Standing Well Back
1600-1610

Matchlocks, Samurai, Money and a Pretty Girl

Here’s another interesting tangent I came across while investigating some historical stuff.   I’m interested in how technology enables new weapon designs, and the principle of “stealing” munition technology in history has occurred many times.

I came across this story of how the Japanese obtained firearms from a Portuguese vessel in 1543 and reverse engineered the weapon.  The Portuguese matchlock was very modern and innovative technology as far as the Japanese were concerned, almost akin to magic.

Readers will recall from earlier posts that in the mid 15th century matchlocks were used in Europe.  The Portuguese were exploring the Far East and they were using a spring assisted “snapping” matchlock.  In this the trigger mechanism releases the “cock” holding the burning match and a spring causes the match to rotate onto the powder pan.  Readers of James Clavell ‘s “Shogun” will know the story of Europeans arriving in Japan.  In September 1543 a Chinese junk, with Portuguese adventurers aboard, made anchor after being damaged in a storm at the island of Tanegashima off the Japanese coast.

The lord of the island, Tokitaka, purchased two of the matchlocks which were sold “for a great profit”  and tasked his sword maker with producing replicas – a very early example of foreign material acquisition and reverse engineering.  Japanese swordsmiths were expert metallurgists, but the swordsmith had difficulty in machining  the barrel so that the screw on the end could be fitted.  The screw can be seen in these images, and could be removed to allow the barrel to be easily cleaned.

 

 

A year later, a Portuguese blacksmith arrived in Japan ,and he was persuaded to pass the engineering secrets.  Legend suggests that the Portuguese blacksmith was offered the hand in marriage of a beautiful woman called “Wakasa”– a nice reward for switching sides and bringing key technology with you.  Within 10 years, 300,000 “tanegashima” matchlocks had been produced, completely revolutionizing  Japanese warfare.

Ingenious Japanese engineers then improved the basic design adding designs to protect the firing mechanism from rain, and experimenting with larger calibres. Here’s a great contemporary image of Japanese musketeers in rain gear with boxes fitted around the firing mechanism to keep the rain off.

Interestingly, the Japanese retained use of matchlocks, even when the rest of the world moved on to flintlocks in the 1600s, and in fact retained the use of matchlocks until percussion cap rifles were introduced in the mid 1800s (about the time of the film “The Last Samurai”)

Japanese matchlocks were all individually hand-made and generally parts were not interchangeable between weapons.  The Japanese weapons were not fired by holding them to the shoulder, the butt was placed next to the cheek and both arms held the weapon in front of the firer. This though was not unique to Japanese matchlocks and was also seen in many European weapons of the time.  There’s a good video here – note the delay between the powder in the pan firing and the powder in the barrel firing

I’ve found a translationof how Japanese blacksmiths made the barrels of the weapons – and you can see the great metallurgical expertise of Japanese swordmakers being applied to this engineering process

1. To make a Teppo, one first makes an iron bar called a “shingane”. For a Teppo one shaku (30.3 cm) in length, the shingane would be one shaku longer, or four shaku. Straw is wrapped lightly around one of the ends of the shingane in order to make it easier to pull out during the teppo-making process.

 2. Next, an iron sheet, called a “kawaragane” is prepared in the appropriate size and thickness to match the teppo. When the kawaragane is ready, it is wrapped around the shingane; the shingane is taken out when the teppo is put on the fire and put back in when the iron is being forged. After the iron has been well forged, the seam is heated until it acquires a paste-like texture and welded together. This is called “wakashizuke”. This condition, consisting of a rolled kawaragane, is called an “ara-maki”. From this stage, polishing the barrel with a file and attaching the necessary parts will result in a finished teppo. This type of teppo is called a “udon-bari” and is an inexpensive standardized product.

 3. Expensive and well-made teppo are made by joining to the aramaki barrel many sheets of iron, hammered into long strips, wrapping them around the barrel and forging them by wakashi-zuke to make a stronger teppo. The result is called “kazura-maki”.

4. More “kazura” (iron strips; literally, vines) are welded to make a half-molten ara-maki. This is fully melted and welded together, using a hammer to forge the iron from the edge. This is called “tsume-maki”. Sometimes, at this point, the cartridge chamber is doubly wrapped. At this stage, the muzzle is wrapped thinly and the breech thickly in a kazura-maki, resulting in an almost complete barrel.

 5. If the entire barrel, and not only the cartridge chamber, is to be doubly wrapped, the strips are wrapped in the opposite direction as the first time. The result is a doubly wrapped barrel.

6. Next, a thick iron sheet is wrapped around the thinner end (the muzzle) to make the “koji”. A rough mold of a pan is made and placed in the cartridge chamber.

7. The resulting barrel is called an “arakata-zutsu”. The arakata-zutsu is put through a hole in a “katagi” (hardwood) and fastened with wedges and the bore is polished using a steel drill. First a rough drill and then, in the final steps, a finer drill is used.

8. Next, an auger is used to cut a breech bolt hole on the breech.

9. After one is finished with the auger, a file is used to shape the upper half of the teppo into a round shape, for a round barrel and an octagonal shape for an angular barrel. The shape of the pan is adjusted and the foresight and rear sight are welded on to the teppo by wakashizuke and fastened with breech bolts. Furthermore, a platform for a rivet to be secured to the gunstock is attached to the bottom of the barrel.

10. Now the teppo is finished. The foresight and rear sights area adjusted next by placing a target on the same level as the bore, normally at a distance of 6 ken (10.9m), and crisscrossing some string in front and behind the barrel, and aiming at the dark spot on the target through the bore. The barrel is then secured; this time one aims at the dark spot on the target through both sights to adjust the sights. This is called the “deai sadame”.

11. After this step, a plank equipped with a mechanism is fitted onto a gun rest made of old hardwood and match clippers and, in the case of an outside mechanism, a spring, as well as a rain-guard, smoke-guard, and trigger are attached to complete the teppo.

I found the above here where there is also a first person description of the arrival of the technology, allegedly written in 1606. Worth a read.

Technology Development

Inventing Detonators

I’m intrigued by the chain of historical inventions that led to the modern detonator.

Detonators for explosive charges evolved from firearm trigger mechanisms and I see these as an invention continuum, with one leading to another. Alongside these mechanical inventions, chemical discovery runs as a parallel track, particularly the discovery or primary explosives and high explosives, which detonate by shock (gunpowder being a low explosive which explodes by deflagration)

Initially, I guess the first “initiators” were simply burning fuzes which transmitted a flame to gunpowder. However there is some early mention of a some victim operated mechanisms perhaps using friction devices or steel and flint levers.   See Chinese IEDs here.  

To help undertsand the chain of scientific, chemical, physical and mechanical inventions that took us down this path the folloing rough time line might be useful:

Pre 1400 – Burning fuzes of various types, igniting gunpowder by burning.

Early to mid Mid 1400s – Invention of the matchlock mechanism to initiate firearms. Note that this was definitely a European invention – the Portuguese took matchlocks and introduced them to China and Japan.  (The story of how the Japanese obtained and reverse engineered the matchlock will be the subject of a future post) .

About 1500 – Invention of the wheel-lock, possibly by Leonardo Da Vinci, which introduces a new mechanical action to apply a burning fuze to a specific point.

1540 – The snaplock was invented, using a flint initiator. This was a precursor to the more sophisticated flintlock

1558 – The snaphaunce was developed which incorporated a mechanism for keeping the gunpowder covered until the flint fell, when the cover is opened automatically.  The cover is called the frizzen.

1588, a time initiated system used by Giambelli to explode the “Hoop”, with a timing mechanism causing ((I’m guessing with a snaplock or snaphance) to initiate the charge.

1602  Gold fulminate (the first primary/high explosive) discovered by John Tholde of Hesse.

1610 – The first flintlock initiation system developed The flintlock mechanism is an evolution of the snaphaunce whereby the frizzen is not only a cover for the pan of gunpowder, but also the steel face on which the flint strikes to cause sparks.

1659 Robert Hooke and Thomas Willis discover the primary explosive characteristic of Gold hydrazide

1745  Dr Watson of the Royal Society showed that an electrical spark from a Leyden jar could initiate a small blackpowder charge.

1750  Benjamin Franklin initiates gunpowder with an electrical spark and makes small paper tubes of  powder with two wires inserted and a spark gap created.

1788  Silver fulminate was first made by French chemist Berthollet.

1776 – American revolutionaries used adapted firearm mechanism to make contact mines consisting of “kegs” of gunpowder which were floated down rivers.  The kegs have fastened to the lid a wooden arm which when it touched a target ship connected to an iron pin, engaging a flintlock device from an adapted firearm, causing the main charge to explode.  Note the similarities in principle to much later IED initiators here.  I’ll post some images of these “kegs’ in future posts.

1777 – Italian scientist Alesandro Volta, describes how he had fired pistols, muskets and a ”mine subacquee” (underwater mine) electrically – it appears he used a hot wire to initiate a glass bulb full of a flammable gas.

1782 – Another Italian scientist, Cavallo, described detonation of a charge of gunpowder, electrically, using an incandescent wire embedded in the powder

1795 – Cavallo uses another method, using gunpowder mixed with steel filings, with two electrical probes embedded in it.

1799 – Fulminate of mercury, a primary explosive later used in detonators was first prepared by Charles Howard. Interesting reports on his experiments are here and I think its very significant indeed that Howard actually tested electrical initiation of mercury fulminate. I note also that Howard refers to French scientists electrically initiating some form of potassium chloride based explosive in the late 1700s.  Howard’s description of the experiments he conducted with mercury fulminate are fascinating – clearly he hoped he had invented an alternative to gunpowder, but initiating mercury fulminate within a gun caused some catastrophic damage to his equipment!  There is a great description of how Howard measured the volume of gas produced from a specific quantity of the explosive.

1812 – The Russian military scientist Pavel Schilling developed an electrically initiated IED, as a mine.  My apologies, in earlier posts I credited this to others later in the 19th Century, and I have only recently discovered Schilling’s  (and Volta’s, and Howard’s) technologies.  Schilling gradually improved the associated technologies, insulating wire with tarred hemp and copper tubing, and devising a carbon arc initiator.

Also in 1812 – Prussian scientist Sommerring improved the insulation of electrical wire, using rubber and varnish, allowing further capabilities to be developed in initiating explosives.

1820 – American scientist Robert Hare, worked on electrical initiation of flammable gases. Hare also developed a “plunger” type galvanic machine for producing electrical charges for this purpose.

1822 – Hare used  a hotwire embedded in a pyrotechnic mixture to initiate a blackpowder charge.  In the 1830s Hare also produced a tin tube container packed with powder and with an ignition wire for rock blasting but foresaw the military importance of command initiated explosive charges.

1829 – A young Samuel Colt initiated an under water charge electrically perhaps using a tarred copper wire.

1831 – The Bickford burning fuze was invented, taking away the guess work about time delays for burning fuses.

1837  Colonel (later General) Pasley of the Royal Engineers developed chemical then an electrical initiation mechanism to explode gunpowder charges under water. Pasley’s work appears to have been prompted by reading a  newspaper report of an “ordnance accident”, in Russia, when Tsar Nicholas I narrowly escaped death when viewing a demonstration of electrically initiated gunpowder charges used to blow up a bridge, presumably developed by Schilling. Pasley read the article and then sought the advice of English scientist Charles Wheatstone to consider how he might use the same concept.  Pasley’s contributions to military engineering are huge, and his explosive related inventions are very significant if only a part of that broader work.  I have yet to find details of Pasley’s chemical fuzes, but his electrical initiation mechanisms used electrically heated platinum wire, with the electricity provided by early galvanic cells. Pasley solved the problem of insulating the wires so they could be used under water, by coating wire with gutta percha. The platinum wire (or foil) provided enough heat to initiate the gunpowder it was embedded in.  However some reports state that the electrical system caused a detonation by a “galvanic spark” so the actual mechanism is still a little unclear.   I’m very intrigued by the chemical fuzes and how they worked, given the nature of the underwater tasks that Pasley developed the explosives for. I think it likely that there would have been some form of command pull to initiate the chemical reaction once the divers were clear and safe.  Chemically the reaction may have been similar to Nobel’s (later? ) designs.

1830s  –  Immanuel Nobel developed chemical initiation mechanisms to initiate gunpowder. The mechanisms used a glass vial containing suplhuric acid, which when broken (usually by an enemy) caused the acid to fall by gravity onto potassium chlorate, which ignited and caused surrounding gunpowder to initiate. These were confusingly called “Jacobi” fuzes after the Russian scientist for whom Nobel worked.  Jacobi led the Russian “armed services committee for underwater experiments” between 1839 and 1856. It is clear that Jacobi’s secrecy prevented international publication of the scientific achievements he made in electrical initiation. Jacobi’s work  from 1839 seems to have been prompted by both Schilling and Pasley.  What is significant is a reference I have found to Jacobi developing “mercury connecting devices” which probably mean some form of mercury electrical switch to initiate contact mines in the 1850s.

1830s, Mercury fulminate was used in copper caps used as firearm initiators taking the place of flint, and making the process of initiating a firearm much less dependent on flint and the weather.

1839 – Other British Royal Engineer salvage operations in Bermuda and in Bengal on the Hoogly river used electrically initiated charges.  I have a great piece of reseacrh to blog about with regard to the Hoogly river operation.

1840s – Samuel Colt conducted extensive work on highly complex electrical initiation systems for sea and river mines.

1848 – Werner von Siemens developed electrically initiated sea mines.

1863 – Alfred Nobel (Immanuel Nobel’s son) published his patent for a practical detonator to initiate nitro-glycerine.  Note that this was four years before his patent for dynamite.  In modern parlance this was a non electric blasting cap, itself initiated with burning fuse.   The detonator consisted of a small blackpowder charge, a wooden plug and a small quantity of nitroglycerine held within a metal cylinder. The black powder is initiated by a burning fuze, which pushes the wooden plug down the cylinder, which then strikes the niroglycerine with kinetic energy.

1865 –  Nobel refined his detonator design significantly, with a small metal tube containing mercury fulminate

1868. H. Julius Smith produces a detonator that uses a spark gap and mercury fulminate.

1875 The electrical detonator using a hot filament was developed independently by Gardiner and Smith

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.

Ship-Borne IEDs

Big IEDs in Ships

As promised, a quick “connections’ commentary on some pretty remarkable IEDs on ships and boats in history.

“Fireships” in terms of boats and ships loaded with incendiary material go back in history – I have found reference to them as far back as 413 BC.  With the invention of gunpowder, fireships occasionally contained gunpowder. Sometimes in massive quantities.  In an earlier blog here, I wrote about the “hellburners”,  two explosively laden fireships used by the Dutch defenders of Antwerp in 1584 against the invading Spanish – one of these the “Hoop” (Hope) detonated against a temporary Spanish bridge, killing 800 – 1000 soldiers. If this is true, it is still probably the most lethal single IED in history. I have now found a diagram purporting to the the clockwork timing mechanisms of the device manufacturer by Bory. The Hellburner itself was designed by the Italian Giambelli, who possibly at the time (and certainly later) was an agent of the British.

References I have found recently suggest that Giambelli mounted a series of earlier attacks , floating explosive objects down the tidal river, with limited success. These IEDs were generally floating objects and rafts which carried barrels of gunpowder on a burning fuse.

After these earlier attacks failed Giambelli “thought big” and amidst a fleet of regular fire vessels sailed two explosive vessels (the “Hoop” and the “Fortune”) down the tide towards the target bridge. My earlier post has more details.  The “Fortune” had a burning fuse (which I have also fund an description of, but it is too complex to post details here).

The Hellburner incident and the use of explosive ships (described by the Italians as “Maschina Infernale”, and by the British as “Machine Vessels” became well known among the navies of Europe for several hundred years.

Just over a hundred years later in 1693 the British Navy led by Admiral Benbow used a ship, imaginatively named the Vesuvius, laden with 300 tons of explosives, (other sources say 20,000 pounds of gunpowder) during an attack on the French port of St Malo. The vessel was sailed in by a Captain Philips. The ship did not quite reach its target, became stuck on a rock and exploded “blowing the roofs of half the town”. But causing little loss of life.  The capstan of the “machine vessel” was thrown several hundred yards and landed on an Inn destroying it.


Machine ship “Vesuvius”, 1693

The following year in a raid on Dieppe, again led by Benbow a machine vessel was sent in to the port to destroy it. The ship, skippered by a Capt Dunbar was placed again the quay – and the crew and Capt Dunbar left it quickly. Unfortunately the fuze went out – but Dunbar re-boarded the vessel, re–lit the fuze, and evacuated a second time.


The Dieppe Raid, 1694

Similar machine vessel attacks were mounted on Dunkirk in the same year.

(Note: There were a number of vessels developed in parallel at the time , known as “bomb vessels” but these should not be confused with machine vessels. Bomb vessels were essentially ships built to mount and fire mortars.  To confuse matters the Vesuvius was a bomb vessel converted to a machine vessel)

A little over 100 years later in 1809 Captain (later Admiral ) Cochrane used an explosively laden ship in the Battle of the Basque Roads on the Biscay Atlantic coast of France.  Cochrane used two explosive ships and twenty-one fire ships to attack the French fleet moored off Ile d’Aix.  Here’s Captain Cochrane’s description (who personally set the fuses on one explosion vessel himself)

 “To our consternation, the fuses, which had been constructed to burn fifteen minutes, lasted little more than half that time, when the vessel blew up, filling the air with shells, grenades, and rockets; whilst the downward and lateral force of the explosion raised a solitary mountain of water, from the breaking of which in all directions our little boat narrowly escaped being swamped. The explosion-vessel did her work well, the effect constituting one of the grandest artificial spectacles imaginable. For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of fifteen hundred barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel. The sea was convulsed as by an earthquake, rising, as has been said, in a huge wave, on whose crest our boat was lifted like a cork, and as suddenly dropped into a vast trough, out of which as it closed upon us with the rush of a whirlpool, none expected to emerge. In a few minutes nothing but a heavy rolling sea had to be encountered, all having again become silence and darkness.”

Cochrane went on , in 1812, to design even bigger machine vessels, but never got the political support needed to build or employ them. His 1812 designs used a hulk, rather than a rigged vessel.

“The decks would be removed, and an inner shell would be constructed of heavy timbers and braced strongly to the hull. In the bottom of the shell would be laid a layer of clay, into which obsolete ordnance and metal scrap were embedded. The “charge,” in the form of a thick layer of powder, would next be placed, and above that would be laid rows and rows of shells and animal carcasses.   The explosion ship would then be towed into place at an appropriate distance from anchored enemy ships, heeled to a correct angle by means of an adjustment in the ballast loaded in the spaces running along each side of the hulk between the inner and outer hulls, and anchored securely. When detonated, the immense mortar would blast its lethal load in a lofty arc, causing it to spread out over a wide area and to fall on the enemy in a deadly torrent. Experiments conducted with models in the Mediterranean, during his layoff, convinced Cochrane that three explosion ships, properly handled, could saturate a half-mile-square area with 6,000 missiles–enough destructive force to cripple any French squadron even if it lay within an enclosed anchorage.”

In 1864, during the American Civil war an explosively laden ship, the USS Louisiana was used to attack a Confederate fort, Fort Fisher, guarding Wilmington, North Carolina.  The ship was meant to be run aground adjacent to the fort walls and then detonated.  The ship was carrying “215 tons of explosives”. The attack failed as the Louisiana detonated too far away from the fort walls to cause damage.

Here’s a diagam of the ship. Note the huge amount of explosives. I have obtained a detailed description of the numerous initiation systems and fuzes but it is too complex to post here easily.  Suffice to say there were 5 independent firing systems.


USS Louisiana, 1864

Just over a fifty years later the Zeebrugge raid of 1918 saw the British Royal Navy again use an explosive vessel, this time the submarine C-3, under Lt Cdr Sandford. Sandford was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross.

“This officer was in command of submarine C3, and most skillfully placed that vessel in between the piles of the viaduct before lighting his fuse and abandoning her. He eagerly undertook this hazardous enterprise, although well aware (as were all his crew) that if the means of rescue failed and he or any of his crew were in the water at the moment of the explosion, they would be killed outright by the force of such explosion. Yet Lieutenant Sandford disdained to use the gyro steering which would have enabled him and his crew to abandon the submarine at a safe distance, and preferred to make sure, as far as was humanly possible, of the accomplishment of his duty.” After pushing the submarine under the piles of the viaduct and setting the fuse, he and his companions** found that the propeller of their launch was broken, and they had to resort to oars and to row desperately hard against the strong current to get a hundred yards away before the charge exploded. They had a wonderful escape from being killed by the falling debris.


Damage caused by the detonation of the C-3 – Zeebrugge 1918

The final one from this series is Operation Chariot, aka “the Greatest Raid”, the British Navy and commando raid on St Nazaire in 1942.  I won’t repeat the story, other than provide this link to the Wikipedia article – not many Wikipedia articles make the hairs of my neck stand up, but this one does. In this raid, HMS Cambeltown was converted into a massive IED and rammed into the docks in St Nazaire to prevent their use by the German Battleship Tirpitz.


HMS Campbeltown rammed onto the dock gates in St Nazaire, before she exploded. 1942.

One big concept – massive IEDs in ships, woven through history.

I have much more to post on historical naval IEDs. Be patient!

China

Early Chinese Victim-Operated IEDs

I’ve been “following my nose” looking for some early historical uses of victim operated or booby trap IEDs and found an interesting reference to an intriguing Chinese IED of the 14th century.  While there are references to both command and victim operated IEDs in China a century earlier (connected to war against Kubla Khan’s Mongols) there is a Chinese text called the Houlongjing (Fire Dragon Manual) from around 1350 which contains some fascinating detail of booby trap IEDs and their initiation system.

 

The Huolongjing describes IEDs constructed from iron spheres filled with gunpowder, and within a range of other IEDs describes two of particular note, translated as the “ground thunder explosive” and the “self-trespassing” types.  The text says the following:

These mines are mostly installed at frontier gates and passes. Pieces of bamboo are sawn into sections nine feet in length, all septa of the bamboo being removed, except the last; and it is then bandaged round with fresh cow hide tape. Boiling oil is next poured into the tube and left there before being removed (I’m guessing these measures are to waterproof the container.)   The fuse starts from the bottom of the tube and the explosive (blackpowder) is compressed into it to form an explosive mine. The powder fills up eight tenths of the tube, while lead or iron pellets take up the rest of the space:, then the open end is sealed with wax. . A trench five feet in depth is dug (for the device to be concealed). The fuse is connected to a firing device which ignites when disturbed.

The Houlongjing then describes an initiation mechanism for this device as consisting of a steel wheel, which directed sparks onto the connection of fuses running to the buried explosive charges. That alone is interesting, but a further Chinese document of 1606 adds detail, about a flint connected to the steel wheel and the steel wheel being driven by a weight drive. There appears to have been some sort of pin release caused by the victim stepping on a flexible board, which releases a weight on a string. The string is wrapped around the axle of the steel wheel or wheels , to which a flint is attached. The flint rotates round striking a steel, causing a spark, which initiates the IED.

There’s a connection here to the invention of the wheel-lock mechanism by Leonardo da Vinci in about 1500. I’m pretty certain that as well as being used as the initiation mechanism for muskets, wheel-locks began to be used as IED initiation systems in the late 1500s.  Of course too there is a link between the weight drive of the Chinese IED and the development of weight driven clocks with escapements.  Technology development is interesting when various aspects run in parallel.

There are some detailed diagrams of the initiations systems in the Houlongjing but I confess I can’t yet make head nor tail of them.

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