Standing Well Back

Radio Controlled IED

German WW2 use of ROVs to deliver explosives

In recent years various terrorist groups and others have used land, sea or air ROVs to deliver explosive payloads to targets.  As usual, people view these things as new and innovative threats. But as readers of this blog site will know,  that usually isn’t the case and I have more details here of some interesting early use of such devices from WW2, although they go much further back.  Some of these may be classed as “improvised” but others are clearly formally developed systems – but let’s not get hung up on definitions, because the concept is what is interesting   There are several aspects to this – one is the technology that is used, and another is the tactical employment. Many of the implementations of this concept were unsuccessful but the reasons for this are also interesting and indeed are being repeated in modern terrorist use of ROV technology.  I won’t go into that aspect in too much detail for obvious reasons.   So here goes with a few interesting  German “land based” example ROVs from WW2.

I’ve written before about the WW2 German “Goliath” remote controlled mine, a small tracked vehicle not too different in scale from modern EOD ROVs.   Following the fall of France in WW2, the Germans captured  a prototype French ROVs used for explosive charge delivery which seemed to inspire the development of the Goliath. This vehicle had been “hidden” in the River Seine, but the Germans got to hear of it and salvaged it for technical exploitation and reverse engineering. (Readers may recall a similar reverse engineering operation from a “purchased” French speed boat just before WW1, that I discussed in an earlier post).

 

Captured German Goliath ROVs after D-Day

While there has been some attention on the Goliath tracked vehicle, used to deliver demolition charges to targets, perhaps just as significant for us looking at history was the German Borgward B remote tracked vehicle. A contract was let by the Wehrmacht to the Carl Borgward engineering company in Bremen for 50 tracked vehicles in 1939. It’s not quite clear if the Borgward B was developed originally to deliver demolition charges or for other purposes such as towing mine clearance tools or as an ammunition carriers.  One suggestion is that during the German invasion of France, German engineers found an operational need and had been converting, in an improvised way, standard German tanks to operate remotely for certain tasks. The theory goes that as a result of after-action reports from this campaign the Borgward B was converted to fulfil this role. But it’s war and it’s a little confusing as to which came first, the chicken or the egg.    In any event,  Blaupunkt, the radio manufacturer developed a radio controlled system for the vehicle. These vehicles and their sub-systems were gradually improved in following years resulting in several “versions” as both their use and requirements changed.  A variety of vehicles were used as “control” vehicles as the war progressed. The radio control unit was very “modern” in appearance, using a joystick control and shared many of the features of the Linsen boats control systems.  The key features of the Borgward B was firstly that it could deliver a large charge, (typically 45o – 550kg), and secondly it could drop off the charge and retreat, thus in principle being a re-usable vehicle, unlike the smaller and disposable Goliath.

Here’s a pic of the Borgward B. The driver would drive the vehicle “normally” until it was a “tactical bound” away from the target, then he would get out and the vehicle would then be controlled by radio remotely. It looks like a fun  drive, (unless you are told to drive it to the Eastern Front).

 

The Borgward B wasn’t a huge success. it was unreliable and quite vulnerable to enemy fire.  Some reports suggest that some versions were equipped with smoke units to lay smoke screens or just to hide its own approach, but I’m not sure how it would then be controlled if surrounded by its own smoke screen. Perhaps this version was simply used to lay smoke screen and move laterally across the battlefield.  I have found a report that a single Borgward B was fitted with a TV camera as an observation vehicle during the fall of Berlin, perhaps a prototype but in the main the later use of these vehicles, in theory was to deliver and drop demolition charges.  The explosive charge, when dropped, had a timer initiation system that after a short period caused the charge to detonate.   The charge was released with the help of gravity after explosive retaining bolts were fired by the operator. I’m cautious about this and think it could have been a lever actuator.   It appears that there was an adjustable safety mechanism that armed the charge only after a certain distance (not time) had been covered, so for instance an operator would set the safety distance to 100m as he exited the vehicle, and the charge would only become “armed” after the vehicle had covered that distance. That’s logical, but I’m not sure how it was achieved.  These vehicles were less suited, of course, to defensive operations than offensive, where their utilisation against defended structures was optimised. I’m led to believe that over a thousand Borgward Bs were produced (compared to many thousand Goliath vehicles).

Here’s a great pic of the explosive charge after being “dropped off” by the vehicle. You can see it slides off the front plate where it is held in a “shoe”.

I think it’s worth thinking about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Borgward B and the Goliath.  The Borgward B could be moved into its tactical launch position by one man, but the Goliath needed a small team of men.  Perhaps that’s why the Goliath was used in defensive positions like the beaches of Normandy, where it was prepositioned in shrapnel proof hides, (but it wasn’t particularly effective). The Borgward B was larger and therefore more vulnerable, but delivered a much bigger charge than the Goliath more suitable to taking on defensive positions. The Borgward B was more expensive but in theory was reusable. In the main the Borgward B was radio controlled and this offered some flexibility but also posed some reliability problems with the technology of the day. The cable system principally used by the Goliath was more reliable but vulnerable to shrapnel damage.

There was an attempt at a “middle ground” the NSU “Springer” ROV developed in 1943/1944. This was smaller than the Borgward B, bigger than the Goliath, but was driven into launch position by a driver. About 50 were made, I think. Here’s a picture showing its scale and size. They seem to have limited operational use. I don’t have a handle on their control system.

 

I think it’s fascinating that the Germans also used vehicles captured  from the British and French and convert to ROVs. It seems that the German engineers saw potential in particular from the British Bren Gun carrier and the Belgian “utility tractor” (a British built tracked vehicle made by Vickers, who also made a proportion of the British Bren carriers).

Here’s a pic of both in “normal use”

A Belgian Vickers Utility tractor

Bren Carrier

A number of both these vehicles were converted to be cable-controlled demolition vehicles, each with a 1.2 km cable.  That’s quite a distance, and one imagines that control of vehicle at such range was tricky, based on distant observation.  A total of 60 were sent to the Crimea in 1941.  The German Crimean campaign of 1941 is interesting because I think it was used as a testing ground for range of innovative German technologies.  I’m currently exploring the use of an advanced prototype German fuel air explosive weapon in this campaign, to clear bunkers and defence structures, and it appears that these converted Belgian and British ROVs were used against the same targets to deliver relatively large explosive charges. I have also seen reports of Borgward B vehicles used in the Crimea at this time.  It appears that the majority of the 60 vehicles were deployed with mixed results – some destroyed by mines before they reached the targets, some destroyed by enemy fire, some failed and some functioned as intended destroying Russian defensive positions.  I can find no specifics over the amount of explosives carried by either vehicle, nor any specifics on the control mechanisms fitted.   It appears that the ROVs were “controlled” from a “mother” command tank.  The Germans complained that there were no spare parts for the captured ROVs and recommended development of indigenous vehicles accordingly.  Other feedback included the suggestion that they would be better employed in flatter, desert conditions, such as North Africa, rather than the complex urban defence environments of Sebastopol, and indeed at least one Bren carrier, captured at El Alamein was so converted.   While this effort to convert enemy tracked vehicles to wire guided demolition use wasn’t really repeated , it’s clear it had some success and more importantly allowed the Germans to develop tactics and concepts of operation. . I think too, given the large amounts of “enemy” vehicles abandoned in Europe at Dunkirk and elsewhere, it made economic sense to utilise them, and the Germans had no qualms about recovering, and using, where possible, quite a range of enemy equipment.

This picture is, it is claimed, a captured Bren carrier (complete with German Cross) fitted with explosives being deployed on the Eastern front. The vehicle in the distance is Borgward B, I think, so it seems very likely.

I think it’s fair to say that the Goliath and the Borgward B ROVs were less effective than the Germans had hoped in normal operations on the Eastern and Western fronts. But it’s worth looking more closely at their deployment in the tight urban environments of cities. There are notable reports of Goliaths being deployed into the Warsaw Ghetto in responding to the Warsaw uprising in 1943.  If ever there was a historic precedent to the urban destruction seen in modern day Syria, the destruction of the ghetto by the German in 1943 is it.    Goliath were used to target buildings, and of course with only small arms the defenders had little defence against these ROVs, unlike formal military units.  I also see parallels with modern anti-tank missiles being used against defensive positions in Syria, of which we are seeing many. Yes these aren’t as fast as those missiles but the targets and tactics are quite similar.

Here’s the remains of a burnt out Borgward B vehicle, I think destroyed by fire after it had dropped off its charge in Kilińskiego Street in Warsaw in August 1944. The explosion reportedly killed 200 residents. The story of this attack is dramatic and a desperately sad tragedy. Essentially the vehicle had been captured by Polish troops as the Germans attempted to deploy it towards a road block and was being paraded around Warsaw by cheering locals. Someone pulled a lever which caused the deployable explosive charge to slide off, and as we know there was a timer started by this activation which the crowds did not understand.  The charge detonated shortly after.  There is more detail here if you are interested. It is possible of course that this was a “Trojan horse” attack, and a number of sources claim this but I suspect that it was just accidental.

Here’s some pics of the Goliath systems being deployed in Warsaw.

This is the effect of a Goliath on a building in Warsaw

I think the German forces of WW2 had, in their ROVs, some interesting tools for offensive operations, and for the built up environments of  Warsaw and heavily prepared defensive environments off Sebastopol they were of some use.  But for German defensive operations, they were less suited. Fundamental unreliability was a major issue, it seems, with all the systems they used, and that’s both in terms of motive power and in terms of the control systems. Modern technology perhaps allows for more reliance on the systems used by terrorists and others. In a battle there is perhaps more of an issue of unit cost – whereas modern ROVs are cheaper, and not being deployed, in general, in battle conditions are doubly attractive. Modern ROVs have more precise controls including reliable and usable video components that makes control easier and more attractive. More accurate control also leads to the potential to reduce charge size and so allow the vehicle to be smaller. I think this aspect of modern ROV weapons is not yet widely understood.  Improved batteries for electric vehicles also increases range.  The issue of logistic support is somewhat useful in understanding use of ROVs for delivering explosives and again modern terrorist use changes the impact of that logistic support and is maybe less crucial in terms of systems.  What is inescapable now and in the past is that ROVs offer an aggressor a safe way of delivering explosives, with the size of the explosive charge required having, of course, an impact on the vehicles that might be suitable.  The key difference today is that technology has improved reliability of control systems, and also that technology is broadly available.  However it is susceptible to technical counter-measures.  In particular radio control systems are now consumer items and not limited to government enterprises.  There are also some other parallels in terms of utilisation of captured weapons systems – and here I’m thinking of the way some Syrian jihadists have adapted captured armoured vehicles for suicide VBIEDS.

I recommend thinking in terms of tactical design – the systems outlined above all approached the target to a “control” point. From there the mode of control switches – and remote control takes over.  It’s worth, as with any attack system, particularly terrorist attack using radio or other command systems, having a hard think about what defines that “control point”.  What are the characteristics of that change over point that are needed, are chosen and utilised? Understanding those will help you develop some counter-measures. Modern day control points are perhaps less clearly defined than these WW2 examples, but the principle remains. Another thought that comes to mind is the importance of Technical Intelligence to the EOD operator. Put yourself on the shoes of an EOD tech 75 years ago – what would you want to know about the command and initiation system before you dealt with such an object? It may have no relevance today but as a “process” it’s useful to think through how you, a modern EOD operator, would deal with such things in a variety of situations – it’ll get your brain thinking, and that’s the best use for a brain.

Most of you will be aware of the command driven vehicles used by modern terrorist groups – various Jihadi ones, ETA, FARC and the IRA have all use such systems and others too are in the back pages of this blog site. But most importantly don’t be then thinking remotely driven vehicles delivering explosives are anything new – they are more than a century old and there are lessons to be learned still. From a historical perspective I’m intrigued by the German campaign in Crimea and the manner in which they used innovative weapons systems there – I’ll be digging further as it’s not a part of WW2 that I’m all that familiar with and instinct is telling there’s some interesting history. I have one wild reference to an ROV being used underground there which I’m trying to track down, and of course Russian defence of Sebastopol in the century before has been a subject of previous blogs. It’s strange how the patterns of explosive use over the centuries return to the same places. Sebastopol, Antwerp, London…

 

Command IED

Command-Initiated IED – 1809 – Peninsula War

I’m finding lots of interesting use of explosives by both sides in the Peninsula War (1807 – 1814) particularly the French who clearly had developed extensive capabilities with explosives. These engineering capabilities and the use of explosives in both attack and defence were, I think, largely developed about a hundred and fifty years earlier by Vauban, the famous French military engineer. I should write about him more in the future, but his writing and ideas were used extensively by the French through the latter part of the the 17th century, through the entire 18th and on well into the 19th – I certainly see his influence in French actions in the Crimean war in the 1850s, some 200 wars after the start of Vauban’s career. But this post is about a command-pull IED.

But this particular device in this post is attributed to the Portuguese who fought as allies of the British. It’s also an interesting “Assault EOD operation” by the French, based on careful observation, planning and intelligence.  Alas I have no imagery but nonetheless a good description provided by a famous French engineer, Captain Pierre Bouchard. In May of 1809, the Portuguese were defending a key crossing, a bridge over the Tampa river near Amarante. This was, in military terms, a “reserve demolition“. The Portuguese were defending the bridge but if it came to it they were prepared to destroy the bridge to prevent the French crossing.  Captain Bouchard had spotted through his telescope where the Portuguese “mine” had been placed on the bridge. The initiation mechanism was not a burning fuze but Bouchard could see a line running from the covering Portuguese positions to a wooden box placed adjacent to barrels of powder under one of the arches of the bridge. He assessed, correctly as it turned out, that this was a “pull mechanism” with the cord attached to the trigger of a flintlock mechanism in the wooden box. This in turn would initiate an explosive chain which would explode the barrels of gunpowder.

Bouchard (reportedly) came up with a plan. His engineers under cover of thick fog surreptitiously moved a large charge of their own as close as they dared to the command pull cord. Bouchard believed his counter charge would break the or snap the pull cord without initiating the Portuguese main charge, or at least disorientate the Portuguese long enough for an immediate assault to take their position. And so it was. Three barrels were placed close to the Portuguese redoubt and a battalion of grenadiers stood by to make the assault backed up by an entire brigade of infantry. Bouchards’s charge was lit with a burning fuze 30m long.  Whether it actually broke the pull cord or not is perhaps in doubt but the assaulting grenadiers were so quick in taking the position, the demolition charge was not fired.  Bouchard led a company of his sappers on to the Bridge alongside the grenadiers and doused the Portuguese charge with buckets of water, as an initial “render safe procedure”

I understand that the Portuguese had a habit of using pull cords rather than burning fuzes because of the volume of fire often experienced in such battles – which they felt may have caused initiation of the explosive charge by a hit on an exposed fuze.  As an aside, Captain Bouchard was also responsible , in Napoleon’s Nile campaign, of finding the “Rosetta Stone” ten years earlier in 1799. Captain Bouchard had the distinction of being captured three times by the British during his military career and spent considerable time as a prisoner-of-war. Here’s a pic. Cheerful looking fella, for a sapper, ain’t he?

I’ve written before here, about the principles of using flintlock mechanisms to initiate explosive devices and you will see that this idea wasn’t that unusual, but it’s the only occasion I can find a record of it being used in this war.

16th Century

Chinese 16th Century Ship-Borne IED

An interesting pic below.

 

This is from a book written in the mid-1500s by a Chinese Imperial official and shows a sophisticated vessel containing large amounts of explosives.  This and other vessels of a similar nature were made at the Dragon River Shipyard near Nanking.  There are some interesting features to this:

 

  1. Note the bow of the vessel – these protuberances are described as “wolf’s teeth nails”. When the vessel is rammed against the target these steel teeth engage and fasten the bow of the IED vessel to the target.
  2. Note the “hook and eye connections” amidships. This is pretty clever. After the vessel is rammed into the target the entire “bow” containing the explosives and rockets, is detached by detaching the hooks from the eyes and the attackers row away the foreshortened vessel. Other vessels from the Dragon River Shipyard utilised other designs for leaving behind explosive or combustible material and rowing a smaller boat away  – and disguise was a key design consideration.  This vessel may have looked like an ordinary commercial vessel with plenty of crew aboard and therefore not like an expected explosive ship, which were usually towed.
  3. The skipper is protected from enemy weapons in a cabin, and the rowers are equipped with long poles to defend themselves and presumably light the charge.
  4. The official describes this vessel as being 14m long, with the forward detachable section being about 1/3rd of the length, (so roughly 5m long).

Europeans (specifically the Portuguese) would have encountered these sort of attacks in their war against the Chinese in the first part of the 16th century.  So these vessels just preceded the first real European use of this sort of weapon, namely the “Hoop” at Antwerp in 1584.  In the early 17th Century the Dutch too faced such weapons in their Chinese adventures. In 1637 a small fleet of English vessels arrived in China to trade and were attacked by a small fleet of fire ships and explosive vessels.  The attack was described by a man aboard one of the ships and adventurer called “Peter Mundy”. (That name will make some of you older British EOD types smile).  Mundy writes:

“The fire was vehement. Balls of wild fire, rockets and fire arrows flew thick as they passed us, But God be praised, not one of us all was touched.”

Mundy then learned that the attack was actually inspired by the Portuguese in Macao to deter British trade competition.  This concept precedes then the development of “spar torpedoes” used frequently in the US Civil war, where an explosive charge was on the end off a spar on the front of an attacking boat, designed to attach to the target.

20th Century

German Explosive Remote-Control speedboats of WW1 and WW2

Apologies, it has been some time since my last blog – I have been distracted on other projects.
This blog is an interesting addition, I think, and opened my eyes once again to matters of historical technology that have been forgotten by many. It concerns German remote-controlled, explosively-laden boats in WW1 and WW2 used in the English Channel and the north European coastline. Given current interest in drone technology it is tempting to start by putting it in that context, but I think I’m going to start by putting it in the context of the boat and ship-borne IEDs that have been something of a theme of this blog in recent years.  To remind you the North European coast from the Netherlands, through Belgium, the English Channel and round the French coast beyond St Nazaire have seen repeated use of the concept of a ship or boat loaded with explosives and sent to or placed next to a target for many centuries.  You can see my blogs on these by following the “ship-Borne IED” tag on the right hands column,   In rough historical order, these are:
  • The Hoop, Antwerp, 1584
  • A floating IED designed by Fulton, use against the French in 1620s by the British Royal Navy
  • Benbow’s Vesuvius of 1693, St Malo
  • Captain Dundas’s “machine vessel”, used against Dieppe and others used against Dunkirk, 1694
  • Meister’s ship IEDs of 1695
  • A catamaran IED used against the French by the Royal Navy in 1804
  • Cochrane’s Infernals of 1809 used at the Aix Roads, and a  larger vessel built in 1812
  • The Zebrugge raid of 1918
  • Operation Lucid, 1940
  • Operation chariot , St Nazaire, 1942
So all of these attacks used boats or ships loaded with explosives to attack ports and shipping.  In that context the use by the Germans of the same concept in WW1 and WW2 shouldn’t be a surprise but I have only just become aware of them.

WW1.

 Below is a picture of a WW1 weapons used by the Germans in the English channel in WW1. It’s called the “Fernlenkboot” (“remote control boat”), sometimes abbreviated to FL-boot.  The vessel was 17m long, and carried 700kg (1,500lbs) of explosive.   The concept was to use these against British Royal Naval vessels operating off the coast of Flanders – right in the traditional area for such attacks over the centuries. The control concept was quite complicated. Each boat had a spool of wire 20km long to provide control signals.  Observation was by aircraft which flew above and sent radio messages to a control station about steering directions.  The boat had a powerful petrol engine and could achieve speeds of 30 knots.  I have found some inconsistent but intruiging suggestions that as well as the cable controlled versions, radio control systems may also have been developed. Certainly some seem to have been equipped with antennae.
The commands available included
  • System test
  • Engine start, engine stop
  • Set Rudder position
  • Turn on a light, to enable the boat to be tracked at night
  • Detonate the warhead, to prevent capture of the boat if it missed its target
In later systems there was an auto destruct mechanism added that functioned after a time period.
The vessels were not used that often but one did hit HMS Erebus in October 1917 which was damaged but not sunk.
The provenance of this weapon is worthy of exploring. The system was built by “Siemens-Shuckert” and seems to have had its genesis in an idea that Werner Siemens the late 19th century engineer developed in 1871. I have blogged about Werner Siemens and his port defence command initiated IEDs before here.  In 1905 his son Wilhelm resurrected his father’s ideas for remote controlled boat weapon. It appears that Siemens developed the idea of an remote controlled , explosively laden boat some time before Tesla, who had a similar idea some 20 or 30 years later. Siemens really does play an important part in the history of explosive systems. The development of such technology of course parallels the development of modern torpedo technology. The advantage of a surface system is that it can be actively seen and steered by the user – the disadvantage is that the system can also be seen by the target, (stating the obvious here).    By 1914 the Siemens-Shuckert firm had continued to develop its technology and an interesting event occurred. There was a “power boat competition” in Monaco and a hi-tech French powerboat with an innovative engine was expected to be the winner. Just before the race, the boat was withdrawn by the French competitor and the boat disappeared – to turn up later in the Siemens- Shuckert research facility in Berlin, being reverse engineered. There was a French government investigation into the acquisition by the Germans of this technology. It appears that a man called Schmidt, who “pretended to be Russian” had bought the speedboat for hard cash. He was working with the German company Bosch, who were in return working for Siemens. This is the motor that appeared in the FL-boot in the war.  So some very interesting German technical espionage and industrial technology acquisition was going on before WW1.

WW2

In WW2, the Germans develop a similar concept called “Linsen” – high speed boats filled with explosives.  The concept was somewhat simpler – the boats had a crew (eventually of one person) who got the system within a distance of a target and then they “bailed out” jumping overboard. Then a control boat with an operator steered the Linsen craft to its target at high speed. this control boat in theory then picked up the original crew.  Like other systems, there were quite a few variants. Maximum speed from its Ford petrol engine was 31 knots. The boats carried a charge of 300kg.  A contact fuse in the bow caused the bow to blow off but the main charge (and engine) in the stern then sank, and detonated at a depth under the target, thus increasing the explosive effect. Clever.  Radio control from the support vessel was by ultra-short wave radio on the 7m band, a Blaupunkt, using various transmitted “tones” decoded into commands.  The receiver filtered the tones into relays and actuators.   The controls possible were:
  • Actuate starboard rudder
  • Actuate port rudder
  • Stop engine
  • Start engine
  • Slow ahead
  • Go faster
  • Detonate  the boat, if the attack was a failure.
  There is a suggestion that the control mechanism was also used in some of the Goliath tracked vehicles that I have blogged about here.
The control units, incorporating a very modern looking chest rig and joy stick look remarkably modern.
The Linsen boats were small, fast and worked in pairs.
The Linsen were used with very  limited success against Allied vessels off the coast of Normandy in the summer of 1944.   In one of those neat historical coincidences , later in 1944, Linsen explosive boats were used against Allied vessels trying to use the port of Antwerp in Belgium – some 360  years after the Hoop explosive vessel had been used near Antwerp to attack the Spanish invaders. Some things are never new…    Of course, other nations produced similar concepts in WW2, including the Italians, the Japanese (who used “swarm tactics” in high speed craft not unlike that envisaged by Iranian craft in the Gulf).  I may write about these in the future.    Small fast moving vessels containing explosives is a concept still very much in vogue, but largely the tactics remain similar, and the technology has advanced a little – but there’s really not much new, as ever!
19th Century

Massive Command Wire IED in Charleston, USA

In my last post I discussed a massive electrically initiated command wire IED from the Crimean war in 1856. This article is about a massive command-wire device in Charleston during the American Civil War in 1863. I’ve been finding stuff on explosive devices during that conflict for a few years now, but this one is new to me, possibly because it failed to explode.  Importantly I think this IED was the biggest ever seen in the USA – perhaps my US colleagues would care to comment.

This Confederate device was constructed using an entire ship’s steam boiler as a container. It was packed with 5000 pounds of blackpowder (other reports suggest 3000 pounds)  and sunk in 6 fathoms of water 1500 yards off Fort Sumter, just outside Charleston, South Carolina. Insulated electrical cables led from the boiler to an electrical charge generator in the Fort, defended by Confederate Forces. There had been a series of naval bombardments of the Fort over several months. On 8 September 1853 the Federal Navy approached the Fort again to bombard it.  The flagship “New Ironsides” placed itself directly above the device and fired nearly 500 rounds at the Fort. Every attempt was made to initiate the device but it failed to function. After 90 minutes the Ironsides moved off. The device had been in place for 4 months before it was attempted to fire. The man responsible for testing the circuit daily was put in irons, although he claimed he had circuit tested it the previous day. Probably there had been an ingress of water or there was insufficient voltage.   But 5000 pounds of powder exploding a few feet underneath a battleship would have been quite an attack.

Here’s a report on the laying of the device, which suggests that the resulting cable length was over a mile longer than expected – perhaps the power source was insufficient to cope with that:

The torpedo was successfully sunk on the spot located by General Ripley, but while running the cable the steamer (Chesterfield) ran out of steam, and, unable to hold against the tide and wind, went aground near Fort Sumter. On the increase of the flood we had to run back a long circuit reach Cummings Point and land the cable. It resulted from this accident that we played out 2 miles of cable, instead of 1, as expected.

Here’s a couple of diagrams of the explosive device, which I think are contemporary:

The boiler, full of powder, is probably still there…

There is some mention of the use of powder filled boilers being used unsuccessfully on the James River by the Confederate explosive expert Captain Maury at an earlier time during the Civil War. Apparently the boilers were not anchored well and moved in the current, parting the electrical cables. Captain Maury’s electricity generator apparently “weighed nearly a ton” which also made the devices awkward to deploy. Maury was later sent on a mission to England to procure better electrical power sources (in modern parlance, “IED components”)  from the scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone.

Fort Sumter in August 1863, a month before the incident:

 

Here’s the USS New Ironsides, the target of the IED:

I have found some new material on underwater Confederate devices used to prevent Federal ships moving up the James River subsequent to Captian Maury’s boilers, but I need time to check this new material against other records. I’ll put up a post at some time in the future when I have time.

In one of those strange “mirrorings” in history the following year it was Union forces who considered use of a massive IED against Fort Sumter. Union commander ,Major-General John Foster had in mind a plan to level Fort Sumter by way of a large explosive device.  “As soon as a good cut is made through the wall,” Foster wrote to Washington on July 7, 1864, “I shall float down against it and explode large torpedoes until the wall is shaken down and the surrounding obstructions are entirely blown away.”

Later that month Union naval forces had made a “cut” in a protective wall and pushed an explosively-laden barge towards Fort Sumter. But due to miscommunication and bad weather the attack was abandoned.  Other attempts were then made in August 1864 by land forces using improvised rafts, laden with explosives and initiated with timing devices. These were to be pushed into place by boat. Here’s one contemporary report:

On the night of the 28th ultimo, a pontoon-boat, fitted up for the purpose and containing about twenty hundredweight of powder, was taken out by Lieut. G.F. Eaton, One hundred and twenty-seventh New York Volunteers, boat infantry, and floated down into the left flank of Fort Sumter. The garrison of Sumter was alarmed before the mine reached them, and opened upon our boats with musketry, without, however, doing them any injury.

The device exploded, but in the wrong place and too far away to cause significant damage. Then:

On the night of the 31st ultimo six torpedoes, made of barrels set in frames, each containing 100 pounds of powder, were set afloat with the flood-tide from the southeast of Sumter with the view of destroying the boom.  They probably exploded too early and only injured perhaps two lengths of the links of the boom, which are now not visible.

Another attempt was made the following night on 1 September 1864, the device exploded but again causing no significant damage.

Here’s a drawing of the devices being launched:

 

 

I also have found some new interesting technical material about very large submerged electrically initiated devices used in the defence of Venice, in 1859, that appear also to have used Samuel Colt’s “Camera Obscura” command post technique – again to follow when time permits. I continue to view Samuel Colt’s amazing explosive device initiation command post of 1836 as one of the most remarkable things I have ever come across in all my research.

 

 

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