Standing Well Back
Uncategorised

Russian command wire device – Crimean war, 1855

I have blogged a few times earlier this year about Russian”stay behind” devices and here.   In these earlier posts I also discussed some evidence that victim operated explosive devices were left behind when the Russians retreated from various places in the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856.

I have just found a contemporary translation of a French report from the Crimean War detailing massive command-wire electrically initiated devices from that conflict, intended to target advancing French and British forces.  So it appears that the Russians were making significant use of both victim operated explosive devices as well as electrical command wire devices in this conflict. I don’t think that has been widely recognised by historians.  Bearing in mind electrically initiated explosive devices were still something of a novelty in the 1850s, this really shows that the Russians had grasped the potential of the use in warfare of such devices and had planned and probably succeeded to detonate several simultaneously. Although the length of the wires are not specified, I think they were fired from a considerable distance, from a central command post. I find the obvious parallels with this concept in 1855 and the F-10 “stay behind” devices used in WW2  by Russia, 90 or so years apart, detailed in my earlier post very interesting, as well as early adoption of this initiation technology. The fact that the command wire ran such a distance , and partly under the sea, and that there were a number of them shows significant technical, tactical and operational capability with this early use of the technology.

The use of the devices was in the Battle for Malakoff in September 1855, which was in the main a French effort, but British forces played a key role in the Battle for the Redoubt. It was a bloody battle, with 20-30,000 deaths and 19 generals killed.

Here is an excerpt from the translation.  Well done that sapper for cutting the command wire to the Malakoff redoubt with his axe!

I have the tale of another quite remarkable electrically initiated device from the 19th Century, from some new research I’ve been doing, up my sleeve, this time an American device that nearly sank a battleship. Watch this space.

Follow up:

I continue to find further hints and comments about the use of command wire IEDs by the Russians during the siege of Sebastopol.  For example this comment in a letter from General Charles Gordon discussing the aftermath in Sebastopol:

“We have traced voltaic wires to nearly every powder magazine in the place”

Also this photograph taken shortly after the battle. Although the image is not that clear the title is surprising. Here we have a Royal Engineer Search Team (REST) looking for an IED command wire, in 1855.

Carronade Battery, flanking the Ditch of the Redan. Sappers looking for Electric Wires communicating with the Powder Magazine

 

1850-1860

Senior officers and explosive investigation don’t mix

In the last few days the British Royal Navy  have announced a “large” deployment (their words not mine!) to the Baltic as part of a NATO exercise.     The reports mention that this is the largest deployment to the Baltic for 100 years.

Actually the previous deployments are pretty interesting.  If you don’t know the story of Agar VC, who tore around the Baltic in a fast torpedo boat, delivering and picking up spies for MI6, then sinking Russian cruisers, in 1919 (!)  you should read this life story here.  Jaw dropping stuff.  I have mentioned one of his WW2 exploits here, and he also took part in the Zeebrugge Raid in 1918, so he is a recurring character on this blog.  Nothing to do with explosives but the story of the sinking of HMS Dorsetshire is remarkable.

There also was a significant range of British naval operations in the Baltic during the Crimean war (1855).   I’ve mentioned this in passing in earlier posts but it’s worth revisiting.  The Russians had a major naval base on the island of Kronstadt hat was potentially a target for attack by the British Navy. The Russians deployed a fairly large number of explosive devices, tethered just below the surface of the sea on the approaches to the base, in effect an early sea mine. (Similar devices had been deployed in the Crimea and you can see a superb drawing of one here)

The British Navy on patrol in the Baltic became aware of them, and decided to investigate, sending two ships, with senior officers aboard to recover and examine the devices.

Here’s a Royal Navy diagram:

The device works when the rod A-A is struck by the side of a vessel. This rod then pushes on a glass vial of Sulphuric Acid (D-D), breaking it at the bottom. The acid drops into a container full of Potassium Chlorate (C), causing a reaction which ignites the gunpowder charge. This fuze is called a “Jacobi fuze” although in fact it was designed by Immanuel Nobel, father of Alfred Nobel.

Provided the rods aren’t pushed, (they are held by a spring), it is possible in theory to recover the mine, which is exactly what sailors from a ship carrying Admiral Seymour did. On recovering the device onto the deck of the ship it was carefully taken apart, and there was discussion amongst the officers observing how the mechanism should work.  Admiral Seymour, being a “hands-on sort of chap” worked it out an exclaimed “O no. This is the way it would go off” – and he pushed the bar A-A. The device duly functioned as intended , exploded, and knocked everyone down around it. Seymour survived but was badly injured.

 

The very next day, a ship carrying Admiral Dundas recovered a similar device. Admiral Dundas performed exactly the same trick as Admiral Seymour, the device exploded and Dundas nearly lost his sight.

Senior officers eh?

 

 

1850-1860

Report of IEDs in the Crimea, 1855

I have written before about Russian use of IEDs in the Crimea, here and here, but recently I came across another report referring to IEDs in Sebastopol, left behind after it was taken by the British in September 1855. Before evacuating the city, Russian forces had prepared and set thirty to forty victim operated IEDs (“booby traps”).   Lt Col Frederic Dallas wrote “ the Russians, outside all their works, have Machines, our men call them “Man traps”, which explode when you touch, or rather tread upon them, and they are a frightful source of accidents”.

The Illustrated London News war artist wrote an account of one such incident on 28 September 1855 describing an explosion that had taken place.  He also describes the initiation mechanism of these IEDs which is clearly the so called “Jacobi Fuse”, actually designed by Alfred Nobel’s father, Immanuel Nobel for Jacobi who was head of the Russian munition design bureau.  Here’s the report:

Yesterday, as I was sketching in the west of Sebastopol, an explosion shook the buildings around and reverberated through the roofless and untenanted edifices of the place. The Arsenal Creek was filled with a heavy black smoke, and showers of large stones fell into the water, lashing it for a moment into sheets of foam. The centre of the fire was a battery on the left flank of the Creek Battery. This was one of the works erected by the Russians to sweep the approaches of the Woronzoff road; it was built of stones taken from the houses around it, faced with earth externally, and without a ditch. The magazine was in the foundations of a house which had once stood there […]. The Russians had placed a fougasse over it, and an accidental tread upon a wooden peg driven into the earth broke a glass tube of inflammable matter which communicated with the powder below […].

Three of the men in the work were blown to atoms; and a large number were buried in the ruins; whilst sad havoc was at the same time committed on parties of workmen leading mules along the road close by. Two soldiers of the guard in the Creek Battery were killed by stones projected with great violence into the air, and launched with fatal force upon them. Several mules and horses were killed in this same manner, and every point within 200 yards of the spot was visited by the terrible shower. The crater left by the explosion was about twenty feet deep and twenty wide; and in its crumbled sides were found some of the wounded, who were speedily conveyed to hospital.

After this incident , troops searched carefully for others and found one in a nearby battery . The devices left behind in Sebastopol prevented the British and French form occupying the city properly. It did not prevent them from undertaking appalling looting however.

1850-1860

Chinese River IED of 1857

Here’s an interesting story about a failed IED attack on a British Naval vessel in 1857. Britain was at war with the city of Canton in China in what was called the “Opium War”. Two British naval vessels, the “Niger” and the “Encounter” were patrolling the Pearl River. A couple of months earlier two small boats had exploded next to the Niger, so a strict policy of look-outs and challenges was being enforced to keep small boats at bay.  At 4 am on 7th January 1857, a look-out on the Encounter spotted a man in a small boat sculling towards the ships. He challenged him and on not getting the appropriate response, shot him dead.  A ship’s boat was launched and they recovered two large explosive charges, each with over a half a ton of explosives. The charges consisted of sealed wooden barrels weighed down with stone so that they only just floated. Protruding from the barrel was a gunpowder filled tube to a small platform on which glowing embers were placed. The embers were kept separate from the gunpowder in the tube by a metal tray or slide attached to a piece of string. The render safe procedure used was to splash water onto the embers.  The plan was that the two barrels linked by rope would float down and the rope fastening them together would catch the bow of the Encounter, then pushing the barrels close either side of the ship. Then the boatman would pull the string to pull out the slides on each barrel, causing the glowing embers to ignite the gunpowder.

Here’s a picture of one of the two charges:

The tactical design has great similarities to British IED attacks in 1804 on the French, although the initiation system is somewhat exotic.

1850-1860

Weapon Technical Intelligence in 1855

I’ve found a very interesting print of a Russian Infernal Machine (i.e. an “IED”) from 1855 from the Crimea, with an interesting back story, demonstrating once again that technical exploitation of IEDs as part of “Weapons Technical Intelligence” in nothing new.

The print is shown below.  It was drawn by a British Naval artist, Oswald Walter Brierly who was attached to the British Naval fleet at Crimea as an artist in residence.

In May 1855 British forces, assisted by Turkish and French contingents, conducted a large scale raid to seize the Russian held port of Kertch.  They destroyed several magazines, seized weapons and found this IED in the Dockyard.  The Dockyard was clearly being used to manufacture a number of devices, ammunition and other munitions.  The device was recovered and examined carefully along with other material.

From a military perspective the raid turned into something of an embarrassment – although it achieved its aims, the behaviour of the Turkish and British troops was appalling as they committed rape, pillaged the town and destroyed everything they saw.   From a technical perspective the device is interesting as it shows, I believe, an evolution from the designs of Immanuel Nobel and Professor Jacobi found in the Baltic and seized earlier by the British

a. The Jacobi Fuze (designed, I believe, by Immanuel Nobel, father of Alfred Nobel

b. Improvised Sea mines from the Baltic – 1854

c. American WTI in the Crimean War 

From a separate source I have the following description of the device shown in the image above, which consisted of six of the charges shown, operating in a chain:

It consisted of six vessels of wood, shaped like two cones placed base to base, each 21/2 feet long by 11/2 feet in diameter at the base, and of several similar vessels of a conical form, and of equal dimensions, loaded to float with the apex downward, the base being provided with a cover to fall on a prepared fuse and ignite the charge upon contact with any floating object.  These vessels were attached to each other by wires, and hen placed in the water would look like a line of buoy; but the wires were carried to the poles of a galvanic battery within the Russian magazine on shore.

The diagram above shows an electrical initiator in the upper part of the device and describes a “gutta percha” seal system to protect it from water ingress.

I think this then is an evolution of the devices seen before – using a “Jacobi fuze” as a contact initiator in the same manner as the devices described in the links above, but having a secondary, electrical initiation system as an alternate. Thus, they are one step more sophisticated in combing the two.

Close Me
Looking for Something?
Search:
Post Categories: