Standing Well Back

1580-1590

Alchemy and High Explosives

Alchemy is the pursuit of chemical and occult methods to turn base metals into gold, and was an activity pursued with vigour in the 1500s and beyond, into the 1800s even.  As proto-chemists evolved so the boundary between “occult magic” and “chemistry” started to emerge.  At this time the first ever “high explosive” and  indeed the first primary explosive was developed, what we call today fulminating gold or gold fulminate. The German alchemist Sebald Schwaertzer first mentions fulminating gold in literature in his “Chrysopoeia Schwaertzeriana” in 1585.   Other texts add more detail in the early 1600s.

 

For those readers not familiar with explosives, gunpowder is a low explosive, where the explosion propagates through the explosive material, in effect, by heat and flame. In high explosive the chemical reaction occurring is propagated by a shock wave, and fulminate of gold was the first chemical compound isolated which exploded in this manner.  Fulminate of gold is also the first inherent explosive compound (gunpowder being a mixture of fuel and oxidizer). As it is ‘sensitive” it is also the first primary explosive.

Gold is one of the most stable elements – it doesn’t react with very much and by implication a compound of gold is easy to turn back into elemental gold, meaning the compounds are unstable.

For obvious reasons alchemists experimented with gold compounds. They mixed gold with other materials and sometimes accidentally produced compounds that surprised them. It’s tricky to make sense of the archaic descriptions, and the peculiar mixture of occult spells (barking mad) and real chemistry.

Fulminate of gold is created by dissolving gold in “aqua regia”, a three to one mix of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid.  This creates gold hydroxide. When this is mixed with ammonia, gold fulminate is precipitated.  But there are other recipes, which as someone who has a slightly limited expertise in chemistry I simply don’t follow. Real chemists feel free to correct me!   This sensitive explosive is then dried, and can be exploded by heating, crushing or scratching.  This must have been a remarkable thing when first experienced by alchemists who expected the weird and the wonderful.  The chemistry is quite complex and there are a number of related compounds, including (ClAuNH2)2NH and (OHAuNH2)2NH.  Essentially though, fulminate of gold is a mixture of various compounds of ammonia and gold, each of them technically a high explosive.

Fuliminate as a term simply means “exploding” . So gold fulminate can be a mix of a number of complex gold compounds including gold hydrazide.

A number of alchemists and later chemists were injured as a result of experiments with fulminate of gold.  Even in recent years, the research into exotic gold based catalysts has occasionally caused accidents in modern laboratories where gold fulminate was created.

Here’s the diarist Samuel Pepys describing a conversation on the subject in 1663:

Up and to my office all the morning, and at noon to the Coffee- house, where with Dr. Allen some good discourse about physique and chymistry. And among other things, I telling him what Dribble the German Doctor do offer of an instrument to sink ships; he tells me that which is more strange, that something made of gold, which they call in chymistry Aurum fulminans, a grain, I think he said, of it put into a silver spoon and fired, will give a blow like a musquett, and strike a hole through the spoon downward, without the least force upward; and this he can make a cheaper experiment of, he says, with iron prepared.

Note that “Dribble” is the inventor Cornelius Drebble, who invented the submarine and coincidentally mercury fulminate. Drebbel had died about 30 years prior to this Pepys reference. Some sources suggest that Drebble was using fulminate of gold as a detonator in IEDs (“petards”) he made for the British at the siege of La Rochelle in 1628. Drebbel was thus perhaps the first man to use high explosives in munitions. Drebble’s father-in-law was an alchemist who lost the sight in one eye from an alchemical explosion. (Pepys had other discussions with Drebbel’s son in law, Johannes Kuffler who was trying to sell an explosive device to sink ships – more on that in a future post.)

The gas produced when fulminate of gold explodes is largely nitrogen. Accompanying the gas is a characteristic violet/purple plume of gold aerosols.

19th Century

Blowing Up Railway Bridges in Virginia

I’ve found more fascinating US civil war stuff on IEDs.  General Herman Haupt was a Union general and engineer with specific responsibilities for both repairing and destroying railways as the operational circumstances demanded.  His reminiscences can be found in Archive.org.  Here’s a description he makes of how to make and place an IED, (a torpedo, in the parlance of the time) and a picture of the said IED.

 

 

Here’s another interesting extract:

1580-1590

The mystery of Ralph Rabbards and strange historical munitions

While researching some historical stuff for another post I came across a letter from an alchemist, chemist and inventor called Ralph Rabbards writing to Queen Elisabeth I some time in the latter half of the 1500s.   In the letter Rabbards offers the Queen a series of military inventions, many of them associated with explosives.  Some of these may be bluff on the part of Rabbards, but some will raise your eyebrows, I guarantee. Stick with the archaic language and plough through it, it’s worth it.  These are some extracts from the letter listing the inventions he is offering. My comments in bold

Speciall Observations concerninge the preparations for fireworks

An excellente kinde of salt-peter of great force

Saltepeter  might be so refined that the powder made thereof mighte be of double the force, so that one pounde maye serve as manye shotte, and as stronge as two pounde of that is comonly used, and lesse chardge in cariage and many other wayes apter and better for service

 (Improved gunpowder)

 A strange kinde of flyinge fire many wayes serviceable

A flyinge fire which shall , without ordynance, and farre of, wonderfully annoye any battayle, towne, or campe, and disperse even as if it did rayne fire; and the devydinge fires, being coted and made flyinge, may touch many places, and leave them all burninge; very terrible both to men and horse.

 (Napalm?)

Balls of mettle serving to many purposes

Balls of mettle to throwe into shippes, to enter in campes in the nightes, likewise in streights or breaches, especially in battayles; and to have said balls of all heightes diamiters and quantities, of a righte composition to devide in as many partes, and of such thickness as it should; and to delyver a thousand at once amongst the enemyes with small charge of ordynance, or other instrumentes, and to powre as much fire as your Majestie will upon any place.

(Carrier shells? Cluster munitions?)

A shotte to fire in passinge

A shotte for greate ordnance to pierce deeper then any other shotte, and sett on fire whatsoever it strike throughe or sticketh in.  A moste noble ingen, specialy for sea service.

(Armour piercing incendiary rounds)

A firy chariott to be forc’d by engine of great service

A firy chariot without horses to runne upon the battaile and and disorder it, that no man shal be able to abide or come nighe the same, and wil be directed even as men will to tourne, to staye, or come directly backe upon any presente danger, or elles to followe and chase the enemye in theor flighte.

(An Armed ROV?)

A rare invention

A musket of calyver, with dyvers strange and forcible shotte, which no armor will holde out, at three quarters of a mile or more; and will also become a most forcible weapon in the hande, as good as a pollox, and with a teice, become a perfitt shotte again.

(An anti- armour sniper rifle with a hand to hand capability?)

There’s a manuscript with diagrams by Rabbards of his military inventions in a collection at Yale University – I can’t wait to find a way to see that.

Weapons Technical Intelligence

Suspicious Shrapnel

Interesting report in today’s newspapers here, suggesting that this former soldier Ronald Brown had 6 oz of shrapnel in his body since a mine exploded under him in 1944.  With all due respect to the man concerned, now passed away, a genuine veteran who did recieve wounds in 1944, I pretty much doubt that German mines or booby traps had wire staples as fragmentation, or contained “philips” screws… which while invented in the 30’s, I doubt were yet components in German munitions.

20th Century

The Yildiz VBIED, 1905

I’m often asked about the history of vehicle borne improvised explosive devices, or car bombs. The book “Buda’s Wagon” posits that the first terrorist bomb of this kind was the explosion in Wall Street in 1920.   But as I pointed out here, this tactic is somewhat older with the attack on Napoleon in 1800 being a classic example.

Another pre-1920 VBIED that isn’t well known was the so-called “Yildiz” assassination attack on July 21, 1905.  This was an attempt by an Armenian revolutionary organization against the head of the Ottoman head of state, Abdul Hamid II, at the Yildiz Mosque in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

By 1905 Armenian left-wing revolutionaries had been fighting a long campaign against the Ottoman empire.  An interesting example of previous Armenian revolutionary attacks was the 1896 Ottoman bank take-over, when Armenian revolutionaries seized the Ottoman bank headquarters in Constantinople and held its mainly western staff hostage with a mixture of pistols, grenades and IEDs. IEDs allegedly recovered from the 1896 Ottoman Bank take-over They did this in order to publicise their campaign internationally. This attack has interesting parallels with modern “Fedayeen” tactics such as the Mumbai attacks of…. Indeed the Armenian revolutionaries even referred to themselves as “fedayees”.

Armenian Revolutionaries

In 1905 the plan was to create a large IED, and a founder of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Christaphor Mikaelian started making explosives in Sofia, Bulgaria. During this process, Mikaelian and a comrade Kendirian were killed in an accidental explosion.  Despite this, the plan for the operation continued.

 The attack once again took advantage of a predictable pattern of behaviour by the target. Sultan Abdul Hamid II attended the Yidliz mosque every Friday as a matter of routine. The Armenian revolutionaries studied his movements carefully, and decided that a large device, set on a timer, hidden in a carriage outside the mosque had a good chance of succeeding.

It’s interesting that the timer, to be set by the carriage driver, was a clockwork timer of only 42 seconds, giving, in theory, just enough time for the carriage driver to leave the scene. The carriage driver, a revolutionary called Zareh, was a veteran of the Ottoman Bank take-over from 9 years earlier.

Due to an unforeseen delay the Sultan escaped injury but 26 people died, including the carriage driver Zareh.

 

The design of the IED in the carriage was interesting.  The device was placed in a metal chest, and included 120kg of home made explosives.  Other reports suggest 80kg of explosives and 20kg of iron pieces as shrapnel.  I’m going to guess that the explosive used was nitroglycerine based.  Beyond that details of the IED and the attack are pretty scarce, and what can be found is confused by conflicting Armenian and Turkish claims.

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