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.
Modern vehicles look somewhat different.
