ground. One of the engineers believed that the impact fuze was being initiated on “set back” within the mortar tube and not on impact at the target. This is an important assessment ignored by Matt Furlong. Attempts to fire a “live” mortar failed as the bomb got stuck in the tube. Probably fortunately.
The engineers involved were concerned about the impact fuze functioning on “set back” within the mortar tube, so they added an additional safety mechanism (which I won’t describe here) and this was was built in to the fuze for subsequent trials. The second set of trials took place near Kells in County Meath. After firing a live shell with the new safety feature which then failed to function on impact, an argument ensued between Furlong and McHugh, an assistant who was present. Matt Furlong insisted on removing the additional safety feature and firing the mortar as originally designed. McHugh, nervous, stepped a few yards away. The others retreated. As the mortar bomb was launched it did indeed explode in the tube, severely injuring Matt Furlong, who later died in hospital after losing a limb.
The loss of the mortar was seen as a significant blow to the IRA in Dublin who had expected to be able to mortar barracks with impunity mounting the mortar on the back of a vehicle, a tactic that they applied successfully 60 years later in the North.
The mortar tube that exploded, eventually killing Matt Furlong, was hidden in the River Tolka for some years before being recovered. In 1937 it was given to the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) where it exists today. There’s some pictures at this link here – it has been mounted at an incorrect angle, but that doesn’t matter.
(Note the damaged base of the mortar tube some way down the page)
On occasion the arming system also failed in later IRA mortars, as I can vouch for personally. To me there is a clear technological development route from the Stokes mortar of WW1, to the IRA’s improvised Mk 10 and Mk 11 mortars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I think there is a distinct possibility that the PIRA designer of the Mk 10 mortar and bomb based the designs in part on the 1920 Joe Furlong designed mortar and bomb which in itself was based on early WW1 Stokes Mortar designs.
Additional research leads me to believe that the additional safety feature in the mortar fuze that Matt Furlong removed before his accident was remarkably similar to a fuze safety feature I saw in on operations in 1991 – on another IRA mortar. That’s seventy years apart, and essentially the same safety feature being used on an improvised mortar. I won’t post details here, of course. The British Army EOD techs of the time were certainly not aware of that provenance. More fool us.
I’ve written before about the evolution of gunlocks, from matchlocks, through wheel-locks to snap-huances and then flintlocks because although these initiation systems were designed to initiate firearms they also enabled initiation mechanisms for explosive devices. This post returns to that subject to discuss a couple of more elements to that story that I find interesting, namely engineering development and some fundamental issues about “energy” chains that apply both to these firearms systems and explosive devices. In this post I have made some generalisations and simplifications in my description of the technology – forgive me, but otherwise the post turns into a book and neither you or I have time for that.
Firearm initiation systems, and in parallel explosive initiation systems, are about initiating a quantity of explosives at a time that the operator chooses. Thus, in the simplest of all firearm systems, a burning “match” is placed in contact with a small quantity of blackpowder in a “touch-hole” which then initiates a larger amount of blackpowder in the barrel of a gun. This system worked for hundreds of years in the cannons you see fired in all the movies.
The gun is aimed and the application of the burning “fuse” simply initiates the blackpowder. The energy in the arm of the man holding the fuse, and the energy in the already burning fuse is enough to initiate the stored chemical energy in the blackpowder in the barrel.
But in a small firearm there’s an issue of the man pointing the gun and initiating it at the same time. Generally these firearms were pretty large and required two hands to point at a target. So quite often the firearm was supported with a crutch allowing the firer to point it with one hand, sight the barrel with an eye at a target and use the “spare hand” to place the burning fuse on the touch hole.
Firing an early firearm without a trigger and serpentine
But let’s face it, that’s a bit fiddly. The touch hole is small and it might be a bit awkward. The firer is concentrating on doing two things, keeping the target in line and finding a small hole with the burning fuse in one hand. So, with some very simple engineering the matchlock was developed. All that happened was that a simple S shaped lever was introduced onto the body of the firearm. One end of the lever held the burning fuse in a specific position, the centre of the “s” shaped piece of metal was a pivot joint and the bottom end of the s was pulled with one finger. The placement of the s shaped lever (a “serpentine) ensured that the burning match always found the touchhole or the pan at the entrance to the touch hole, and the firer could use two hands to aim the firearm, concentrate on the target and just use a finger to pull the “s” shaped piece of metal.
A very early, simple matchlock arquebus
Now , manufacturing such a firearm was pretty simple, and within the engineering skills of the average door-lock manufacturer of the 15th century which simply used levers and pivots. So matchlock firearms were relatively easy to manufacture and relatively cheap. Matchlocks continued to be produced from the 1400s for about 250 years. I think this is important to understand – although better technology was invented in a series, starting in the early 1500s, match-locks remained a simple and cheap firearm and so were the most common at least until well in to the 1600s.
A nice image of a Japanese matchlock mechanism showing a pan cover
Now, there are some operational weaknesses with the simple matchlocks. In the simplest of all matchlocks the pan or the entrance to the touchhole is permanently exposed to the elements. So in poor weather the firearm simply won’t work. Also the glowing match gives away both the position of the firer and the nature of their weapon. Both these weaknesses were partially addressed. Firstly a mechanism of a sliding or levered cover to the Pan or the entrance to the touchhole was developed, requiring some more intricate engineering so when the serpentine was moved then a cover was moved out of the way allowing the match access to the pan. A bit complex. Some attempts, too, were made to hide the burning match in a box, but not very effectively. Burning fuse also, by the way, made the weapon unsuitable for those guarding stores of ammunition. So in the early 1500s the wheel-lock was developed.
In large part the wheel-lock invention was enabled by advances in engineering, and specifically advances in engineering from clock making. On a fundamental level, the wheel-lock utilises, for the first time in a firearm, “potential energy” in a spring. A wheel-lock, consists of a steel wheel, which has a small chain wrapped around its axle. The wheel is rotated with a spanner, this wraps the chain around the axle and the other end of the chain is attached to a spring. Thus when the wheel is rotated it induces a potential energy into the spring. The spring is then held by a trigger. A second spring is then set up to hold the serpentine. In this case the serpentine doesn’t hold a burning fuse, but a small lump of iron pyrites. The spring acting on the serpentine holds the pyrites in contact with the rim of the steel wheel which usually has grooves on its circumference and some small notches to encourage friction. When the main spring holding the chain attached to the wheel is released by pulling the trigger, the steel wheel rotates and, because it is in contact with the iron pyrites, sparks are formed. The sparks initiate blackpowder in the pan.
So we have the potential energy in the spring, making kinetic energy in the wheel , which initiates chemical energy in contact with the pyrites, which initiates the chemical energy in the blackpowder, which converts to kinetic energy in the projectile, and that kinetic energy is transfered t o the target t cause damage. A nice little chain, but one which requires a significantly more detailed engineering capability than a match-lock.
The wheel-lock however has several advantages. It is safer, in that safety catches can be applied to both the serpentine and the wheel. The presence of a firearm is not given away by the burning fuse. It can be prepared well in advance of use (if the springs don’t deform as some where liable to) The firearm can be concealed. Since it is possible to conceal, the firearm was then made smaller, and so the pistol appeared for the first time, able to be held about a person, and the same person could indeed carry two or three wheel lock pistols. Since this is a blog about explosive devices, then of course the wheel-lock became a potential initiator for IEDs – the device could be hidden and initiated at a point of the firers choosing, perhaps say with a string to the trigger or a potential booby trap switch. IEDs are more suited to initiation by potential energy.
But now we have economics at play. The high level of engineering and therefore cost required for a wheel-lock would make it usually unsuitable for a one-time-use in an IED, although possible. Only the rich could afford wheel-locks. So wheel-locks and match-locks existed side by side for decades and indeed for at least 150 years. The economics of the engineering had some other interesting implications. Matchlocks are simple utilitarian devices usually without decoration through the 16th century. Wheel-locks however, bought by the rich became covered in ornate art, and became models of fine engineering and artistic excellence. Here’s some images of highly decorative wheel locks.
The fact that wheel-locks were used by the rich also had an effect on the manner in which warfare was conducted. Ordinary infantrymen could not afford wheel-locks but the aristocratic and rich cavalry could. Cavalry tactics then evolved to make benefit of the capabilities that two or three wheel locks could provide. The cavalry galloped forward to a point within range of their wheel-locks, fired, and galloped back. The tactics of cavalry using wheel-locks then had an impact on the types of horses and armour being used by the military. The huge horses required for armour encumbered cavalry with lances were replaced with smaller, quicker more agile horses. This perhaps lead, by connection, to the evolution of horse racing and blood stock management. The armour, designed to to defeat the weapons of the medieval horseman was discarded – armour could be produced to protect against the bullets fired from wheel-locks but frankly it was too heavy. So the nature of warfare rapidly evolved. One could say that the nature of warfare evolved over the period of between 1500 and 1620 entirely because of the initiation system moving to a potential energy storage device (a spring) for the initiator rather than a chemical energy storage initiator (the burning match).
Subsequent evolutions of the gun-lock technology brought together the principle of a potential energy store (from the springs in the wheel-lock), with simpler engineering requirements. I think that the spring-held serpentine of the wheel-lock got people thinking. Firstly pyrites wasn’t always a solid enough material to hold reliably in the jaws of the serpentine, and indeed the spring holding the pyrites wasn’t designed to cause the pyrites to impact with the steel wheel, just hold it against it. I think that the metallurgy of springs improved throughout out the 16th century. A powerful spring could cause a flint to strike a steel firmly and reliably enough to set a spark – earlier technology wouldn’t allow that – the springs would break or the springs would deform very quickly. But the evolution of clocks and associated engineering developed through the 16th century so that steel suitable for using in springs evolved. All of a sudden there was a metal available that could be used in a spring that could force a serpentine holding a flint hard enough to cause sparks. The “snaplock” then developed in about 1540 utilised the same serpentine used in the match-lock and wheel-lock, but this time powered by a strong spring to strike a “steel” to cause sparks – subsequent developments of the snap-huance and then the flintlock were simply improvements on that design, improving its reliability and weather protection. Essentially then in energy terms, the potential energy inherent in the spring that powered the wheel in the wheel-lock was changed to potential energy in the main-spring of the flintlock. Crucially though the engineering required of the flintlock was still considerably simpler than the technology used in the wheel-lock. Flintlocks could be pretty much mass produced while wheel-locks remained the product of a highly skilled craftsmen. As an aside, the engineering tolerances required of the wheel of the wheel-lock needed to be much tighter than the engineering tolerances in a flintlock. In a wheel-lock the wheel rotates through a slot in the “pan” and if the slot is too big then the gunpowder falls through it. The fact that flintlocks used potential energy , but were also cheap and able to be mass produced means that they became attractive to use in “one time use” IEDs such as this device . The first mine , Samual Zimmerman’s “fladdermine” also use a flintlock mechanism.
It is clear from reading up about the history of clock development that many of the principles of engineering in clocks developed during the period of about 1550 – 1750 were subsequently applied to the production of munitions fuses. There’s probably another blog (or book!) to be written about that.
Update on Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 12:00PM by Roger Davies
As a follow up I found this excellent image from a French military handbook published in 1616, showing how a small one handed wheel-lock pistol could be used by a “new” cavalryman against a “traditional” knight in armour with a lance. Step one, shoot the knight from beyond the range of his weapon, or alternatively, step 2, shoot his horse. Note the difference in armour of both protagonist.
Roger Davies