Standing Well Back
Ship-Borne IEDs

Fulton and Royal Navy IEDs -1805

Another in the series of posts about historical use of IEDs.  I’ve been slowly gathering material on naval use of IEDs , and have some great stories to tell. In future weeks I’ll write about:

  • Three massive ship borne IEDs of 1673, 1693 and 1694, (used by the British Navy against the French)
  • Floating IEDs designed by Cornelius Drebbel in the 1620s, (used by the British Navy against the French)
  • An attack using an IED on a ship in the Tagus in 1650 (by the British parliamentarian Navy on a British royalist ship)
  • An attack off Boulogne on 1804 using a fascinatingly designed IED on a small catamaran, (used by the British Navy against the French)
  • Admiral Benbow’s attacks  and Admiral Cochrane’s attacks (on the French in St Malo) using massive IEDs in 1693 and 1809 and their spooky similarity with the Campbeltown attack in the raid on St Nazaire in WW2

For now, I’m again I’m grateful to Leslie Payne for flagging me a source document – a letter from Robert Fulton to the President of the USA in 1810.

Fulton was an interesting man who worked on a  range of naval engineering matters. Born in the USA in 1765, he experimented with explosives as a child and developed paddle wheels for his father’s fishing boat .   By 1797 he was a well-known inventor in Europe and was building steam boats and a submarine, the Nautilus, for Napoleon Bonaparte.  Some sources suggest he was also making explosive charges for the French Navy

France and England were at war at the time (as usual). In 1804 Fulton switched sides and went to England to offer his inventions there.  He was commissioned by the Prime Minister, William Pitt, to develop a range of Naval weapons including explosive charges.   It is in this period that the attack, described below, occurs.

Fulton then switched allegiances again and went home to the US, to build submarines and torpedoes for use against the British. In 1810 he wrote a letter to the President James Madison on the subject of “The Torpedo War and submarine explosions”.   The letter is interesting on several levels:

  1. It describes a very successful demonstration undertaken by Fulton, where he blew up a ship as a demonstration to the Prime Minister off the cost near deal in Kent in 1805. (Samuel Colt conducted a similar experiment a few decades later for the US Navy in the Potomac near the Navy yards.)
  2. Initially the devices were large (180 pounds of gunpowder) and initiated by clockwork  with an 18 minute delay.
  3. There is a beautiful quote about a sceptical British Naval observer to the trial;   “Twenty minutes before the Dorothea was blown up, Capt Kingston asserted that if a Torpedo were placed under his cabin while he was at dinner, he should feel no concern for the consequence. Occular demonstration is the best proof for all men.”
  4. A pithy quote from a British Admiral, Earl St Vincent, who said of the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for Fultons plans  “ Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed, to encourage a mode of war which they who commanded the seas did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it”
  5. It describes a similar experiment conducted in New York harbour in 1807, but which failed at first because of a design fault in the explosive devices.
  6. A detailed description and diagram of the device. Although the demonstrations used clockwork initiation systems, Fulton designed a lever switch which a passing ship would act on, so causing a cocked gun trigger to fire, initiating the charge.
  7. An “attack torpedo” using a clockwork timer and a harpoon gun to fasten the torpedo to a target.

  1. A detailed description of the attack on the French ships anchored off Boulogne by Capt Siccombe of the Royal Navy and his men in 1805.  In two separate attacks, one led by Capt Siccombe and another by Lt Payne, the “infernal machines” failed to seriously damage the ships, and Fulton conducted a rapid technical evaluation to attempt to understand why.  It appears that the ballast adjustments of the two charges were incorrectly set, so the charges detonated on the surface of the water next to the ships rather than under the keel as intended.
  2. The letter describes the efficacy that a few well armed, fast moving small boats can have on a major naval fleet, if moving at speed and with novel weapons…. (Iran, Persian gulf, Sixth fleet….any premonitions?) and discusses the cost effectiveness of his infernal machines against warships and the asymmetric warfare principles behind it.  He describes how a fleet of small boats could command an area like the Straits of Dover (or the Persian Gulf!)

 

Update on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 9:17PM by Roger Davies

This is beautiful!.  Here’s a document I just found – a legal contract between the British Government and Fulton, Note the values of his rewards and also his promise not to divulge the plans to anyone else for 14 years (a promise he broke in his letter to President Madison)

Articles of Agreement between the Right Honourable William Pitt, first

Lord Commissioner of his Majesty’s treasury and Chancelor of the Exchequer,

and the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Melville, first Lord of the

Admiralty, in behalf of his Majesty’s government on the one part, and Robert

Fulton, citizen of the United States of America and inventor of a plan of

attacking fleets by submarine Bombs, on the other part.

     The said Robert Fulton agrees to disclose the principles of his scheme

to Sir Home Popham and to superintend the execution of it on the following

conditions:

 

     First. To be paid Two hundred pounds a month while he is employed on

this Service for his personal trouble and Expences.

     Second. To have a credit lodged from time to time for the payment of his

Mechanical preparation, not to exceed Seven thousand pounds.

     Third. That in his Majesty’s dockyards and Arsenals shall be made or

furnished all such articles as may be required which are applicable to this

purpose.

    Fourth. If any circumstance should arise to prevent government carrying

this plan into execution then the parties are each to name two commissioners

for the purpose of examining the principles; and trying such experiments as

they may think proper, and if it should appear to the Majority of the

members that the plan is practicable and offers a more effectual mode of

destroying the enemies fleet at Boulogne, Brest, or elsewhere, than any now

in practise and with less risk, then government is to pay the said Robert

Fulton the sum of Forty Thousand Pounds as a compensation for demonstrating

the principles, and making over the entire possession of his submarine mode

of attack.

     Fifth. When the said Robert Fulton has destroyed by his submarine

carcasses or Bombs one of the enemies decked Vessels, then Government is to

pay him the sum of Forty Thousand pounds, provided Commissioners appointed

As in the previous article shall be of opinion that the same Scheme can be

practically applied to the destruction of the enemies fleets.

      Sixth. If the Arbitrators differ in opinion then they are to draw lots

for the choice of an Umpire and the majority of the Voices to decide all

points of reference within the construction of this agreement and that

decision to be final.

     Seventh. One half the supposed value of all vessels destroyed by Mr.

Fulton’s Submarine mode of attack to be paid him by government as long as he

superintends the execution of his plan; but when government has no further

occasion for his services; or that he wishes to retire then he is only to be

paid one quarter of the supposed value of such vessels as may be destroyed

by his scheme, and this remuneration to continue for the space of fourteen

years from the date hereof. 

    Eighth. In case the Vessels destroyed by this scheme should exceed in

amount Forty thousand pounds, then the Forty Thousand pounds first

stipulated to be paid, shall be considered as part payment of the whole sum

which may become due to the said Robert Fulton.

    Ninth. If in the course of practice any improvements Should be Suggested

that can only be esteemed as a collateral Aid to the general principles of

Mr. Fulton’s mode of attack, then such improvements are not to demenesh or

set aside his claims on government. 

     Tenth. All monies which may become due to Mr. Fulton to be paid within

six months from the time when they shall be so adjudged according to the

tenor of this agreement.

     Eleventh. This agreement to be considered by both parties as a liberal

covenant with a View to protect the Rights of the individual, and to prevent

any unproper advantage being taken of his Majesty’s Government.

 

      Mr. Fulton having deposited the drawings and plans of his submarine

scheme of attack; in the hands of a confidential friend with a view to their

being delivered to the American government in case of his death, does hereby

bind himself to withdraw all such plans and drawings and not divulge them or

any part of his principles to any person whatever for the space of fourteen

years; which is the term during which he is to derive all the advantages of

their operation from the British Government.

     The benefit of the foregoing agreement shall be extended to the heir

and executors of the said Robert Fulton.

     Signed this Twentieth day of July One thousand eight hundred and four.    

                                              ROBERT FULTON.

19th Century

Siemens Tangents – Command Wire IEDs of 1848

Following the post below about micro IEDs in Siemens equipment I’m going to go off on a wild tangent here. Hold on.

I’m reminded by the mention of Siemens about much earlier IEDs associated with the Siemens founder, Werner von Siemens in the 1840s.  For context, in the US Samuel Colt developed a number of sea mines, and in Russia, Alfred Nobel’s father Emmanuel Nobel worked for the Russians developing a contact fuze for sea mines used in the Crimean war against British naval vessels in the Baltic.  (A similar contact fuze, named the Jacobi fuze, but actually designed by Nobel was also used in improvised land mines in the Crimea).

Werner von Siemens was a German electrical engineer and inventor who developed electrically initiated command detonated water borne IEDs which protected the waters off Kiel and prevented Danish naval bombardment of the city during the Schleswig-Holstein war in 1848.   I’m amused that Siemens was placed under “honorary arrest” for being a second in a duel, and used his time in gaol to conduct chemistry experiments.

Siemens’s sister lived in Kiel where her husband was a chemistry professor. They lived close to the harbour in Kiel and were potentially vulnerable to Danish attack.   As Siemens says in his autobiography:

This led me to the then entirely novel idea of defending the harbour by submarine mines fired by electricity. My wires insulated with gutta-percha offered a means of exploding such mines at the right moment in safety from the shore. I communicated this plan to my brother-in-law, who took it up warmly and immediately submitted it to the provisional government for the defence of the country. The latter approved of it and despatched a special emissary to the Prussian Government, with the request to grant me permission to execute the plan. My authorized employment or even mere leave of absence for this warlike purpose was however opposed on the ground that peace still reigned between Prussia and Denmark. But it was intimated to me that I should receive the desired permission if circumstances changed, as was expected. 

I employed this waiting time in making preparations. Large and particularly strong canvas – bags rendered watertight by caoutchouc (rubber) were got ready, each capable of holding about five hundred- weight of powder. Further, wires insulated in all haste and exploding contrivances were prepared, and the necessary galvanic batteries procured for firing. When the departmental chief in the war-office. General von Reyher, in whose ante-room I daily waited for the decision, at last made the communication, that he had just been appointed minister and war having been resolved against Denmark, that he granted me the desired furlough as the first act of hostilities against Denmark, my preparations were almost completed, and on the same evening I left for Kiel. 

My brother-in-law in Kiel had meanwhile made all the preparations in order to proceed quickly with the laying of the mines, as the appearance of the Danish fleet was daily expected. A ship-load of powder had already arrived from Rendsburg, and a number of large casks stood ready well calked and pitched, in order to be provisionally used instead of the still unfinished caoutchouc-bags. These casks were as quickly as possible filled with powder, provided with fuses, and anchored in the rather narrow channel in front of the bathing establishment in such a way that they were buoyed twenty feet under the surface of the water. The firing-wires were carried to two covered points on the shore, and the course of the current so disposed that a mine must explode if at both points simultaneously contact was made.  At both places of observation upright rods were set up and the instruction given, that contact must be made, if a hostile ship took up a position in the direct line of the rods, and remain made until the ship had again completely removed from the right line. If contact of both right lines were at any moment simultaneously made the ship would be exactly over the mines. By experiments with small mines and boats it was ascertained that this exploding arrangement acted with perfect certainty. 

Later in the war the casks were replaced with “caoutchouc” india rubber bags and Siemens used the casks as command initiated land based IEDs to protect the fortifications around Kiel. One of these detonated prematurely, as follows:

The rest of the men I had collected in the fortress-yard to distribute them and exhort them to bravery, when suddenly before the fort-gate rose a vast fire -sheaf. I felt a violent compression succeeded by a violent expansion of the chest: the first sensation was accompanied by the clatter of broken window-panes, and the second by the elevation of the tiles of all the roofs to the height of a foot and their subsequent fall with a dreadful din. Of course it could only be the mine, whose explosion had produced the mischief. I thought at once of my poor brother Fritz. I ran to the gate to look after him, but before I reached it he met me uninjured.

He had prepared the mine, set up the battery on the terre-plein, connected the one igniting wire with the one pole of the battery and fastened the other to the branch of a tree to have it ready to hand, and was about to announce this when the explosion occurred, and the atmospheric pressure hurled him down from the rampart into the interior of the fort. The rather violent wind had shaken the second firing-wire from the tree, causing it to fall just on the other pole of the battery and so producing the explosion.

Incidentally the same technique for sighting of targets was subsequently used in the US Civil war.

As an aside the scientific genes ran strong in the Siemens family. Werner’s younger brother was a remarkable engineer who emigrated to England, adopted British citizenship and became knighted as Sir William Siemens for his contributions to science. Another brother, Carl, an entrepreneur,  worked in Russia developing the Russian telegraph system.  He was ennobled for this by Tsar Nichlas II.

So a number of industrial dynasties, (Colt, Nobel and Siemens) all had beginnings based on the development of IEDs….

 

 

Update on Wednesday, September 26, 2012 at 1:50PM by Roger Davies

Just to clarify in terms of the relative dates of inventions:

Samuel Colt demonstrated  a working electrically initiated water borne mine in 1841.

Werner Siemens’s Kiel devices seem to have been independently invented in 1848.

Immanuel Nobel seems to have taken Siemens’s idea and created contact fuzing in 1853.

…or thereabouts….

Colt’s IED’s were not brought into service in the US because it was objected to by then Congressman John Quincy Adams who scuttled the project as “not fair and honest warfare” and called the Colt mine an “unchristian contraption”  But such mines were later used extensively in the Civil war.

Update on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 6:15PM by Roger Davies

Ok, there’s another man in the mix for earliest electrically initiated sea mines. Engineer in Chief Schilder of the Russian Navy in the 1830s.

 

 

Update on Friday, November 2, 2012 at 10:52PM by Roger Davies

And another  even earlier Baron von Schilling was making electrically initiated command sea mines and land mines for the Russians in 1812.

19th Century

US Made “Trojan Horse” IED Used Against the British in 1813

Another interesting booby trap IED set by our American cousins against the Brits:

The United States Congress decided to encourage private citizens to get involved in the war effort. In March 1813, they passed legislation encouraging the development of weapons and tactics designed to disrupt the blockade. John Scudder, Jr., a New York businessman, soon rose to the challenge. He outfitted a schooner named “Eagle” with kegs of gunpowder, sulfur, turpentine, and two flintlock firing devices, which were attached to two barrels of flour on deck. If either barrel were to be moved, the entire vessel would be detonated. The boat was filled with a standard load of provisions, then sailed toward the mouth of the Sound.  It arrived off Millstone Point on June 25, 1813, and dropped anchor. The crew headed for shore as a British boarding party approached, then fired on the boat.  The boarding party, to save themselves and the schooner, cut the anchor line and sailed back toward safety. The Americans had planned on this, assuming that the British navy would tie the prize to HMS Ramillies. Instead, the Eagle was tied to another recently captured vessel. That afternoon, one of the flour barrels was moved, causing a massive explosion that destroyed both the Eagle and the boat it was tied to, killing a second lieutenant and ten British sailors in the process.

What is it about these New Yorkers?  : – )

 

20th Century

Martini-Henry and Other IED Initiation Systems

My friend Ian Mills  has studied the South African origins of the Martini-Henry triggered IEDs, (discussed in the two earlier posts below) and written about it in the British Army Review. I’ll try and get permission to copy his article here, but that may not be possible.  The Boer IED team were led by a former British boy-soldier turned deserter, Captain Jack Hindon, but Ian describes the IED design as liekly being the work of one Carl Cremer, a fellow Boer.  Interestingly while on a posting to South Africa, Ian had the opportunity to conduct some trials on the Martini-Henry trigger system (real Martini-Henry, real trains!) and found it worked just fine.  He also found reference to the Hindon gang using “copper wire” as a pull switch command mechanism

In looking at this I have found reference (albeit unclear and vague) of pressure initiated IEDs used in the US Civil war to attacks trains on railroads.   IED use in the US civil war was very extensive and I have blogged about it before a little, here. I keep finding extensive Civil War references to electrical initiated IEDs, victim operated or target operated devices, (often friction pull switches) and the like for both land and water based IEDs (called torpedoes in the vernacular of the time.).   There’s a lot on intersting development in waterproofing under-water IEDs.  I have just found a good description of a “horological torpedo” or timed IED used successfully by Confederate forces.  As an example see the image below of electrically in initiated command wire IEDs from 1862, recovered by Union forces in Kentucky.

I’d be grateful if any of my US colleagues who might be able to help to write about US Civil War IEDs (you know who you are!) and post as guest blogs.  There’s a lot of open source information out there but you guys can probably dig a little further.  There are interesting connections to be made….

20th Century

Bombs in lavatories

The conviction of a team of radical would-be terrorists who discussed planting IEDs in the lavatories of the British Stock Exchange  reminds me that lavatories are a theme in many IED attacks, which I think is curious.  Here’s a range of previous “bombs in the bogs””

Only a couple of days ago some sort of apparent explosive device was found in the lavatory of a Libyan plane in Egypt    For what its worth I don’t think it was an IED but the story is pretty cloudy for now.

In May 2008 there was the very peculiar incident in Exeter, UK, where a decidedly odd individual detonated a device while he was in the lavatories of a fast food restaurant.

In 1957 an elderly man blew himself up in the lavatory of a passenger aircraft over California. A good investigation report is here    The device was constructed by dynamite and blasting caps with the blasting caps initiated by matches and burning paper.  Only the perpetrator was killed.

A similar dynamite IED functioned in the lavatory of an aircraft in 1962 over Iowa, this time killing all aboard. http://www.airsafe.com/plane-crash/western-airlines-flight-39-1957.pdf

A Canadian passenger aircraft  blew up after a device exploded in the lavatory over British Colombia in 1965. The crime was never solved.

In 1939, as part of a significant Irish terrorist bombing campaign in England a bomb was planted in a public lavatory in Oxford street. Disaster was averted when the lavatory attendant dumped the IED in a  bucket of water (not a good response, but a brave man).  Several other incidents in this campaign were IEDs left in lavatories. The attendant was awarded £5 for his bravery

In 1884, during another Irish bombing campaign in England, (yes there have been a few) the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, Scotland Yard, was severely damaged in an explosion caused by a large IED being left in a public lavatory next door to the police Headquarters.  Here’s a picture.

There’s an interesting aspect to this story. Several months earlier, in 1883, an Irish revolutionary organization , the Irish Republican Brotherhood sent a letter to Scotland Yard  threatening to ‘blow Superintendent Williamson off his stool’ and dynamite all the public buildings in London on 30 May 1884. The Met Police largely ignored the warning, and then on the very day promised the explosion at Scotland Yard occurred, as did two other explosions elsewhere in London.  The failure of the Met Police to protect their own headquarters, as well as the occurrence of several other IED attacks across London embarrassed the police severely and led indirectly to the formation of Special Branch.

There are numerous other IED attacks on lavatories, too many to list.

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