Standing Well Back
21st Century

Rockets, again

This week the police in the Republic of Ireland held a press conference where they displayed a range of weaponry seized from Republican terrorists. Included in the display were rockets which were described as similar to “kassam” rockets used by Palestinian militants in Gaza.  Here’s a picture of one of the rockets.


And here’s some Kassam rockets for comparison:

Now of course there is some alarm at this, and understandably so, but regular readers of this blog will know that a recurring theme of mine is that terrorist weaponry, well, has a recurring theme. And this is a great example. One might think from the press coverage that the occurrence of terrorist rockets is new in Ireland, and that these terrorists might have been exchanging technology with Palestinians. I’m not going to comment on that, but let me highlight something – rockets used by revolutionaries in Ireland aren’t new at all. A couple of years back I ran a series of posts about Irish rebel improvised rockets used in Dublin in 1803. That’s 216 years ago. And frankly they weren’t that dissimilar, a little smaller, but not much so.  And I made the point that the designs used by Emmett’s rebels in Dublin in 1803, were actually built on instructions from an English rocket designer, Robert Anderson, from over a hundred years earlier, in 1696. Here’s two pages of those three-hundred-year-old build instructions:

 

By the way, I still believe that Congreve, who claimed to have invented military rockets in about 1805 was copying Emmet’s designs and inadvertently copying the even older design by Robert Anderson.

Here’s the links to the posts about the Dublin rockets of 1803 and their links to the 1696 design.

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/24/revolution-and-invention-comparing-syria-in-2012-with-irelan.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/28/the-mystery-of-the-the-man-with-no-history-other-spies-and-e.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/27/woosh-bang-ohnasty.html

http://www.standingwellback.com/home/2012/12/28/rockets-a-reassessment-a-mystery-and-a-discovery.html 

1580-1590

Things that have happened before

The press are pretty awful at describing any given terrorist attack as something “new”.  I hope this site and the blog posts associated with it show that very often there is nothing new under the sun.  Tactics, technology, targets all repeat themselves in one form or another, and history is forgotten time after time.  Partly this is because of the “shock” affect of terrorism, which can indeed be stunning, and partly because people (journalists and politicians included) are lazy.

In an effort to counter these, as readers of previous blog posts will have seen, I research and collect early examples of certain kinds of improvised explosive devices, It’s time to summarize a few here, some  of which I’ve written about before and otehrs I will write about when time permits.

a. Letter bombs – I have details of letter bombs from 1581 (Poland) and this one from 1764 (Denmark). A Colonel Poulsen, living in Borglum Abbey, received a box through the mail. “When he opens it, therein is to be found gunpowder and a firelock which sets fire unto it, so he became very injured”

  b. Vehicle bombs. The Wall St bombing in New York in 1920 is often wrongly cited as the first.  There was a famous vehicle bomb in Yildiz, Turkey in 1904 and the attempted assassination of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800, in Paris using a vehicle bomb. The concept was well known and various designs were circulated in military documentation much earlier. I’ve got some copies of those diagrams.

c. IED shrapnel coated in acid or anti-coagulant.  This was trumpeted as a new horrific tactic a few years ago – but the Stern gang attempted such techniques in 1942 (along with exceptionally sophisticated “come-on” tactics) in an assassination attempt on a British Palestinian policeman.  The tactical design of this attack is extremely interesting, very thorough, and I’ll post details in a few weeks.

d. Multiple VBIED attacks – attacks in Iraq ten years ago using multiple vehicles against a target such as a hotel were labelled as “new”. But British Army deserters used three trucks to blow up Ben Yehuda St in Jerusalem in 1948, each allegedly containing a ton of TNT and additional material. Their intended target was a hotel. I’m building a full post on this.

1800-1810

USS Intrepid – Another ship-borne massive IED

I’m indebted to John C Wideman, author of an excellent and detailed study of US civil war IEDs for information about another ship-borne IED similar to those mentioned in an earlier blog post.

The USS Intrepid was a ketch, originally named the Mastico, captured from Tripoli (now in Libya) in the First Barbary War. The First Barbary War has its origins in interesting parallels with modern piracy.

In 1804, the Intrepid was converted into a “floating volcano”, to be sent into Tripoli harbour and blown up amidst the corsair fleet adjacent to the walls of the port’s fortress. The ketch was loaded with 150 artillery shells and 100 barrels of gunpowder. Burning fuzes with a 15 minute delay were attached.  a crew of 11, led by Lt Richard Somers manned the vessel.  On entering Tripoli harbour, it cane under intense fire, and was unable to manoeuvre towards the intended target.  The 15 minute fuze proved unreliable and the ship detonated prematurely, killing the crew who had intended escaping by row boat.


USS Intrepid exploding in Tripoli Harbour

So, it can be seen, the explosively laden ship has been a repeated tactic, since 1584:

1584 – The explosion of the “Hoop”, Antwerp, against the invading Spanish Army. This incident remains, in my opinion the IED that has killed most victims in history, with 800 – 1000 killed. Tell me if I’m wrong.

1693 – The “Vesuvius”, used by the British under Admiral Benbow against St Malo

1694 – The Dieppe Raid, and raids against Dunkirk using the same technique

1804 – The Intrepid used by the American Navy against Tripoli, North Africa

1809 – Two explosive ships used by Admiral Cochrane, against the French, in the Basque Roads. Notably these had 15 minute fuses which exploded prematurely.

1864 – USS Louisiana, used in the US Civil war against Fort Fisher, Wilmington, N Carolina.

1918 – Zeebrugge raid, by the British Navy, using a submarine packed with explosives

1942 – HMS Campbelltown rammed into the dock gates in St Nazaire by the Royal Navy.

1800-1810

French Technical Intelligence on a Command-initiated IED, 1801

I have written before about the IED attack on Napoleon Bonaparte on Christmas Eve 1800, and I am slowly uncovering more and more details.  These include:

  • Detailed costs of medical support and pensions for the families of victims.
  • Details of the 25 houses damaged by the explosion, and examples of that damage.

In the investigation that followed, a gentleman called Chevalier was arrested, and an “infernal machine” in his possession was seized.  This was a command initiated device, and “Citizen Monge” a member of the office of the Prefect of Paris was assigned to examine it.

The device was described as follows:

This infernal machine consisted of a barrel hooped with iron, and filled with balls, maroons and gunpowder. To this machine was attached a gun barrel, heavily loaded. This machine was placed on a wagon, laid on purpose to intercept the way and discharged by the aid of a pack thread from a neighbouring house. The intent: was, that its discharge should overturn  and destroy everything that was near it.

A separate report has Chevalier admitting that it contains six or seven pounds of powder, then:

In this barrel is securely fixed a musquet loaded, but with the stock cut off. This machine is placed on a small carriage, which unexpectedly, and at a given signal is pushed into the street to obstruct the passage, and then by means of a string the trigger of the musquet is pulled and the whole machine blows up.

The use of a trigger mechanism from a firearm is of course well known and I have blogged before, several times :

So who was this Citizen Monge to whom the task of examining the device was given?  It turns out Gaspard Monge was a technical and scientific adviser to Napoleon and a famous scientist. He was held in very high regard by Napoleon.  Monge was interested in explosives, and ordnance and wrote books and papers on the subject.   Monge was tasked earlier in 1800 by Napoleon to consider Fulton’s inventions.

Once again I’m struck by several issues:

a. Technical examination of IEDs goes back over two hundred years.

b. Simple adaptation of firearms to initiate IEDs can be found repeatedly over history.

In doing this research I’ve uncovered much more about Fulton and his devices – which I’ll return to in future posts

1630-1640

400 years of IED design – and you end up with the same device

Compare the device from Syria, last month at this link:  http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/syria022013/s27_41627145.jpg

with this IED from 1630:

Ok, so the Syrian rebel one hasn’t actually got wheels on, but the axles are there.  This design was also used in Dublin in 1803.

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