Standing Well Back
20th Century

Description of 1944 Render Safe

I’m taking a bit of a gamble with this story. Usually the stuff I post is out of copyright. The excerpts below are from a book published in 1977 by the then Lord Rothschild.  I have contacted his estate to seek permission to quote this small excerpt but received no reply. I think this story is worth telling and shows the man in a good light so I’m going to take a chance and copy some images here.  I will remove if anyone objects and make a donation to a suitable charity if it causes concern.

Lord Rothschild (1910-1990) was one of those larger than life characters, a real polymath if lived a life to the full.

During WW2 he worked for MI5, advising on the vulnerability of British industry to sabotage, and in one or two other related “spooky” activities related to explosives, much of which there is little or no public record of.   In 1944 there were some sabotage devices sent from Spain, I think, to the UK hidden in cases of onions. One arrived, somehow in Northampton and Lord Rothschild went  to deal with this German sabotage device which used 21 day timers.  I have no other details of this German operation.  Below is an extract from Rothschilds telephone conversation with his secretary as he rendered the device safe.  It reminded me very much of the Earl of Suffolk, another Lord involved in Bomb Disposal in the Second World War who I have written about before – he too conducted his RSPs while talking to his secretary on a field telephone.

I understand that it was mainly for this operation that Lord Rothschild was awarded the GM. Good job.  No doubt his secretary then asked “So, how do you think that went?”

 

This excerpt is from “Meditations of a Broomstick” By Lord Rothschild, published in 1977 by Collins.

 

 

 

1940-1950

10,000 explosive attacks a night

I’ve written over 30 posts in the last few years about explosive attacks on railways – you can see these from the categories link on the right hand column below.  For this post, I’m returning again to Russian partisan sabotage attacks on the Germans.  One of the reasons for my focus is the belief that the intensity of the attacks in Eastern Europe is largely underestimated. The more I look at these attacks the more intriguing it gets. I don’t claim to be anything other than a very amateur historian and I’ve learned a lot about the Eastern Front that I never knew, in general terms. Whereas I normally focus on tactical aspects of device design, this post is very much focused on the strategic.   This post is less about the technicalities of the attack but more about the level of coordination and intensity of the attacks and comparing them to railway sabotage in Western Europe at a similar time.

I would suggest, if you haven’t already you read the earlier post on Ilya Starinov, one of the most important people in explosive sabotage history and probably THE most important individual. I see his fingerprints on much of what follows.  I’d also recommend the post on Boer War railway attacks – which in WW2 terms are a most instructive historical campaign on a strategic level, with many similarities.

Now, as I have discussed before, railways make ideal targets for explosive sabotage. Here’s just some of the reasons why:

  • Railways are an infrastructure target which can impact on a whole economy or military capability, in some cases with strategic effect.
  • The scale of railways are too big for defensive forces to provide adequate security. Fundamentally a large railway system cannot be protected.
  • The railways then provide high value targets (trains) at predictable times, (and no trains at predictable times too) making operations easier to plan.
  • The kinetic energy of a train can be utilised by an attacker to increase attack effect. Remove just one rail or even the connection between two rails and a speeding train will do the rest of the damage for you.
  • Railways offer either time and space for command initiated devices to be emplaced and initiated or known and repeatable mechanical opportunity to use a train-triggered switch.
  • Responses post-attack are predictable and usually aligned geographically to the railway.
  • Failed attacks can cause almost as much disruption as successful attacks, as devices need clearing.

I think the apogee of explosive attacks on railways came in three bursts on the eastern front of the Second World War, as the Soviets faced the Germans.  The numbers of the attacks were quite remarkable, even if you view Russian claims very sceptically.  The three key railway attack efforts were:

  • Operation Rail War
  • Operation Concert (sometimes referred to as Operation Concerto)
  • Railway sabotage attacks as part of Operation Bagration.

I’m going to summarise these in turn.  Each of these sabotage efforts were part of a strategy to disrupt German advances and also make the German defences much weaker.  But first it’s important that we place the importance of the railway system in Eastern Europe in context. Railways in Eastern Europe were much more important than in Western Europe because there were few roads capable of taking significant traffic.  If you wanted to do anything logistically “strategic” in Russia and Eastern Europe, you did it by rail.  I’m going to give a link here to a fascinating article about how the Russians and Germans ran their railways in the war – you might think that would be dull dull dull, but by golly it’s an eye-opener. Of particular note are these things:

  1. There is a myth that the Nazis were the ones who got the railways running properly. This linked article demolishes that completely – it was the Russians who optimised the railways system so much better, and with a simple robust methodology.
  2. It is fascinating that when the Germans advanced into Russia they took over 40% of the Russian rail network – but only 15% of its trains. And that’s a big problem if you then have to find hundreds of trains and carriages (also with a different gauge).
  3. It’s important to understand the logistic manner of functioning with “depots” serving areas of track – the locomotives stay attached to the depot and shuttle backwards and forwards – the carriages are passed like a baton.
  4. Russians ran their trains slower, all at the same speed – conserving engines and carriages and train lines. This also allows for simpler control mechanisms (even if it’s a man with a flag). The Germans tried to run their trains at a variety of speeds, leading to more wear and tear and a much more complex control system to allow for “overtaking”.
  5. The numbers of people involved in railway logistics on both the Russian and German side is stunning.

Russian partisans were made up, in broad terms, from the following:

  • Soviet soldiers who had been bypassed by the German advance. All soldiers were instructed to undertake sabotage operations in these circumstances.
  • Captured Soviet soldiers who had escaped
  • Civilians from the overrun population, usually communist party functionaries. Some of these formed more formal “Destruction Battalions” including retired soldiers and factory workers. Their prime mission was originally securing the Soviet rear area and destroying infrastructure as the Russians retreated, but once overrun they became partisans in effect, with at least some sort of command and control, and relevant training.
  • NKVD or military personnel brought in by plane and parachute.
  • Other partisans of all sorts of backgrounds.

The command and control system was flexible and changed as the war progressed – becoming more organised as time passed. So let’s look at the three key Russian rail sabotage efforts.

Operation “Rail War”

This operation occurred during the Battle of Kursk as over 100,000  partisans tried to disrupt German rail activity, disrupting German reinforcements and logistic supplies. This was in July and August 1943.  This operation built on the experience of an increasingly effective partisan campaign over the previous year – in the previous winter 225 German trains were derailed, and much other infrastructure attacked.  Coordination was handed over from the NkVD to other Russian command structures and became much more coordinated. In Belorussia alone 123 partisan detachments were assigned to demolition activity – often, but not always, with explosives.  Literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of track were either blown up or removed.  As a cross reference, in July 1943 alone, the Germans reported at least 1,100 separate railway attacks.  Then, during the nights of August 3rd and August 4th, the German Heeresgruppe Mitte reported 4,100 railway demolitions.  A German source puts the figure even higher for the whole front suggesting 10,900 demolition charges were laid on the night of 2-3 August alone, with over 8000 functioning as intended and the remaining rendered safe by German EOD, many of them “daisy chains”.   That’s an incredible number. It seems some attacks were carried out by Red Army demolition units of 30 men each (probably sent by Starinov) flown in to support Partisan activity during the Operation. Is this the first effective use of Starinov’s “Spetznats”? These latter groups seem to have focused on undertaking attacks with more complex devices.

Operation “Concert”

This was a strategic offensive to against German rail communications and logistics  during the Battle of the Dnieper and Russian Operation Suvarov, an attack in the direction of Smolensk. It took place immediately after Operation Rail War, from 19 September – 1 November 1943. This was a wide ranging set of attacks from the Baltics to the Crimea. According to Russian sources it involved 193 partisan units, totalling more than 210,000 men.  Railways were disrupted across a 560 mile front, to a depth of 250 miles.  One source suggests that German logistic movements were restricted by 35 – 40% , In Belorussia alone, partisans claimed to have destroyed or damaged 90,000 individual tracks, 1,061 trains, and 72 railway bridges during this 6 week period.  Two examples of the intensity of explosive sabotage operations during this time are as follows:

  1. On one 30 mile stretch of the railway to Minsk, there were 643 explosive demolition attacks on a single railway. On another 40 mile stretch there were 580 attacks.
  2. At one stage on this Minsk line the situation got so desperate that reinforcing troops were off loaded from trains and stationed at 20 ft intervals to guard against the attacks.

Sabotage in support of Operation “Bagration”

At least 150,000 partisans took part in sabotage operations in support of Operation Bagration, the major assault that occurred roughly the same time as the Allied attacks on Normandy. In many ways Bagration was much more successful than the Normandy attack in terms of the advances made, albeit at heavy cost.  In the West we think of “Normandy” as the key battle in WW2 – but if you look at the number of troops and the distances involved, Bagration was a much bigger affair. Partisan disruption of German logistics, by explosive sabotage on railways, played a crucial role. On a single night the night of June 19th 1944, there was more than 9,500 explosive attacks on the German occupied railway infrastructure. The Soviet offensive with conventional forces started three days later, and they were able to overcome German defenders who had no supplies and no reinforcements.  It is interesting to consider this three day gap, which perhaps allowed the Germans to catch their breath.  I don’t quite understand this pause.  One explanation might be that the partisans simply used up all their explosives on the first night. Another might be that the Russians expected the Germans to denude their front lines of infantry units to guard the railway lines.   In any event, two and a half months later, the Soviets has advanced almost 600km and most of the German occupied Soviet Union was retaken. (By comparison by that time the allies had got to Paris, about 25okm.) It is clear too that the ability of the partisans, in terms of setting and emplacing explosive devices had improved, probably due to Starinov’s influence in training and device design. Similarly, coordination, control leadership and planning had improved too, making partisan operations more effective, but perhaps not fully optimised.

As the war progressed and particular after responsibility was passed from the NKVD to other military structures, Russian support and coordination to the partisans improved, in terms of direction and resources often airlifted in to the vast spaces of Eastern Europe.

 

Elsewhere in Europe

Partisan style attacks of course occurred in Western Europe and it is useful, where possible, to compare these against the scale of the Russian partisan efforts.

During October and November 1943 (a comparable time period to the Russian Operation Concert above) the Vichy French police reported more than 3000 attempts made by the resistance to attack the railway system.   The biggest comparable effort was “Plan Vert” by the French resistance movement, in support of the forthcoming Allied Normandy Landings and subsequent battles. Around the time of the landings in Normandy, 486 attacks were made on the French railway infrastructure by the Resistance preventing German reinforcement on a number of lines.  This, while significant, appears to be an order of magnitude smaller than the Russian efforts. Of course, the two theatres are not directly comparable in terms of the importance of the railway infrastructure. In Northern France the optimum logistic  infrastructure were the roads. Throughout the whole of the “OB West” administrative sector (which equate to the Western Front against the Allies,) 500 locomotives were destroyed by sabotage or air attack during March 1944, but there were 500 sabotage attacks on railways in France in April 1944, much of which had an impact on the supply of concrete and steel to build the Atlantic Wall.   In the West, the Allies relied predominantly, but by no means exclusively, on air attack to disrupt the railways. From all sources, however rail traffic was reduced by 60% from 1 March to 6 June 1944.  There were, according to some sources, 1,800 sabotage attacks on French railways between 1 March 1944 and 6 June, and 2,400 rail targets hit by Allied bombers.  But compare that 1,800 figure over a 4 month prior to the 10,000 plus on one night in August 1944 on the Eastern front, (and that’s a German figure), and I’m not saying that the French railways were a similarly important target – but whatever the measure, the Russian partisan attacks in the East were remarkable in their number, and I suspect in their effectiveness.

Of course there were other successful rail attacks on the German forces elsewhere in Europe, but these are relatively few and far between and simply get reported better than the thousands of attacks on the Eastern Front. In particular there were quite a number of attacks by Polish resistance forces, who on one occasion cut all railway lines to Minsk, and who carried out “hundreds” of explosive sabotage operations on the railway during the war. Of course the Polish attitude towards the Russians was complicated which affected their operations.

It is also important to recognise that not all sabotage was by the use of explosives. Unbolting tracks, adding grit to lubricants, allowing boilers to overheat, allowing trains to travel too fast or too slow, or making deliberate mistakes with railway points all count towards a broader sabotage effort.

In general in the West we assume , wrongly, that the sabotage by the French resistance was a large scale operation, and we note other individual attacks across Europe or historical campaigns such as those of Lawrence and Garland in Arabia in the First World War. The truth is, though , that they are nothing, a pinprick compared to the huge efforts of the partisans in Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1944.

Assessment

So my assessment is that the sabotage attacks on German rail infrastructure was significantly greater than in the West and the impact of this is probably largely underestimated. The partisans showed that if necessary they could mount 10,000 explosive attacks in one night, and maintain many thousand attacks a month across most of the Eastern front. I can think of no other sabotage or explosive campaign in history with that level of intensity.  It might have suited Russian propaganda to downplay the scale and proportional effort and effectiveness of rag-tag partisans rather than more formal Russian forces, just a much as they might exaggerate the effectiveness of individual local partisan detachments.  Quite often though I have found German sources to present even higher numbers, which leads me to believe that this incredible level of operational activity was genuine. And, the Germans were better at record keeping than the Russians.   But we should also remember that in the East the rail systems were much more crucial to military success, and circumstances allowed a much more “permissive environment” than in Western Europe.  Other factors leading to this success include:

  • Significant numbers of partisans available, often from overrun Soviet Army units, in the area behind German front lines.
  • A huge geographic space where large numbers of partisans could “disappear” into, and regroup, resupply unhindered by occupying Germans who were focused on the front.  The imperative  driven by Hitler himself was to throw any and every German unit into the formal front rather than focus on securing rear areas. This gave the partisans a freedom of movement.  The Germans simply didn’t have enough troops to secure their rear areas and supply routes and guard the railway system consistently. Furthermore, most of the troops securing rear areas did not have transport. Nor were there enough troops to guard prisoners or feed them. If you were one of a thousand Russian troops being guarded in dense woodland by three second-rate Germans with bolt action rifles and pocket full of ammunition and one horse between the three of them, and you weren’t being fed, would you sit tight in the snow or simply walk away and become a partisan? That’s the reality of the situation.
  • Russian roads being so poor that it was impossible to move any amount of supplies by road, meaning the railways were even more important.  The railway lines where everything – what else was there for the partisans to attack if it wasn’t actual military units? So the most efficient form of attack was an attack on the railway that risked less.
  • The temperature – German locomotives converted to run on Russia gauge tracks, or tracks changed to suit them, were not designed to operate in the winter temperatures of Russia. Damage to German run trains was harder to fix.
  • A Russian “tradition” of partisan warfare going back to Napoleonic times.
  • Poor German logistic management of railways, in some respects.
  • Ilya Starinov himself.

Overall, it is clear to me that partisan explosive attacks on the railroads significantly enabled the defence of the Soviet forces in the summer of 1943 and their subsequent advances. Partisan attacks were intense in number, flexible and by the latter part of 1943 well controlled and supported from Russia. It seems to me that in general they often had an 80% successful rate in terms of devices that exploded versus rendered safe by EOD. That’s pretty high.   This wasn’t always the case, and in some areas that ratio was reversed, probably due to poor training.   I have no doubt they enabled the success of Soviet Forces in the East. German responses to the explosive threat to the railways was occasionally innovative but hampered at every turn by the fact they were deep in occupied territory, on an extended supply chain with locals who if they weren’t unsympathetic to start with became increasingly so as the war progressed and they suffered from the fundamental flaws inherent in a fascist invading army. The Germans were never able to find the military numbers to secure the railway.   I have no doubt that the partisan sabotage efforts shortened the war in Europe and allowed the Russians to reach Berlin well before the Western Allies.  But that’s not because the Western allies failed to attack the rail infrastructure on “their side of Europe”, it’s just because railways were much more important in the East and the Russians realised that and exploited it.

One of the sources I have used for this post also includes some very interesting assessments of German counter-sabotage efforts – well worth a read if you have the time, here. You should note it is drawn mainly from German sources. I’m also looking at similarities between WW2 sabotage operations and what the US/UK and UK faced on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. If you read the lessons learned in the document linked above about the experiences of the Russian partisan efforts, while bearing in mid what occurred in Iraq in 2003/2004, it will make you wince, so clear are some parallels.  The parallels between aspects of the counter-sabotage operations and engagement or otherwise with local forces is particularly pertinent. It’s not nice to see similarities between certain Nazi strategies and operations and your own, but there it is. Do you think what happened in the Anbar Awakening and the “Sons of Iraq ” was an innovative idea? Think again. The Germans used White Russian cossacks in attempts to secure certain areas, and there were a number of other strategies which seem only familiar for an invading Army.  If I were to be really cynical, (and I can be) there’s also some similarities in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

Although this post is all about strategy and not my usual focus on technical matters, I found a few intriguing technical references that I intend to follow up on.

  • The first is from the period of the summer of 1943, about the period of Operation Rail War. There is talk of the Germans encountering a new “small” explosive charge provided from Russia to the partisans, which is “daisy-chained” along a length of railway in a series of charges – one report suggests as many as 500 charges in a single daisy chain…. very intriguing and I’ll hunt out details in coming weeks if I can.
  • The second is reference to a specific counter measure – the Germans apparently in response to pressure sensitive explosive devices on the tracks filled a couple of spare carriages with rocks and placed them at the front of their trains, as sacrificial carriages.
  • Some other countermeasures. During Operation Concert one countermeasure used by the Germans was the use of searchlight units set up at intervals along vulnerable tracks – the exact technique had been used by the British Army to counter Boer IEDs on railways in South Africa 40 years earlier. In other areas some sort of “alarm” system was set up but as yet I have no details, but the impression I have was this was electrical, I think utilising microphones because the oblique report I have seen suggests they were linked to “listening posts”.  Anti-personnel mines were laid by the Germans in places alongside railways where they expected attacks. It would appear that the Germans booby trapped some telephone line poles, that they expected partisans to fell,  but the technique is not clear. In another similar approach to the British countermeasures in South Africa 40 years earlier, the Germans manufactured “bicycle trolleys” for troops to patrol tracks.
  • A reader of this blog has also flagged to me that Starinov co-authored another book, in 1961, about the campaigns above called “Mines against the German rear area”.  I don’t think it has been translated but I suspect it’ll contain more interesting detail. I’m searching for a translation.

 

 

20th Century

Young officers and explosives

An old one but a good one, from a letter from Evelyn Waugh , who was serving with the Commandos in WW2. I’m not the first to quote this but it is worth repeating:

Darling…

So No. 3 Cmdo were very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and he said don’t spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so that it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion. So Col. Durnford-Slater D.S.O.  said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree. Yes sir, 75 lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir.

And when Col. D. Slater D.S.O. had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don’t want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir.

Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. D.S. D.S.O. said you will see that tree fall flat at just that angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.

So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it half an acre of soil and the whole of the young plantation.

And the subaltern said Sir I made a mistake, it should have been 7.5 lbs not 75.

Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.

So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotion in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.

This is quite true.”

Of course reminiscent too of the famous whale, here .

20th Century

Book Review – The Secret Horsepower Race

The subject of this book review is perhaps a little outside my usual scope, being a history of largely mechanical engineering developments. The book is ” The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development” by Calum Douglas.

Is there a more complex piece of machinery in history than a WW2 fighter engine combining dozens of technologies- with demands on it from 0, to 35,000 feet, and when life or death is the outcome?

This book has sparked significant interest from me for a number of reasons:

  • I’m originally a metallurgist and there’s a fair bit of that in there.
  • I have some background in Technical Intelligence matters in a previous life, decades ago, and there was plenty of that going on in the 1930’s and 1940s in this field. Techniques were largely the same!
  • Although I’m not a mechanical engineer I have a modicum of knowledge and recently have been refurbishing a 1914 stationary engine – this gives me just enough understanding to get through most of the technical elements of the book. When I say “refurbishing” I mean “tinkering and occasionally get it to spring in to life”.
  • My father was a mech engineer and had a connection with Ricardo, a British engineering research company which played a key role, and also with Vickers who bought Supermarine in 1928.
  • This blog is essentially about the technical development of certain weapon technology – and this parallel weapon technology development to the matters I discuss on this site was pretty important.
  • I “get” the importance of piston engine development at this period and had previously dipped into the subject a few years ago
  • I know many of the readers of this blog have a broader technical interest in military history

Mr Douglas has written a tour de force here. The research from various sources in various languages has clearly been thorough and detailed. The book hangs together well, is well structured, laid out and with significant effort on technical images, which genuinely add to understanding.  I admit that sometimes the replicated graphs of WW2 engine performance under tests sometimes become hard for me to decipher – a reflection on my patience rather than the author’s work. But they are there if you need to interpret them.   He has bridged the highly technical subject matter to most readers with a modicum of knowledge like myself in a clear and unambiguous way. I confess at points I went off to do some side research in occasional subjects (like getting a better understanding of sleeve valves and disc valves, as an example, about which I was ignorant) to give me a better understanding of some of the issues he discusses but I don’t see this as a negative – I’m now a more knowledgeable reader. A book that encourages one to read more around a subject can only be a good thing. If the author had felt the need to explain such matters, it would be several volumes long and I think he chose the right path, by and large.  Another example of this – I had to read up on the differences between “pre-ignition” and “detonation” (in terms of internal combustion engines) which I didn’t grasp the reasons for and the differences, but more importantly I was keen to understand the chemistry of detonation in the context my own separate understanding of explosive science. It surprised me that post-combustion products or remnants could explode “again” at the pressures present in the cylinder. Again, no huge negative and a detailed technical analysis like this would normally demand some contextual reading for the average consumer.  I also like the way he gives detailed technical excerpts from his sources as part of the main narrative – it helps the book hang together rather than having to refer to appendices or footnotes. The verbatim arguments recorded diligently by stenographers between the various German protagonists is astounding and, separately, pithy letters within other nations equally surprises, and it’s a positive to detail these directly.  On occasion a throw away line intrigues me and sets me off on a tangent – like the mention of 146 Merlin engines sat in France in June 1940 ahead of the Nazi invasion and an oblique mention of attempts’ to re-patriate them – there’s a story there, I suspect, that I’ll dig in to – readers may recall that I’ve written in the past about the efforts of The Earl of Suffolk who was getting machine tools, diamonds , scientists and heavy water out of France at this very time.

I think the book is important for a number of reasons:

  • The development of aero engines in the 1930s shows how nation states can influence strategic technology development in both useful and negative ways.  It is clear that the governments of UK, USA and Germany were all talking with commercial companies to develop key technologies, set priorities, targets, directions and aspirations, and providing money too. Sometimes that guidance failed or pushed matters in the wrong direction but at other times it led to remarkably fast technology development.   Like many I had heard of the importance of the UK ‘s efforts to win the Schneider trophy in the early 1930s, and I had the false (schoolboy) impression that it was simply a precursor to the Spitfire, but only now do I see the the importance that this government funded effort to support the Supermarine company in the competition and the benefits in terms of engine development capability.  But beyond that, the “R” engine in the Schneider trophy winning aircraft was hand-built and had an expected life of 4 hours operating only at sea level. In 1940, the RAF needed thousands of Merlin engines, with hundreds of hours possible on each, operating higher than 30,000ft.
  • The pace of technology development was remarkable. We think that technology development is fast today in the early 21st century. But take this as an example – In 1914 many aircraft engines used a wick to deliver fuel to the combustion chamber.  Just 17 years later, the “R” engine in the Supermarine S6 was as if from another planet, generating 2000bhp.  But the “R” in the float plane only operated at sea-level. 12 years later Spitfire IXs were operating at 38,000 ft, an entirely different proposition
  • It may seem that “piston engine development” is a single subject – but as Mr Douglas lays out, it’s much more interesting than that. To develop an aircraft piston engine the following technologies need to be improved, each of which impacts on and complicates the other:
    • Engine layout and construction
    • Metallurgy, as applied to every component
    • Valve technology
    • Fuel technology to prevent “knocking” or pre-detonation.  Germany was hampered by the logistics of its synthetic fuel production.
    • Carburation- how to get the fuel to the right place in the right form and with the right energy output – using carburettors, pressurised carburettors and eventually fuel injection.  Hugely complex engineering challenges in this alone.
    • Cooling technology and the associated challenges with pressurising cooling systems, applied to engines and components such as turbo chargers and even valves.  I had no idea that liquid sodium was used as a coolant inside valves.
    • Superchargers and Turbochargers.
    • Lubrication technology
    • Bearing technology
    • Spark plug technology
    • Logistics – the Luftwaffe were clearly hampered by poorly thought through logistics for their fuel production, by circumstance already a difficult challenge but one they made worse by poor decisions on storage and production logistics.  This is in marked contrast to the British effort to secure a robust logistics system for 100 octane fuel.
    • In some German engines the whole engine had to allow a gun barrel to be slid down the middle

The development of one technology often impacts on others – creating complexity. To give a simple example, adding lead to a fuel to improve its performance, has a knock-on effect (pun) causing more corrosion. So then a designer has to balance more performance with less engine life, along with a host of other implications from maintenance engineering resources, raw material supply, pilot training, production engineering, etc. At speed, in war and with life and death to consider too. It’s interesting that it often appeared that German research efforts were focused on “getting around” material constraints, while UK and US efforts largely focused on simple engine improvement. One wonders what the excellent German engineers could have done if resources were not a problem. Perhaps the Saturn 5 in the US space program indicates the potential of what might have been.

So the book is essentially a description of how nations pull together widely divergent technologies into a single strategic direction, with varying degrees of success. (Spoiler, the Allies win, although they were losing for some time).  The author’s efforts to address the parallel tracks of technology development in a coherent way are commendable.   I find it fascinating that each nation had its strengths within the above subsets of expertise but the overall successful engine required a fusion of many and, as often as not, that fusion was administrative rather than technical. In the early part of the war the German fuel injection system was streets ahead of problematic British carburettors. The Americans were better at fuel technology and turbochargers and the British had their strengths too, radiators being one example. Running successful engineering projects requires excellent communication systems and administrative skills as well as engineering knowledge. The question is, do those communication and administrative skills lie best in government or in engineering companies?  In the German system at one stage there was a clear gap between a central ministry and the development labs in terms of setting technical priorities. It was a fault at this interface that caused the Me 109G , intended to be a replacement for the Me 1o9 F, to be no better than the aircraft it replaced – a true disaster from the German perspective.  One particularly interesting example of  British government-company integration was the installation of “moles” who were “embedded” with engine manufactures with a specific, openly acknowledged role of reporting to Beaverbrook’s Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP), providing eyes and ears and direct up-to-date communications between Ministry and manufacturer.  These liaison positions were titled “Resident Officers”. I think that’s an interesting concept.  High tech development of multiple systems becomes a communications problem as much as anything else.

Government competence is an issue in terms of technical development. While there were some remarkably capable engineers within Nazi Germany, when the Nazis placed political appointees in the engineering system, or gave authority to people because they were famous pilots, things fell down. Fascists and competent government don’t go hand in hand.  A good example is the appointment of Ernst Udet, a WW1 fighter pilot and protege of Goering to head a technical research department, for which he was eminently unsuitable.  Running research departments demands an unusual fusion of technical brilliance and administrative skills – a mix that political extremists rarely provide.  But in Germany it wasn’t just personal inadequacies that flawed their strategic engineering development response – it was also the structure and attitude of its fascist government that seemed to think that metaphorically barking orders equates to authoritative competence. Italy was even worse.  That’s an interesting lesson for today’s governments too.  Running trains on time might be within the capability of a fascist government, but not making a 2000bhp Merlin operate at 35,000 ft and shoe-horn it in to a Mustang.   The point is really knocked home in reports in the book detailing how so many of the best Luftwaffe pilots were killed not by enemy action but by engine failure.

The book does highlight for me the strategic importance of any nation holding its engineers in high regard. The engineering talent that was applied to the development of piston engines in the 1930s and in subsequent war years is simply stunning. We celebrate the contribution soldiers and airmen make but the contribution to a national goal in war of engineers was never more apparent then. There were many more British aircraft engineers than Barnes Wallis, and dare I say some of them at least of equal stature, but today largely forgotten.   For what it is worth the Germans provide a fine example still to this day – “Dr-Ing” is still an honourable title in Germany – but in the UK engineers seem to be held in less high regard.  The occasional inserts provided by the author on key engineers emphasise the human aspect of this technological battle.

The amount of Technical Intelligence going on in the 1930s and 1940s was a surprise to me. British and American engineers visited Nazi engine development sites until the late 1930s and vice versa. Indeed in some areas technology was exchanged – the FW-190’s superior performance was at least due in part to above-board transfer of technology in the 1930s. Regular engineers working for civilian companies were clearly reporting back to government authorities about what they saw and heard on foreign visits. There was also covert activity with , for example, two German spies visiting the US Government facility at Wright Field in such a manner that they were able to draw extensive diagrams of equipment and tooling. The different approaches to analysis of captured enemy equipment is also fascinating – do you bang out a quick report, or do you spend a year or two doing detailed analysis? If you classify it as “Secret” , is it usable information?  If you are 3/4 of the way through the development of your own fuel injection system is it helpful; or a distraction, to have a report on the enemy’s system thrust under your nose, by an analyst who perhaps hasn’t seen your work?  Age-old problems seen in stark outline here with the US, UK and Germany all taking different approaches to Tech Intelligence analysis.

One area that particularly caught my attention, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a specific Technical Intelligence effort to examine fuel systems from captured or shot-down German aircraft. At every such opportunity, samples were taken, analysed and correlated over time. This provide a remarkable database for Air Intelligence to examine. Furthermore they clearly and specifically engaged with the top fuel scientists in the country to draw inferences from changing fuel specifications – and whether these were driven by technology demands or forced by fuel supply and synthesis problems. A great example of how collecting mundane data consistently can allow very valuable insights into enemy technical and strategic capabilities. The author, quite rightly, describes the analysis provided as a result as “astounding” – a great lesson for modern military technical intelligence.  On the flip side however, the British took an age to work out that the additional gas injection system they found on captured German aircraft was using Nitrous Oxide, despite knowing that the Germans referred to it as the “Ha-Ha” system. It never occurred to the Tech Int analysts or indeed the British combustion experts until much later.

One final Technical Intelligence matter – Open source – there is repeated reference to the important technical information on newly developed German engines by reading articles in magazines – the German seemed quite comfortable even as late as 1942 to announce aspects of their engineering developments in openly published magazines for enthusiasts. Similarly, in November 1941 American articles about new fighter aircraft engines were being openly published, and German Tech Int copied a diagram of a twin supercharged Merlin from “Flight” magazine. Who needs spies when the opposition makes public their secrets? That is, assuming people to bother to read the published material, which was not always the case.

As I read the book, I encountered several fascinating engineering problems and learned how different nations addressed them – fuel dissolving in lubricating oil on cylinder walls was one such issue for the Germans who ran their engines cooler, but not so for the Merlin which had a deliberately hotter running coolant system but  that meant the fuel evaporated off from the hot lubricating oil. Thus the German lubricating oil became dilute and less effective, even though, in principle, a cooler engine was a better thing.  Another interesting technical issues for Messerschmidt 109s was an engine malfunction caused by high performance synthetic fuel being stored in a flexible canvas rubber bag, which the fuel reacted with, reducing the fuel’s performance, polluting it, and damaging engines, reducing their life.

As someone with a modicum of metallurgical knowledge I was still surprised at the criticality of the lack of nickel for the German war machine. I hadn’t come across that before and the author’s explanation of the implications of essentially the German nation having no nickel in any of its components are stark. There’s probably an interesting story somewhere about how they obtained what nickel they had, mainly from Finland.  High performance engines operate in and produce inside themselves demanding environments for steel, and nickel is crucial in making steel less reactive -and this lack of nickel leads, as the author makes clear, to a direct consequence of lower performance engines. Their aircraft had less performance because of a lack of nickel – a mundane alloy component in today’s world. Imagine being the Daimler Benz house metallurgist and being told to come up with a nickel steel alloy, but not use any nickel.  At a crucial part of the war (1942) the conflicting demands on metallurgical resources means that key alloys were being taken away from aircraft production for use in flak guns.  Again, a fascist diktat-run government couldn’t manage the implications of that.

In one interesting area the German were well head and that was in developing control systems. The multiple subsystems in advanced piston engines create real challenges in terms of an operator managing them – and the Germans put great thought into automating these control systems where possible – allowing the pilots to concentrate on “being pilots” and not monitoring and adjusting sub-systems as a “flight engineer”. Today these would all be electronic but creating mechanical systems for this was quite something. Here’s an image below of the BMW engine management system from an Fw-190. Scarily complex, a mechanical analogue computer, automating engine controls.  Also… imagine being the engineering intelligence analyst presented with a captured engine trying to work out what every component actually did – intelligence analysts need to be very competent engineers too, and that crosses over into my own field of expertise too:

In a time of current “National Crisis”, it’s interesting to sense the concern across the Allies in June 1942, as they examined a captured FW-190 and it became apparent they were “losing” the air battles with it, and why. The reports seem to reflect depression and deep concern that Allied aircraft improvements were some way off. Intriguing, especially since the Mk9 Spitfire was only a month away, and the P51 Mustang , also Merlin powered, arrived very soon after.  It is also of interest that efforts to develop aircraft engines were in a sense similar to today’s efforts to make a Covid vaccine. You didn’t put all you eggs in one basket and in parallel with the continual (and amazing) development of the Merlin, several other horses/engines were backed, some of which proved fruitless, but in time of war made sense to reduce risk.

I also find it fascinating that piston engines of the time struggled to have a used duty cycle of hours flown – struggling often to get 100 hours without major refurbishment. I don’t know what they cycle is modern passenger jet aircraft power units is (fundamentally simpler, in a sense I guess), but the engine life must be in the ten thousands of hours. Another area that intrigued me was the development of turbine blade technology for turbochargers, and a very clever rim mounted turbine used in a Russian swirl throttle – I wonder if the science used in developing these was later applied to jet turbine blade design.  Until now I had sort of assumed that turbine blade design for jets started from scratch.

It’s not my habit to pick out errors so hopefully the author will forgive my wry smile when Eric “Winkle” Brown is described as an RAF test pilot. He was of course, a naval officer, posted to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) as Chief Naval Test Pilot. Probably a simple transposition of an F for an E.  My only other criticism , (I hope constructive) is that it would perhaps benefit from an Annex discussing the aircraft these engines provided power for – and their roles, as context for the engine development. It would have helped to understands that the Typhoon for instance originally was intended as a straight replacement for the Hurricane as an interceptor, and not as the “FGA” aircraft it became. Similarly the impact of the various models/roles versus engine variants of the Mosquito and Spitfire perhaps could have been pulled through a little more in an Annex.

Mr Douglas’s book brings a huge range of history and technical issues together in a readable and fascinating book. I’ve not some across a more enthralling book on an engineering subject. I’d recommend it to anyone with at least a little engineering knowledge.  It’s well researched history, telling an important tale. You can get it online, but best of all use a local independent bookshop if you can.  If you have a little engineering background and an interest in history, you’ll find this book fascinating.

Lastly an aside, which again brings about the human nature of war.  On of the key Luftwaffe technical administrators was Field Marshall Erhard Milch – a fundamental protagonist in the competitive development of fighter engines.  At the end of the war he tried to flee Germany but was caught on the Baltic Coast on 4th May 1945. On surrendering, he grandly attempted to surrender to British Brigadier Derek Mills-Roberts, a commando, while offering champagne, in an attempt to be treated kindly, according to his rank. Mills-Roberts was unimpressed with Milch’s attempted self-grandeur and attitude.  In previous weeks he had been appalled by Nazi atrocities when he liberated Bergen-Belsen. He lost his temper, seized Milch’s Field-Marshall’s baton and broke it on Milch’s head and then beat him further with the champagne bottle, fracturing Milch’s skull. He kept the baton as a souvenir. Milch kept his skull, just.

 

20th Century

Starinov, Krushchev and the radio-controlled explosive device

In my last post I promised a little more on Ilya Starinov, the Russian explosives expert and the godfather/grandfather of sabotage explosive attacks.  In the blog post on the F-10 explosive device I recounted how Starinov himself was directly involved in planting the F-10 radio controlled device that killed German General Braun in Kharkov in 1941, and this story relates to that incident directly.

The Russian retreat from Kharkhov was carefully planned. Hundreds of “stay-behind” explosive devices were left and Starinov was directly involved. Some of the explosive devices were on timers, some of them with victim-operated switches, and a good handful of F-10 radio controlled devices, these usually with very large charges associated with them. Furthermore there were large numbers of deliberate indications  left behind that the Russians created to give the impression of yet more devices to further slow the German progress into the region – holes in the ground, disturbed earth, and hoax devices where no device was actually planted, and sometimes devices laid on top of other hidden devices.  According to Soviet sources, 30,000 anti-tank mines were laid in and around Kharkov, about 1000 victim operated devices, and 2000 timed devices.

This anecdote relates to Starinov’s role in this and I cannot be certain it is true, but it is a story worth telling anyway.  A key individual in the Soviet forces in the region was Nikita Khrushchev, who apparently worked closely with Starinov. It is clear, with our view of history, that the Russians expected a significant German EOD effort – by November 1941 the pattern of “stay-behind” devices had been set, including the use of F-10 devices hidden in likely headquarter buildings to be occupied by advancing German forces  in Odessa and Kiev in previous months.

Here’s a pic of an F-10 device being removed from the Opera House in Kiev in October 1941, by a German EOD team. The distinctive construct of the F10 receiver is clear.

-and below is a fascinating Nazi propaganda film showing towards the end the explosive charges and German EOD team’s removal and inspection of the F-10 device itself recovered from the Kiev Opera House. Quite remarkable footage.

So Starinov was instrumental in the dummy devices, and the efforts to overwhelm, fool, distract and out-think the Wehrmacht engineers.   In the run up to the German advance, Krushchev’s headquarters was in a building in Dzerzhinskiy Street on Kharkov, in a building identified by Starinov as likely to be soon used as a German headquarters. Learning the lessons from Kiev, according to this story, two F-10 devices were planted, one hidden carefully below the other in the basement.  Interestingly Krushchev did not move out from the headquarters immediately, as he felt this might give an indication to the advancing Germans that the building was prepared with F-10 devices.  So clearly Krushchev and Starinov met and there was a degree of trust between the two. But remember, the political atmosphere within Soviet forces was febrile and senior officers were frequently “purged”, accused by Beria’s secret police. In some ways Starinov had been lucky to escape, but here we see perhaps a clue giving one reason he had evaded the purges.

As the Germans entered Kharkov, they did indeed , as Starinov expected, have some success at finding and rendering safe quite a number of explosive devices. Nazi propaganda was quick to trumpet these successes and their success against the “dastardly Bolshevik devices”. This apparent success was noticed by Beria’s secret police, who saw, perhaps, that the devices were being found too easily, giving the German’s success and suggested that something had been so planned by Starinov. The Nazi propaganda from the previous month of the device being found in Kiev would perhaps have added to their suspicions. Then General Braun’s staff made an announcement that they had “easily cleared the major part of the mines”.  The secret police prepared a case against Starinov, but Krushchev got to hear of it. He advised Starinov to detonate the two devices in the Dzerzinskiy Street Headquarters now, as predicted, occupied by General Braun.

According to the source I have found the “top” F-10 explosive device planted in the cellar had, as expected, been found, made safe and the initiation mechanism presented to General Braun, showing the headquarters was made safe. The now safe initiator sat on a desk in a main room. Accordingly Starinov, warned of the expected investigation by the secret police, ordered the first device initiated – and in the main hall of the German headquarters the receiver “clicked”, to the delight of the Wehrmacht.  Five minutes later the second device, still hidden deep under the building and with a massive charge attached to it received the necessary transmission… and General Braun and many of his staff perished in the explosion. Thus , Starinov’s investigation was dropped by the secret police, and he continued his career.

I should state that other sources slightly contradict this story – saying the “top device” designed to be found was a time delay device. But perhaps the story as detailed above makes a better story – I found it in a 1963 edition of Izvestiya, and it too may well be propaganda. The best stories often are. I do note that the Izvestiya report gets the wrong date attributing it to 1942 and not November 1941.

Here’s a picture of Starinov I have found. I’m not sure when this was taken but I suspect it was some years after the war. Starinov is the older man in civilian clothes pictured with serving Russian soldiers, perhaps those he was training in the late 1960s or 1970s.

Here’s another picture of Starinov taken, I think in the late 1980s.

 

And here, as young man being introduced to Marshal Klim Voroshilov.

The efforts of the German Wehrmacht EOD/Engineer units in dealing with the significant explosive threat in places like Kiev and Kharkov in 1941 probably deserve some attention.

 

 

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