Standing Well Back
1970-1980

Left, Right, Anarchist and Nut Job

The history of IED attacks in the US is full of surprises. The two organizations responsible for the most IED attacks, numerically, in the last 120 years is the Puerto Rican separatists organization the FALN (in the 1970s and 1980s ) with 126 IED attacks that killed 6 people in total, and the Iron Workers Union who between 1906 and 1910 used 111 IEDs to attack industrial targets, then finally the “bombing of the century” as it was called, when it blew up the offices of the Los Angeles Times. The subsequent fire killed 26 people.

I have blogged before about union attacks in the period, clearly industrial relations were very much an issue then, but the volume of attacks is remarkable.  But remember at the time there were other violent attacks on going – the “black hand” extortion gangs in the New York area were very active, as were the early bomb squads in terms of responding to them.

The LA Times bombing was the fourth worst bombing (I think) in US history, after the Oklahoma bombing, the Wall Street bombing and the Bath School bombing – tell me if I have that wrong.

The LA Times device consisted of a suitcase of dynamite left on some sort of timer. It was reportedly set to detonate at 4.00 am when no-one was expected to be in the building, but detonated early at 1.07 a.m. The whole case is fraught, even now, with question marks and conspiracy theories.  Indeed even the defendants lawyer the famous Clarence Darrow was caught bribing a juror. The end result of the bombing and the subsequent trial was a considerable set back for the Unions in Los Angeles.

At the same time as the incident at the LA Times, another IED was found on a windowsill at the residence of the owner, General Otis and another targeting another opponent of the unions.

So, in terms of perpetrators, the most fatal bombings in US history are the responsibility in each case of domestic terrorists:

  1. Radical right wing extremist (Oklahoma Bombing) 168 killed
  2. Regular nut job (Bath School Bombing) 45 killed
  3. Anarchist extremists(Wall St bombing) 38 Killed
  4. Radical left wing unions (LA Times bombing) 21 killed

Of course the 9/11 attacks killed more, but they weren’t IEDs per se.

1910-1920

Kurt Jahnke: the legendary German saboteur

I’ve blogged before about the German sabotage campaign just before the US entered World War 1.    I’ve been digging slowly through much new material with regard to Kurt Jahnke.  Jahnke was one of the key German saboteurs operating in the USA before and during the First World War and along with his close colleague Lothar Witzke and a more distant colleague, Franz Rintelen, they played key roles in the extensive and, in my opinion, largely underestimated or unrecognized, IED campaign and associated disruptive activities in the period. This disruptive campaign involved extensive use of IEDs, biological warfare attacks (anthrax and glanders attacks on US soil), arson, encouraging labor disputes, encouraging Mexico’s entry into the war against the US, etc I’m building extensive files on this campaign, bit by bit.

There’s enough for a couple of books, and frankly I’m a bit overwhelmed and the material demands much more beyond a short blog.  For those of you who haven’t heard of him, here’s a very brief potted history of Jahnke:

  • 1888 Born Gnesen in West Prussia
  • ? Enlisted in the German Navy
  • ? worked in Peking as a member of the International Customs service, possibly as a German Agent
  • 1909 Emigrated to the USA
  • ? Enlisted in the US Marines and served in San Francisco, Pearl Harbor and the Philippines
  • ? Discharged for medical reasons (malaria?)
  • 1912 Posted to the German Consulate in San Francisco as a diplomatic official
  • 1912 onwards – developed connections with China whilst in the San Francisco post
  • 1916. Almost certainly involved in the Black Tom explosion, New Jersey
  • 1916 Strongly suspected of fomenting and encouraging labor strikes in San Francisco
  • 1916 Claimed to be responsible for sinking 14 allied munitions ships
  • 1917 Almost certainly responsible for the Mare Island munitions depot explosion near San Francisco.
  • 1917 Involved in other bombings on the US east Coast
  • 1917 After declaration of war, operated from Mexico with numerous plots
  • 1923 Undertook sabotage attacks against occupying French forces in the Ruhr, Germany
  • 1920’s Possibly involved with official, but secret German collaboration with Russian forces
  • 1920’s Possibly recruited as a Russian agent
  • 1934 Formed the Jahnke Buro , a semi-official intelligence agency, aka “Abteilung Pfeffer” Possibly responsible for handling of a German agent in the US embassy
  • 1939 By this date Jahnke’s “Abteilung Pfeffer” was under direct control of Rudolf Hess.
  • 1941 – After Hess’s flight to Britain he “retired” . Some reports suggest he was fired in 1940
  • 1943? – Tempted out of retirement by Walter Schellenberg, head of the Nazi’s foreign intelligence department to return to intelligence activities.  Suggestions he opened a dialogue with Allied intelligence agencies in 1944
  • 1945 – Fled to Switzerland
  • 1945 – Returned to Germany, arrested and tortured by Russian SMERSH
  • 1945- Killed by SMERSH or perhaps not till 1950… or perhaps not at all… suggestions that he worked for one Russian intelligence agency but was arrested by another in a  turf war. Suspected by everyone of being a double agent of one sort or another.

As one might expect with such a full and complex life, establishing the truth is nigh on impossible.  Certainly Jahnke at times claimed responsibility for things he probably hadn’t done, such as the sinking of the USS San Diego, which he claimed responsibility for to the Russians interrogating him. Other things about Jahnke worth considering, which I’m digging at:

  1. Could he have played a part in the 1916 “Preparedness Day bombing” in San Francisco
  2. If so, could he be involved in the 1921 Wall St bombing (there’s a possible connection)
  3. Details of his sabotage attacks on the Ruhr in 1921
  4. Details of the explosive devices he employed
  5. Details of the China connections
  6. Details of US and UK operations in Mexico to counter his activities (quite a bunch of stories there)

There’s lots more to come.

1770-1780

An American terrorist in England

A friend of mine asked me my opinion on the most significant terrorist attacks in history. Here’s one which had pretty significant implications.

“John the Painter ” aka James or John Aitken, aka Jack the Painter, aka John Hill aka James Hinde was born a Scotsman but adopted America as his cause.  A petty, and not so petty, criminal he made his living as a painter and clearly his daily dealing with turpentine and flammable liquids prompted a thought.  He was also seized with enthusiasm for the cause of Independence for America, having arrived there in 1775. He became a prototype lone wolf terrorist.

In 1776 he knocked on the door of the leading American diplomat in Paris, France, Mr Silas Deane, and with a little encouragement described a plot to set on fire the key naval dockyards in England, thus crippling the British Royal Navy. He showed Deane his incendiary device:

Producing a portable infernal machine of his own invention, he explained his scheme. The machine consisted of a wooden box to hold combustibles, with a hole in the top for a candle, a tin canister, no larger than a half-pound tea can and perforated for air, to cover it; the whole to be filled with inflammable materials—hemp, tar, oil and matches. The candle, having been lighted, would burn down until it ignited the inflammable materials, and these exploding would scatter the fire for yards around.  

Deane gave him a little encouragement and a little money and sent him on his way.  On returning to England, John the Painter successfully burnt down the Rope House at Portsmouth Naval dockyard. He also set a number of fires in Bristol.  This created the public impression that gangs of American revolutionaries were active in the country. The King himself offered a reward for his capture and demanded daily briefings.

 

In an early form of Weapons Intelligence Investigation a failed device of the same design was discovered in an adjacent building to the burnt down rope house and subsequently witnesses attested that John the Painter had had it made in Canterbury.   John the Painter was hunted, arrested and tried – the transcript of his trial is available on line in Cobbett’s State Trials.  The device is described very clearly on a number of occasions by witnesses. An intriguingly thorough trial even down to the calling of a witness from whom he had bought matches.

He was duly transported to Portsmouth where he was strangled at the gates to the Naval Dockyard then hoisted up the 64 foot mizzenmast of the HMS Arethusa [specially unbolted and placed on land for the occasion]  then they eviscerated his body, tarred it, hauled it back up the mast and left him to waft in the wind for years as a warning to all and sundry.

The mast was the highest gallows in England’s history. 20,000 people attended the execution (quite a number, given the population of Portsmouth was 13,000)

So, why was this so significant in its implications? Here’s why:

  1. The fires in Portsmouth and Bristol caused terror across England. Vigilante groups patrolled the streets of ports.  Thus the arson attacks really did terrorize the nation.
  2. The attacks turned the public opinion – there had been significant support for the American revolution, especially in Bristol, but this public support was turned on its head. Had this not occurred, and more negotiated independence may have been achieved. Who knows what that may have looked like?
  3. The public mood allowed the production of the 1777 Treason Act and for years after the death sentence for murder in the UK had been abolished in 1965, the death sentence was still permitted for treason, and explicitly included in the list of treasonous acts was arson in the naval dockyards.

 A newspaper of the time stated:

“Of all bad characters, an incendiary is the foulest. He acts as an assassin armed with the most dreadful of mischiefs, and in executing his diabolical purposes, involves the innocent and the guilty in the same ruin.” 

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.

1870-1880

Alexander Keith and the Crime of the Century bomb

This is another oddity.  Alexander Keith was born a Scotsman in 1827. He worked in Canada for a while and then worked for the Confederate States in the American Civil war as a blockade runner. In one escapade he was involved in what would today be called a chem bio plot to send clothes infected with yellow fever into the Northern cities in the United States.

It appears that he attempted to swindle some colleagues and fled to St Louis and then settled on the prairie. However one of his alleged victims tracked him down and he fled again, this time to Europe, where he assumed the name of “William King Thomas”, and later the alias William Thompson.  As he began to run out of money, in 1875, he concocted a complex insurance fraud that involved blowing up a passenger ship.  But his plans went badly wrong.

Keith hid a large timed IED in a barrel and arranged for it to be shipped across the Atlantic to New York in the steamship Mosel.  As the barrel was being loaded onto to the Mosel, the barrel slipped, fell and exploded on the dockside in Bremerhaven.  There must have been a significant quantity of explosives, and in a massive explosion 80 people were killed.  A witness stated ” “A mushroom-shaped column of smoke rose approximately 200 meters above the harbor. Everywhere people were crying and whimpering beside ruins. The entire pier was covered in soot: it was like the gateway to hell.”    Newspapers of the time dubbed the incident the “crime of the century”.

Interestingly Keith was on the Mosel and clearly understood that his plan had gone wrong. He had intended to sail on the ship, but leave it, and its explosive cargo, when he got to Southampton.  He went to his cabin immediately, and shot himself in the head twice (think about that…) . In the drama of the post blast no-one noticed the two shots from his cabin – only later did someone hear a groaning from his cabin. The door, locked from the inside, was broken down and Keith found lying on the floor, still alive. A revolver was by his side with 4 remaining bullets. His second shot paralyzed him.

Now, as I have written before, placing IEDs on ships was something that confederate agents had done before. (My next blog post will be about confederate “coal torpedo” IEDs used to damage ships) But by 1870 dynamite had become available significantly increasing the potential of an IED. As we know, Confederate IEDs had utilized clockwork mechanisms. Keith needed to obtain one for his plan, and had approached a German clock making company called JJ Fuchs of Bernberg, with a  request for a silent spring-loaded mechanism capable of functioning after a 10 day delay.  Keith refused to explain why he needed the mechanism but Fuchs designed it nonetheless. The mechanism was large and weighed about 30 pounds, and was so expensive that Keith initially refused to buy it. He approached two Viennese clock makers for a cheaper alternative but they failed, so eventually he returned to Fuchs.


The Fuchs timing mehcanism

There remain suspicions that Keith may have been involved in the disappearance of at least two other ships, The SS City Of Boston in January 1875 and the schooner Marie Victoria in 1864.

 


The suicide note

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