Standing Well Back

1930-1940

US-UK EOD Lineage

Last night I enjoyed the inaugural US-UK EOD gala dinner, raising money for EOD related charities on both sides of the Atlantic. US Ambassador Matthew Barzun gave a great speech. The theme of the night was the shared challenges of the EOD community and the transatlantic bond that is so powerful between the EOD communities. I related this story to the audience which perhaps deserves wider understanding:

In 1933 a young American man, named Draper Kauffman, graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was the son of an Admiral. Despite his father’s position, at the time the US Navy was shrinking because of the economy and he wasn’t offered a commission because of poor eyesight. Instead, this adventurous young man left to seek employment in Europe for a shipping company.  When war broke out in 1939, being a determined and ethically driven individual, he joined the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps and was captured by the Germans as they invaded France in 1940. He was released and went to England (after being awarded, I think, the Croix de Guerre by the French) where he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and trained in bomb disposal, serving during the Blitz in London.


Draper Kauffman in RNVR Uniform with a German Mine

In 1941 he returned to the US and obtained a US Naval Reserve commission.  When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the US entered the war, there was a problem with an unexploded Japanese 500-pound bomb just outside the doors of an ammunition storage compound in Fort Scofield, Hawaii. The US Army in Hawaii requested advice from Washington, who in turn asked Great Britain. The response was a little brief – “Try Lt Kauffman, we trained him, he’s experienced and he works for you now!”.   Kauffman was sent to Pearl Harbor. There he won the Navy Cross for his EOD efforts defusing the first Japanese bomb for subsequent techncial study. Kauffman returned to Washington and because of this experience he was asked to urgently establish an EOD Training School.  His first action was to request 4 British EOD instructors which the UK managed to provide despite the huge pressures on that profession at the time, where the life expectancy during the Blitz had been a lttle over two weeks.

He later earned a second Navy Cross in the Pacific theater in Saipan leading his team in a daylight reconnaissance of fortified enemy beaches under heavy fire. He retired as an Admiral having set up the US Navy Underwater Demolition teams. That’s a military career that is impossible to match.

When I related that story, my friend Ken Falke shouted “Go Navy!”. My only reply, of course, was “Go Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve!”.

Both communities, British and American, are proud to follow the footsteps of Draper Kauffman.

 

Rear Admiral Kauffman USN

1650-1660

Command-initiated IED described in 1650

I’m steadily working through a book that was published in Latin in 1650, “The Great Art of Artillery” by Kazimierz Siemienowicz.  The book was translated into French, then from there into English in 1729 and of course that’s the version I’m studying. The breadth of subjects covered is remarkable, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, explosive processing, explosive storage and other related things.  There’s a lot about artillery and some interesting rocket technology related to my earlier post about the English rocket experimenter Robert Anderson who was making his rockets in 1696. I have an interesting blog post “cooking” on the technical similarities of rocket design from these two engineers, working in different countries 46 years apart. And readers of this blog will recall that the revolutionaries in Dublin in 1803 used Anderson’s rocket manufacturing instructions and it is very possible that one of the revolutionary Irishmen went to Woolwich in subequent years to assist Congreve in the manufacture of his rockets. Give me a few weeks to bottom out that detail and assess the apparent links, but this 1650 document is pretty remarkable in its technical detail, with multi-stage rockets being explicitly manufactured.

As well as covering artillery and rocketry, amongst the book are also numerous references to improvised explosive devices. For example there’s reference to a large barrel or cylinder shaped IED used in the Seige of St Andrews in 1546 that killed 321 and injured hundreds of beseigers. Ths large barrel containing “powder, stones and Iron bolts” was rolled down amongst the enemy.  I’m trying to find a cross or supporting reference for that, as that’s pretty early in my historical time line of IEDs. Siemienowiz quotes his reference to the St Andrews device as being written by an Italian in a book called “Precepts in the Modern Art of War” that must have been published prior to 1650. Unfortunately the name of the Italian author is not clear and varies between translations and I have yet to unearth it.

Here’s another example from Siemienowicz referring to command initiated improvised devices using the flintlock mechanism I have described in some recent posts – remember this was written in about 1650.  This text below is from a 1729 translation:

Technology Development

Irish Republican Improvised Mortar Design – 1920

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.

1870-1880

Mechanical Sabotage Devices

This is an interesting news report I found.  It discusses some clever mechanical devices used to sabotage ships. The devices are secreted inside the ship, against the hull, and utilise the movement of a ship through the waves to steadily and slowly bore or cut a hole in the hull. This report from about 1876 was repeated in some other newspapers at the time, in identical reports referring to the Bremerhaven attack  and provided as context for other types of attacks on ships.  However, I have dug away and not found any other details of such devices. Really this single report. Intriguing. The explanations are not entirely clear, I’m afraid.

1770-1780

The language of IEDs

What we now call Improvised Explosive Devices have had different names over the centuries that they have been used. Here’s one you may not have heard of.  The word “caisson” has a range of meanings derived from the “sealed box” of its original meaning. Today a caission is associated with either the ammunition box used in support of an artillery piece, or a sealed box like structure sunk in water to allow engineering work to take place.  But in 1778 “caisson” had this meaning, according to a military dictionary published that year:

 

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