Standing Well Back
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.

1940-1950

1947 and 1948 Postal IEDs – The Stern Gang

A friend pointed me in the direction of recently declassified MI5 files, now officially and publicly available. One set of hitherto SECRET and TOP SECRET papers relates to a series of attempted IED attacks on British targets in 1947, by the Stern Gang, in the run up to the Israeli declaration of Independence in 1948.  If you have the patience, there is an 88Mb download available at this link.   For those of you with an interest in technical matters, the report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Explosives on one device, planted in Dover House, Whitehall, London on 16 April 1947 is on page 239.

The devices largely failed for technical reasons. However later IEDs in 1948 were not all failures.

Elsewhere in the released documents, historians will find some of the material fascinating.  MI5 demonstrably retained some of its star security officers from WW2,  and they were involved, in part, in this case – people like “TAR” Robertson who ran the “Double Cross” counter intelligence operation against the Nazis in the War.

There’s some fascinating reporting of its time – telephone operators overhearing suspicious conversations, members of the public reporting concerns, police surveillance operations and pre-digital secret bureaucracy. It is interesting to see the 1947 version of inter-agency counter-terrorist coordination between Foreign Office, MI5, police forces, Special Branch and others.

A later file from 1948 is also available for download (post the establishment of the State of Israel) and others clearly can now be accessed. In May 1948 the Stern gang sent a postal IED to Captain Roy Farran of the SAS (who was accused of murdering Alexander Rubowitz)  The package (addressed to R Farran), was opened by Roy’s brother Rex, killing him.

1940-1950

Eccentric Military Umbrellas – Part 2

A few months ago I wrote a post about eccentric military umbrellas, here.

Here’s another proponent of the umbrella and one of the most remarkable men in WW2.  Mad Jack Churchill was an officer in the Manchester Regiment and subsequently the Commandos. Read his wiki entry here, it’s worth it, but this link has more heart and humour than wikipedia.

Here’s a quick summary:

  • Served in the Manchester Regiment in Burma in the late 1920’s early 1930’s.
  • Left the army in 1936 after a “spotty” career to be come a newspaper editor.
  • Rejoined in 1939.
  • Initiated an ambush during the BEF retreat to Dunkirk by shooting the lead German in a patrol with his longbow. No kidding.
  • Joined the Commandos. Led a raid ashore in Norway while playing the bagpipes and throwing grenades.  (He’s English, by the way)
  • Won an MC at Dunkirk, a bar to it in Norway, a DSO in the Salerno landings, again playing the bagpipes as he led the assault on the beaches, with an ancient Scottish sword around his waist. Later got a bar to his DSO too.
  • Led a unit of Commandos working with the Partisan’s in Yugoslavia (bagpipes again). Last man standing of 1500 men assaulting Brac when captured.
  • He tried to set fire to the plane taking him to Berlin.
  • Sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Escaped. Recaptured.
  • After the war qualified as a parachutist and served in Palestine with the Seaforth Highlnaders who perhaps appreciated bagpipes a little more. Significantly he led the attempted rescue of a Hadassah medical convoy besieged by hundreds of Arabs, in full dress uniform including kilt and spats.
  • Served on exchange in Australia and took up surfing.
  • And the umbrella bit – as a young officer during his first stint in the Army: He appeared on parade carrying an umbrella, a mortal sin. When asked by the battalion adjutant what he meant by such outlandish behavior, Churchill replied “because it’s raining, sir,” an answer not calculated to endear him to the frozen soul of any battalion adjutant.
  • Quotes:
    •  “In my opinion, sir, any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.”
    •  “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years.”
    •  About a remarkable incident near Salerno where he and one other captured 42 Germans: “I always bring my prisoners back with their weapons; it weighs them down. I just took their rifle bolts out and put them in a sack, which one of the prisoners carried. [They] also carried the mortar and all the bombs they could carry and also pulled a farm cart with five wounded in it….I maintain that, as long as you tell a German loudly and clearly what to do, if you are senior to him he will cry ‘jawohl’ and get on with it enthusiastically and efficiently whatever the … situation. That’s why they make such marvelous soldiers…”
    • “You have treated us well,” he wrote to the German commander at Brac after only 48 hours in captivity. “If, after the war, you are ever in England and Scotland, come and have dinner with my wife and myself”
    • From Hong Kong after the war had finished: “As the Nips have double-crossed me by packing up, I’m about to join the team v the Indonesians,”
1860-1870

Coal Torpedoes

A “coal torpedo” was the name given by Confederate Secret Service agents for a crude IED disguised as a lump of coal. The device was then introduced into the stocks of coal on ships and trains with the aim of causing an explosion in the boiler when it was shoveled into the engine.

The coal torpedo seems to have been invented by Capt Thomas Edgworth Courtney of the Confederate Secret Service.  Courtney proposed the idea to Jefferson Davis motivated probably by the financial rewards promised by the Confederacy which were suggested could be 50% of the value of Union shipping destroyed by new inventions. In this case, financial reward became the mother of a number of inventions. Courtney was commissioned and formed a Secret Service Corps of 25 men with direction to to attack any Union vessel or transport carrying military goods found in Confederate waters, with his rewards (no salary) being paid in Confederate war bonds.

Details of Courtney’s plan leaked to the Union who put a price on his head. Courtney escaped to England, and tried to sell the design of the Coal torpedo to the British Navy, the French, the Spanish and Turkey, without success.

The Union naval forces on the Mississippi under Admiral David Porter issued General order 184 accordingly:

The enemy have adopted new inventions to destroy human life and vessels in the shape of torpedoes, and an article resembling coal, which is to be placed in our coal piles for the purpose of blowing the vessels up, or injuring them. Officers will have to be careful in overlooking coal barges. Guards will be placed over them at all times, and anyone found attempting to place any of these things amongst the coal will be shot on the spot.

Details of the actual ships destroyed by this means are unclear as records have been destroyed but it appears likely that a number of the devices functioned as intended.

Courtney’s torpedoes were manufactured carefully at the 7th Avenue Artillery shop in Richmond, Virginia. Actual lumps of coal were used to form a mold into which iron was cast. The walls of the devices surrounded a hollow sufficient to hold about four ounces of blackpowder.  After filling, the void was closed with a threaded plug, dipped in beeswax and rolled in powdered coal to disguise it.  The device, although small, could rupture the pressure vessel of a ship, causing much greater secondary damage.

The concept of coal torpdeos carried on. After the American Civil War the Fenian Brotherhood (see previous blog posts) had connections with both sides and there appears to have been a plot in the 1860s and 70s to use such devices to place in the furnaces of New York hotels and British shipping .

In WW1 German saboteurs operating in the US planned to use such devices to attack munitions ships, and in an earlier post I mentioned that such devices were found by US forces after overrunning the Germans in France in 1918.

In WW2 both the OSS and the SOE used similar devices, as did German spies. I have found reports that the Japanese also developed a similar tool at the Noborito research Institute, and they were used by Japanese commandos in raids in New Guinea.  There is also a hint that the CIA explored this as a tactic to be used in Vietnam.

The OSS didn’t do things by halves and developed a coal camouflage kit for such devices, with a range of paints to enable the device to match variations in coal supplies.

1940-1950

Mystery bombings

Fritz Joubert Duquesne was an inveterate anti-British spy who apparently used a number of IEDs to destroy British vessels sailing from South America in WW2.    Duquesne’s spying career started when as a British soldier serving in his home country during the 2nd Boer War, be was horrified at the British treatment of women and children.  His sister had been killed and his mother was dying in a British Concentration camp.

Duquesne then lived in the USA and became a German spy in 1914. He was sent to Brazil as “Frederick Fredericks” under the disguise of “doing scientific research on rubber plants.” From his base in Rio de Janeiro, he allegedly planted time bombs disguised as cases of mineral samples on British ships; he was credited with sinking “22 ships”. Among them, allegedly, were the Salvador; the Pembrokeshire; and the Tennyson and the “liner” Liger. One of his bombs allegedly started a fire on the Vauban.

I have been trying to find reference to the explosives planted on the British ships – little other than a reference to “infernal machines” in a press report. At the time numerous German saboteur plots were operating from N America (see earlier posts).

However, in investigating this I have found some discrepancies. For instance the SS Tennyson, was not sunk – it was still operating from Brazil in 1922. I can find no record of the “Liger” or a fire on the Vauban. The S.S. Pembrokeshire was “hulked” in 1913. Very curious. Was this a British misinformation campaign?

Here’s a press report of the time giving some details

Duquesne once again operated for the Germans in WW2, running the “Duquesne spy ring” which was broken by the FBI.

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