Standing Well Back
17th Century

An explosive device in Whitehall

Some more detail of an early IED attack attempt that I had heard about  but which I didn’t have much detail of until now.  I mentioned in my post a couple of years ago here (Bomb Alleys) about an assassination attempt on Oliver Cromwell, with a device designed to burn down Whitehall Palace and I’ve found a few more details in the transcripts of the trial in ” Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings etc Volume 5, pages 842-872″.    It seems this was a successful EOD operation as part of a complex counter-terrorism operation. What a curious world counter-terrorism was in those days – as it remains today.

Cromwell – the target of the assassination attempt

The counter-terrorism operation was run by Oliver Cromwell’s spymaster, John Thurloe.  The protagonist in this was one Miles Sindercombe, whose pseudonym was “Mr Fish”. Sindercombe appears to have been funded by a rebel puritan officer, Colonel Sexby, from the Netherlands.  After four plans to ambush Cromwell had failed, Sindercombe decided to burn down Whitehall Palace, where Cromwell was living, in the hope that it might kill him.  The device he used was constructed “by a man sent from overseas”.

The device was in a wicker basket, and contained, a gunpowder charge, and “tar, pitch and tow” and “brimstone” to add an incendiary component. It had two “slow match” burning fuses in parallel with an expected delay of about 6 hours. That’s quite a delay for a burning fuse. The device was left in a chapel in the Palace (now the site of the UK Ministry of Defence, and buildings in that area), which Sindercombe had reconnoitered by attending a service earlier. On 8th January 1657, Sindercombe and his accomplices gained entry via a back door into the chapel, and hid the device under a seat. They lit the fuze and left the premises. However Sindercombe’s cell had been penetrated by government agents working for Thurloe and the authorities were alerted.  The Palace Guard “found” the device and the Officer of the Guard rendered it safe by removing the burning fuzes.

Sindercombe was injured resisting arrest the following morning, and refused to co-operate. However all his co-conspirators did cooperate, gave testimony and Sindercombe was found guilty and sentenced to death a month later. He escaped the gallows by committing suicide by poisoning but suspicion remains he was killed to prevent a riotous public assembly at the execution. There are details of a rather bizarre post-mortem conducted some time after he had been buried beneath the gallows with a stake through his heart.

The details of his earlier assassination attempts on Cromwell are also intriguing. In one he hid an arquebus and pistols “in a viol case” (very 1920s…). In another, a purpose built firearm was to be used, described as a “strange device” that fires 12 bullets and a slug at the same time. Peculiar.

It’s surprising to me that this assassination attempt of the de facto head of state is little known about. Whitehall Palace – a mish-mash or architecture and complex passages , built mainly from wood did eventually burn down fifty years later. During the attempt to put out that fire in 1698 gunpowder charges were used to try to create firebreaks.

Here’s a useful pic of the Palace in 1680 – I’ve highlighted the chapel. It does indeed look like a warren of buildings. Those of you familiar with the area in modern day can orientate yourself with the Banqueting House and Horseguards

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.

17th Century

Meester’s Ship IEDs of 1695

I’ve written a few times before about ship IEDs, which typically are massive devices sailed into an enemy port and then exploded after the crew flee. You can see my earlier posts on the subject by following the “Ship IED” link in the right hand column to this page. The earliest I have is 1584 and the “Hoop” used against the Spanish in Antwerp, and the latest is HMS Campbelltown used against the Germans in St Nazaire in WW2.  In one of my earlier posts I mentioned in passing that such devices were used by the Royal Navy against Dunkirk in the 1690s. I have used a number of sources and there are some odd date discrepancies. The main attack on Dunkirk appears to have been on 1 August 1695 but I think there were other attacks at least one other using a “machine vessel”.

I have now found more details of these ship born IEDs used against Dieppe and Dunkirk in 1694 and 1695. The explosive component was designed and built by a Dutchman, Willem Meesters, who was contracted by the Ordnance Board in 1690 to provide the devices and convert a number of small ships. Meesters, favoured by the King, was appointed by the Board Of Ordnance to be “Storekeeper of the Ordnance” in the Tower of London in 1691. The attack on Dunkirk in 1695 was a complete failure and there was much recrimination between those involved and some of the blame was apportioned to Meesters. He was accused of “Cowardice and Misconduct” by the commanding admiral.  The attack on Dunkirk, as did other attacks in that era on St Malo and other targets used a range of special ships. and it is important to understand the differences:

a. “Bomb Ships” are not ships designed to explode, they carry large mortars and bomb the target from close to shore

b. “Fire Ships” are disposable ships, which are set fire to and drift into enemy shipping, causing confusion, smoke obscuration and hopefully set fire to ships they collide with.

c. “Machine ships” are the ones we are interested in, with “infernal machines” which explode. They may be disguised as fire ships.

The technical detail of Meester’s “machine ships” is described in his proposal to the Ordnance Board.  He proposed to use a watertight metal box fitted with a clockwork mechanism which acted on a flintlock as the initiator for other explosives. Around this box were packed barrels of gunpowder, scrap metal and “fireworks”. Some of his vessels were designed to explode with great violence and others simply to provide smoke screens.

Meester’s design, in general principle, is identical to both that of the “Hoop” in 1585, and the Campbeltown in 1942 – a mechanical time fuze set to initiate a massive improvised charge in a ship. I still find it fascinating that this near identical history of ship IEDs stretches so long over the centuries.

In May 1692, Meesters was authorised to purchase a number of vessels in which his ‘machines’ could be fitted. He bought, at first, seven vessels and some months were spent fitting them out for his purpose. All the ships were former Dutch merchant vessels. These were renamed, and by 1694 were based in Portsmouth, each with a crew of 10. A number of these were paid off and not used but the ones deployed operationally which exploded were:

1. Abram’s Offering, a 55ft vessel under Commander Edward Cole. This ship was recorded as “expended” during the Dunkirk attack in “September 1696”.

2. Saint Nicholas, a 70ft vessel under Commander Roert Dunbar. This was exploded in an attack on Dieppe in July 1694.

Then a series of smaller vessels were bought, each with a crew of 4. These were never used.

In 1695 four larger vessels were purchased and all were exploded in an attack on Dunkirk in August 1695. I have only the names of these vessels – Ephraim, Happy Return, Mayflower and the Wiliam and Elizabeth.  All four of these “machine vessels” were set too early and didn’t get close enough to shore and caused no damage to the Dunkirk targets when they exploded. The admirals were not happy, Meesters was arrested, made to demonstrate another device, which itself failed. But he seemed to retain the patronage of the King, and remained in his official position at the Tower of London until 1701.

Despite the attack being a failure, I have found a treasury record that he was paid (three years later), the large sum of £3222 for provision of these machine ships for the attack on Dunkirk.

Rockets

The history of metal-cased military rockets – an investigation

A couple of years ago a wrote a few posts about the emergence of metal cased military rockets as a weapon system in the early 1800s. In retrospect I made some hurried assessments, and after a while digging I’d like to revisit. The links to my older posts are below but I’ll repeat some of the story here for coherence. This is a story of terrorism, weapons technical intelligence, politics, subterfuge, tall tales and obfuscation, leading to financial success for one individual (William Congreve) that perhaps wasn’t entirely deserved.  The traditional, commonly accepted wisdom was that Congreve “invented” rockets in about 1804, introducing “new” metal-bodied rockets, and also introducing larger calibre and longer range variants. He was supposedly “inspired” by the use rockets by Tipu Sultan in the Mysorean wars in India in the late 1700s.  I think that is a misrepresentation (mostly by Congreve himself), of a much more interesting story which I’ll try to make here.  I’ll also try to give credit for what I think Congreve deserved . I have been encouraged by a new colleague, a keen historian from India, Nidhin Olikara from Karnataka in India. Nidhin is involved in some exciting research in this area which I cannot reveal yet. Mr Olikara’s blog is here:

I’ll lay the story out chronologically as best I can:

  1. After being “invented” in China, rockets appeared first in Europe in the late 1300s and early 1400s. Rocketry was discussed in the book “Bellefortis” written in about 1405. However I think there is a red herring – the picture below, from Bellefortis, is quoted often as an image of a rocket. But I think it is not – to me it is simply a spear head, and the “rocket vent” is simply the socket for a spear. Some people quote the size of the man holding the rocket/spear but the other images within Bellefortis are massively inconsistent in scale too.  I do accept however that Bellefortis does apparently discuss rockets elsewhere in text.

   Rocket or spearhead with socket? I think the latter.

2. Throughout the 1500s and 1600s rockets were well known in Europe, mainly as a component of massively complex fireworks displays which became very popular in the late 1500s onwards. Leonardo da Vinci discussed rockets and a number of books about “pyrotechnics” were published. Some of the books clearly made the jump from rockets as a form of pyrotechnic entertainment, to rockets as a military weapon.  In the 1500s rockets were clearly being developed by Conrad Haas (1529 -1569) in Austria/Hungary. Haas’s technology was surprisingly advanced, and included bell shaped nozzles and multi-stage systems.

Note the venturis on the rockets and the engineer creating
a combustion chamber with a spike

3. Haas probably influenced a German, Johann Schmidlap who developed further the staged rockets in about 1561.

Double and triple stage rocket motors

4.  In the late 1500s and early 1600s there were a number of experts publishing instructions on rocketry, these include the aforementioned Haas and Schmidlap, and others referred to by later authors as “Brechteltus”, Diagus Ulfanus, Adrian Roman, James Valhouse, Furtenbach and Frontsbergue. Many of these authors/experts developed their own formulae for the best dimensions of rockets in terms of diameter and length. Many also describe a very specific number of taps with a mallet of a specific weight for driving a needle into the packed rocket for the purposes of optimising the rocket motor ignition surface/chamber. This may seem an obscure instruction but is important.  As far as I can tell these rockets were not metal cased but made from paper or card.   In these early years of rocketry I understand that the propellant was standard blackpowder (gunpowder). As firearms developed over this period improvements were made to gunpowder to speed up its reaction.  This made it rather too powerful for rockets with the pressure from the product gases being very high and the cardboard and paste cylinders could not contain the pressure so the tube ruptured.  So rocket gunpowder was made by adding additional carbon (charcoal) which reduced its burn rate.  This issue is fundamental to the development of rockets over the period – having a slow enough burn rate to not rupture the body of the rocket, but enough to project the rocket forward. Much trial and error went in to the development of effective geometry and hence design and production of the rocket motors.  I have found some vague references to the military use of rockets against cavalry in 1600 but so far I have no detail.

5.  A book was written by Jean Appier in about 1620, called La Pyrotechnie de Hanzelet Lorrain.  Here’s an image of a simple rocket design from that book. Note the “warhead” with a fuse that is initiated as the rocket motor finally competes burning. Still there is no sign as yet of metal cased rockets. Note the combustion surface in the rear, created by tapping a mallet into the packed propellant.

Note warhead initiation when motor finishes burn

6.  In 1635, and English book called Pyrotechnica by Robert Babington detailed rocket manufacture. These were not metal cased. Here’s a diagram of the mould used to create the rocket motor. Note the “needle” used to create the correct combustion geometry within the rocket’s gunpowder. Many of the documents and books discussed here recount how the needle is inserted into the packed gunpowder and gently knocked into place with a number of blows from a hammer. Basically the mould former on the left is lined with paper and card, filled with damp gunpowder, then the needle inserted and tapped into place and then dried. The needle is removed and the vent/nozzle formed (“choked”) with a twist of card held in place with string. This rocket is two and a half inches in diameter (which is a dimension that will be repeated in the future. Babington’s book is remarkably detailed. Babbington describes that the best paper to use for the body (“coffin”) of the rocket should be “old law books”!  He then describes a range of explosive compositions and how to make them. The thrust of Babington’s book is entertaining firework displays – but it is fascinating how some of his more exotic pieces presage the use of sub-munitions. He also describes a range of test apparatus to allow the testing of gunpowder.

Rocket mold, cross section and needle for making combustion chamber.

7.  Another book  “The Great Art of Artillery” by Kazimierz Siemienowicz published in 1650 also described a number of rocket systems.  Again I can see no detail referencing metal cased rockets but there is considerable discussion about the variants of propellant mixes needed for various sizes of rockets.   This document provides extremely detailed manufacturing instructions.  (I am using an English translation published in 1729.)  it is interesting to note that Siemienowicz comments about the habit of “pyrobolists” (those making rockets) to keep the methods of manufacturing very secret – but who let the secret out while drunk…  Siemienowics describes rocket cases made from paper, pasteboard in some cases reinforces with wound thread and in some cases made from wood, with conical noses.  The paper ones are described in some cases as being reinforced with iron wire, “for fear the powder would split it”.  He does describe however a range of quite large rockets.  Here’s a diagram of some of a range of Siemienowicz’s rockets.  Note the Multiple rocket using 7 smaller rockets (unlike Elon Musk’s 9). Note also the range of payloads and multi staging. Siemienowcz is extremely detailed on various aspects of quality control.


Siemienowicz’s advanced designs

Siemienowicz appears to be an admirable chemist, physicist and engineer. He spends pages decrying his predecessors who were closer to alchemists, who described their rocket making art in mystical forms hiding the secrets of their craft through pseudo-science. Siemienowicz developed some rules for rocket making and explains the science behind these rules:

First Rule: The larger the rocket the weaker and slower should the rocket propellant be (and vice versa, the smaller the rocket the faster burning propellant is required. This, he explains relates to the available surface area of the combusting propelllant’s hollow cone.

The second and third rules relate to the composition of the propellant in certain circumstances, adjusting the carbon, sulphur and saltpetre comparative quantities.

Siemienowicz describes rockets that are stabilised in flight with sticks and others stabilised by fins. He also describes a stabilisation method I have not come across before using a lead ball fastened to a piece of wire that trails to the rear of the rocket, which he says acts like a stick. Another technique he describes is to add lead filings at various points in the rocket motor – very sophisticated in concept, altering the movement of centres of gravity and thrust in a complex manner.

8. In 1696 Robert Anderson, and Englishman wrote a book with a clear rocket design, two and a half inches in diameter and about 18 inches long.  In my earlier blogs I had misinterpreted some of the instructions from this book, assuming them to describe a metal cased rocket. After careful research and examination of this book I now no longer believe this to be the case, and my earlier assessment was an error.  I think Anderson was using paper and pasteboard and not a metal cased body.

9.   In the late 1700s , in the Mysorean wars in India with the British, the Army of Tipu Sultan used rockets extensively. Some of these were metal cased rockets (I think the first) and some of these rockets were recovered to England for analysis, at Woolwich Arsenal laboratory.   The laboratory was under the control of William Congreve’s father. At the time William Congreve (junior) was not employed at Woolwich, he was busy as a publisher of a political magazine. So there were military metal-cased rockets in Woolwich some 20 years or so before Congreve is credited with their invention. I believe two of these metal cased Mysorean rockets are in a museum in the UK and I’ll be checking on this in coming weeks.  My Indian friend Nidhin is investigating his excellent sources in India. I suspect that the crucial key here is the advanced metalsmithing available in Mysore at the time – often underestimated by Western historians – able to create a closed end lightweight metal cylinder, strong enough to contain the pressures of a rocket motor but light enough to not interfere significantly with flight.

10.  In 1803 Robert Emmet’s uprising in Dublin used metal cased rockets (two and a half inches in diameter) against British forces, it is possible using the specific design and dimensions of Anderson’s rockets from 1696, or even Babbington’s from 1645. However rather than use paper or pasteboard, Emmet used a metal cased rocket.  I’m not sure yet where this idea came from but it is possible it came from Robert Fulton, the American inventor whom he met in Paris in 1802. There is also a French connection to Mysore, and the French could also have recovered metal cased rockets from Mysore to Paris, and hence to Emmet.  Certainly, reports suggest that Emmet came back from Paris with specific instructions on on how to construct rockets.   Another possibility is that one of his workmen, Johnstone, had previously worked in India for the East India Company and had encountered the earlier metal cased rockets.  There is a possibility that Emmet was using manufacturing instruction from one of a number of pyrotechnic books – many had similar instructions and statements suggest those instructions included tapping the rockets with needles to create combustion chambers.  I believe some of Emmet’s rockets were recovered to the Ordnance laboratory at Woolwich, still under the control of Congreve’s father, in 1803.  Again, this is just a few months before Congreve junior became employed by his father at Woolwich. So we know that there had been two sources of metal-cased rockets in Woolwich laboratory before William Congreve (Junior) even began his employment there, and it is very likely that Weapons technical intelligence activities and exploitation were undertaken by the laboratory..    There is also a very strong suggestion that one of Robert Emmet’s men, Pat Finerty, who had been employed by Emmet to make rockets for the Irish uprising was now taking the Kings shilling and was working in the laboratory at Woolwich, perhaps providing insight and experience. Perhaps he was a British spy in the first place.

11.  In 1804, Congreve junior was struggling. His political publishing venture had gone bust and he needed work. But his father was a senior administrator for Woolwich Arsenal,  and all of a sudden he had employment at Woolwich, and he also had potential access to political patronage – vitally important for raising money.   The next few years saw Congreve develop and deploy military rockets. As a former editor of a political publication, Congreve knew the power of media and in parallel campaigned vigorously for funding and patronage to further develop military rockets. He even got himself awarded a commission as a Colonel and took charge of the rocket attack on Copenhagen and elsewhere, distrusting the military to deploy “his” invention. (In return they distrusted him and his lack of military experience).  The development of Congreve’s rockets needs a whole different blog post (or book). But the point I am making here is this:

a. Congreve was a canny political operator, seeking patronage and funding.

b. Within the politics of the time, he understood that he would optimise his chances of patronage if he could take the entire credit for the development of militarily useful rockets.

c.  Diluting the credit for the development with tales of Haider Ali or Tipu Sultan did not fit the politics of the time.

d. Nor indeed would giving the credit in any way to Irish rebels.

I also note that Congreve was an ardent patent producer – except when it came to rockets. was he concerned he might have been challenged?

So, Congreve has gone down in history as the “inventor” of military metal-cased rockets. but we can see that this was incorrect.  We can also see that a wide variety of rocketry principles were developed by scientists and engineers in the two or three hundred years before 1804.  What Congreve did do was this:

a. Management of a secret technical intelligence exploitation operation which reverse engineered both the Mysorean rockets and rockets from the Irish uprising.

 b. Modern quality control and the development of robust and repeatable industrial processes- therefore enabling predictability of range etc.

 c. The development of larger rockets with greater ranges and payloads, utilising the scientific knowledge of propellant technology at Woolwich.

 d. The development (albeit by trial and error) of improved deployment and use operationally to improve effectiveness.

Congreve made much of the fact that an enemy capturing a Congreve rocket couldn’t reverse engineer it, and my assessment  is that this could only be because of the chemistry of the propellant, which by the technology of the day could have been tested but not analysed chemically very well. I think the technical knowledge of the Woolwich Laboratory with regard to propellant science was crucial to the development of Congreve’s rockets.

In the future I hope that the work of Nidhin Olikara and his colleagues will shed more light on Mysorean rocket technology, and the pre-eminent role they had in the development of metal cased rockets, well before 1804.

16th Century

Bomb Alleys

I now have an ulterior purpose in this blog.  I’m considering writing a book on “the history of explosive devices” and doing so in a perhaps unusual way. I propose to write the book in three parts, each part describing a geographic journey.   I have probably 70% of the research done and readers of this blog will recognise parts of the content.

Part 1 describes a walk of perhaps a mile and a half. The walk starts at Westminster Abbey in London and finishes in a church just up the road in Trafalgar Square.  This journey highlights the fact that explosive devices have targeted the centre of government and power over a 500 year period, and also highlights early bomb squad responses.

Part 2 describes a sea journey along the coast of Europe, beginning in St Petersburg and ending in Lisbon, Portugal.   It highlights how war and revolution has driven the development of explosive device design and tactics.

Part 3 is a car journey in the United States, starting in Connecticut and ending in Florida, highlighting the surprising thread of explosive device use throughout the history of the USA.

On each case a short chapter will detail the events on the route with a map to provide the theme of a geographical context. I welcome your comments as to whether you might find this interesting or not and of course any incidents on these journeys I have omitted.

Part 1 – A walk from Westminster to Trafalgar Square

This section of the book describes a walk past the sites of various historic incidents and significant places in the history of explosive devices, showing how perceived or actual centres of power have often been the target of explosive devices.  In summary the walk goes like this:

  1. Westminster Abbey. Suffragette Bomb, 1914
  2. The Houses of Parliament discussing the following attacks  The Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes et al 1605   Fenian Bombs in Westminster Hall and the House of Commons, 1885 Westminster Hall  IRA Bomb, 1974  Westminster Palace Yard, assassination of Airey Neave with under car boobytrap, 1979
  3. Whitehall, Fenian bombing 1883
  4. Duck Island Bomb Disposal facility, St James’s Park , established 1894.
  5. Downing street, IRA Mortar attack 1991
  6. Admiralty Building off Horse Guards Parade Square, a peculiar bomb at the same time as Fenian attacks but probably different perpetrators. 1885
  7. Palace of Whitehall, Bomb attack attempt to assassinate Oliver Cromwell (device defused), possibly inspired by the Royalist Prince Rupert 1657
  8. Adjacent to Old War Office Building – launch site of the IRA mortar attack on Downing St. 1991
  9. Old Scotland Yard Police headquarters, Fenian Bomb attack 1884
  10. Nelson’s Column. IED consisting of 16 sticks of dynamite defused, 1884
  11. Church of St Martin in the Fields, Suffragette bomb attack 1914

Themes – repetition of attack targets, security measures, Church, State and the Law as targets. Characters discussed Col Majendie, Dr DuPre, Prince Rupert.

Part 2 – A sea voyage from St Petersburg to Lisbon along the Northern European coastline.

This journey highlights how war and revolution has inspired the development of explosive devices

  1. St Petersburg. The assassination of the Tsar by suicide bomb, perpetrated by Russian revolutionaries Narodnaya Volya 1881
    • St Petersburg 1887 – another attempted assassination of the Tsar, by Lenin’s elder brother.
    • St Petersburg. The tsar established a research department to research underwater mines in 1839 – led by Professor Jacobi, later joined bi Immanuel Nobel.
  2. Baltic sea. The development and deployment of the sea mine using the Jacobi fuse (invented by Alfred Nobel’s father) – the story includes two British admirals blown up in separate incidents in the same day as they investigated recovered Russian sea mines as part of  Weapons Technical Intelligence operation. 1854
  3. Wismar, Germany, Swedish concealed IEDs on ships 1645
  4. Kiel. Siemens deployed an electrically initiated sea mine system to protect the port of Kiel, saving it from being bombarded by the Danish fleet 1848
  5. Copenhagen – Congreve’s rockets, and Danish Harbour defence mines
  6. Bremerhaven, Timed explosive device used in attempted insurance fraud by Alexander Keith , the so called crime of the century, 1875
  7. Antwerp  timer initiated Dutch explosive ship (the “Hoop”) device killing more people than any other explosive device ever 1584
  8. Zeebrugge, explosive filled submarine used by the British to attack the Germans in Zeebrugge, 1918
  9. Dunkirk, Dutch Ship bomb, 1588
  10. Hop over the channel to Sandwich for Fulton and the Dorothea, sunk as a demonstration using timed waterborne IEDs, 1805
  11. Boulogne. Operation Lucid, ship IEDs, 1940 (plan did not take place, despite 4 attempts).   Fulton attack 1804
  12. Dieppe, Admiral Benbow’s Ship bomb attack on the French  1694
  13. Spithead, Portsmouth Colonel Pasley , Wreck of the Royal George used electrical initiation to clear a wrecked ship explosively. 1839
  14. Portsmouth Dockyards arson devices, John the Painter, 1776, part of the American revolution
  15. St Malo, Admiral Benbow’s exploding ship, Vesuvius, 1693.  Fulton’s ourrigger IEDs, captured by the French 1805
  16. French Atlantic coast, St Nazaire, Operation Chariot and the explosive ship HMS Campbeltown, 1942
  17. Basque Roads ship bomb attack by Captain (later admiral) Cochrane 1809
  18. Lisbon and Prince Rupert’s royalist bomb attack on the parliamentarian ship the  Leopard in the English Civil War 1650

Themes.  Suicide bombing, Bombs on ships, Timers and initiation, creating terror, concealing devices,The English channel as a battleground, war and revolution providing encouragement to inventors. WTI investigations.  Characters discussed – Jacobi, Nobel (father and son), Giambelli, Pasley, Peter the Painter, Cochrane, Benbow, Fulton and Prince Rupert again.

Part 3. A car journey through the USA

Here I’ll highlight the surprising thread of explosive device use weaving through the history of the USA

  1. Connecticut Birthplace of Bushnell and Colt and where early experiments on under water explosion took place. Niantic Bay “torpedo” attack on HMS Cerberus 1777, part of American Revolution.
  2. Millstone Point, CT, Trojan Horse ship IED used against the British, 1812.
  3. New York, centre of global IED activity 1890-1921
    1. Bushnell’s Turtle attack on HMS Eagle 1776
    2. Thomas Tunney, Bomb Squad commander 1905- 1919
    3. Owen Eagen, EOD expert New York, 1895-1920
    4. Fenian bomb schools – Professor Mezzeroff 1880s
    5. Mafia black hand bombings early 20th C
    6. Galleanist attacks New York 1914 onwards, Wall St Bomb 1920
    7. Black Tom explosion 1916 by German saboteurs
    8. Other German sabotage attacks on shipping etc.
    9. Ramzi Yousef 1996
  4. Philadelphia Battle of the kegs, IEDs in barrels designed by Bushnell used against the British 1776, Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin, 1751 Electrical initiation of gunpowder Galleanists attacks 1918, Bomb factory 1883
  5. Washingtion – Senate bombings 1915,  1983
  6. Virginia, City Point , Fredericksburg railway IEDs,  Raines’s Williamsburg IEDs 1862
  7. Wilmington North Carolina, ship bomb , USS Louisiana 1864 Sinking of the USS Cairo by improvised anti-ship mine 1862
  8. North Central Florida Captain (later Brigadier General) Gabriel Raines set up a victim operaterd IEds to catch Seminole Indians near an Army base. 1839

Themes.  Explosive devices being used at key points in US history. Revolution, Civil war, war and crime. German sabotage campaign. Port defences in comparison to European efforts. Other parallels with attacks in parts 1 and 2 Characters discussed.  Bushnell, Franklin, Colt, Thomas Tunney, Owen Eagen, Brigadier General Raines, Ramzi Yousef.

Feedback welcomed!

 

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