I’d like to advise any sensible person not to look for mousetraps on the internet. Some are bizarre, some cruel, and some very weird and unpleasant, sometimes all of those things at once.
But this one is explosive so, hey, I have an obligation to show it to you.
It’s been a while since my last post – other things have had my attention. A reader, John C, responded to a post I wrote last year with some thoughts and this encouraged me to look again at this fascinating and crucially important piece of (explosive) history.
This then is a follow up to this post which I suggest you read through to refresh your memory. In it I explore some interesting technological developments regarding the development of explosive initiators in the early 1500s. Why is this important?
So in the history of firearms and in the linked history of explosives (as the site purports to be, in a sense) these mechanical devices described in my earlier post are quite significant.
In the earlier post last year I included a copy of beautiful diagram of a mechanical igniter from a date of about 1505. Historically speaking this is technically a wheel lock but I think was invented before a similar device was fitted to a hand held firearm. It’s maybe the first wheel lock mechanism. This device and one or two others were carefully drawn and included in the“Loffelholz Kodex”. At the time I hadn’t worked out how this igniter had functioned. I’ve now spent some time scratching my head and doing a little research and I think I may have an answer. But I’m only about 60% certain, so if you think I’m wrong, please correct me. I’m very open to alternative interpretations of this intriguing machine. For ease of explanation I have included the diagram again here below but with some annotations.
I originally thought the device had a coiled spring hidden behind the wheel (F) to cause it to turn, but I no longer think that is true. Importantly I don’t think coiled springs of the type I had envisioned had been invented at this time. Rather, like the simpler device seen in the last post, there is a cord wrapped around the wheel’s axle. The horizontal J shaped main spring (B) has its longest arm, along the bottom and this is the spring which pulls the cord down, causing the wheel to spin. The wheel is prevented from turning by the Brake (C) in the middle to which a pull string is attached. Pulling that away from the wheel is like releasing a parking brake. In normal conditions this Brake (C) is held in place by the brass bar running in parallel to it acting as a spring. The bit I’m slightly unsure of is the Cord tensioner (G). This holds the cord tight against the axle. You can see the finger holder that you pull when winding up the wheel(F) with the winding key (E).
So… let me describe the preparation and action…
1. The winding cord is tied to the end of the J shaped main spring and the other end to to the right hand contraption. The right hand contraption is tensioned using the finger guard to pull the cord.
2. The wheel is turned using the “ring key”. This causes the cord to wrap around the axle of the wheel. (Somehow!)
3. As this is done the J spring is flexed upwards, and held there by the cord.
4. The “brake” acting on the wheel prevents the tension of the cord to act on the wheel. .
5. After a few turns the brake is engaged, holding the wheel.
6. The tray is primed with gunpowder or tinder.
The action on firing is as follows:
1. At the chosen time the string is pulled.
2. This pulls the brake away from the wheel.
3. The J spring now acts pulling the cord down that is wrapped around the wheel’s axle.
4. The wheel rotates
5. The serpentine holds the pyrites against the rotating wheel
6. Sparks are generated and thrown into the gunpowder/tinder in the tray. The ignition of this gunpowder or tinder can then be used to ignite the main charge though some sort of channel.
I’m not quite sure about how the cord is wrapped on the axle – this important component is hidden from view.
The Loffelholz Codex was produced at roughly the same time as Leonardo da Vinci was also developing spring powered wheel locks. Frankly his diagrams are much harder to interpret that these in the Loffelholz. I have no idea which came first, and it doesn’t really matter perhaps. Other technologies which enabled this design include:
The impact of this development was significant – in 1512 such mechanisms were banned in at least one European country because of the capabilities it provides to those with nefarious intent, and therefore a threat to society of the time. There are interesting parallels with trying to control and constrain explosive technology today. Wheel locks continued to evolve into neater, smaller designs designed to be mounted on or built in to firearms, usually with some clever spring design – but this early example is entirely separate from a firearm in this form.
I’m grateful to Prof Tim Wilson for drawing my attention to these peculiar 1931 railway bombings by Sylvestre Matushka. Here’s the story:
In the 1930’s the most important “infrastructure” in Europe was the railway system. As my previous posts about railways have discussed, (see the tab on railway bombings in the right-hand column) railways provide a useful target for explosive attacks – they impact the wider world economically and therefore always get attention, there’s thousands of unguarded miles of tracks and bridges that provide safe and unconstrained opportunity of access, the presence of a population dense, massive target, arriving at great speed can be predicted, and the very fact a train balances fairly precariously on rails is also a key factor. So trains and railways were (and remain) a popular target.
The protagonist in this story, Sylvestre Matushka, was a Hungarian engineer and businessman. Some reports suggest that during the First World War he was a soldier in an Austro-Hungarian military engineer unit, responsible for demolitions of railway lines which of course, if true, would be significant. He later became a manager and owner of a number of businesses including a quarrying company which gave him access to explosives or a justification to purchase explosives. Other reports suggest he was a chemist.
Matrushka, (in a dirty raincoat!)
He made at least two unsuccessful efforts to derail trains with explosives in Austria in December and January 1930/31. In the first attempt he loosened the railway track (also leaving a note saying ” “Assault! Revolution! Victory!”), but the attempted derailment failed. In the second, he fastened another rail across the track but that too failed to derail the train. Strange for him to use this methods if he was a chemist able to access explosives and had experience of damaging railway lines.
Then on 8 August 1931, he derailed a train with explosives causing over 100 casualties (none of them fatal) . The train was the Berlin-Basel express, and the attack took place just south of Berlin. I’m not sure of the device construction but one vague report suggests it was electrically initiated.
A little over a month later on September 13th, he successfully attacked the Budapest to Vienna express, a the Biatorbágy bridge near Budapest. His device was placed on the viaduct and the train and several carriages plunged into a ravine. Here 22 people died and 120 were injured. Matushka was arrested at the scene where he was pretending to be a surviving passenger. He was released but re-arrested a month later in Vienna, where he “confessed”. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. 
I have regrettably found little detail so far about the device here also. It reportedly used dynamite in one source but another more convincing source suggests the explosive was “ecrasite”. Dynamite as a main charge would match the quarrying background of Matruska but ecrasite would perhaps marry with the report he was a chemist, and as military explosive perhaps marry with the reports that he had been a demolitions officer in the First Wold War. One source, without explanation, suggests the Vienna device was initiated by the pressure of the train closing a switch. That’s interesting but I can’t confirm it yet. Such devices were certainly technologically possible, and were used in the Great War and before, as I have discussed in earlier posts, so would have been available in concept to Matushka. But he was “present at the scene” and a command initiated device would have been simpler perhaps, so I think there still remains a question mark over the initiation.
The question of Matushka’s “motivation” is interesting. Initially the investigations assumed a political motivation because at the Berlin explosion a defaced Nazi magazine was found and the note found after one of the earlier attempted derailments. Allegedly a letter was found after the last incident “praising revolution” but there are suggestions that this was a plant that enabled the government to implement an anti-communist security crack-down. Two communists were executed for supposedly encouraging Matrushka, but there were doubts about how genuine this was. At his trial he claimed he first claimed to have been directed by “God” to conduct the bombings, then that they were instigated by an imaginary or long dead friend, “Leo the Ghost” who only he could see and who had hypnotised him. The assessment at the time was that Matrushka was pretending to be insane. Then a story emerged that he had sexual gratification from seeing dramatic and tragically violent incidents. This was supposedly the first ever case of “Symphorophilia”, and to be honest I’m not aware of any subsequent ones involving explosives, so I’m a bit sceptical. To me, it’s no more believable than “Leo the Ghost”. In any event he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Matushka remained in jail in Vac throughout most of the Second World War. Vac was liberated by the advancing Soviet Army, and at that point Matushka disappeared. There are unconfirmed but intriguing suggestions that he then worked for the Soviet Union under a new identity, as an explosives expert in the latter part of the War, and perhaps even operated as a demolition expert in the Korean War in the 1950s. The Soviet Union certainly had secret programs to cause disruption to Western European countries later in the 1930s (see my earlier posts on Ilya Starinov) , and some of these did include train bombings of a similar kind. There are other rumours (supposedly back by documents) that he reappeared in Hungary in the 1970s under another identity.
There is an interesting possible link to the first bombing near Berlin. The morning after the bombing, two policemen were assassinated by a communist group who were active at the time – and Berlin was a long way from Matushka’s home turf.
So the possibilities are that
Take your pick.
A few days of enforced idleness has given me a little space to think. Inspired by my (off topic) recent post, a book review on the evolution of piston engines in the Second World War I’ve been thinking again about key technological developments in history with regard to explosives and related issues.
To put this blog into context, let me try to make things really simple. An explosion, (whether that be of high explosives or gunpowder) is a chemical reaction, typically a change from a solid to a lot of gas. For about 500 years from about 1000 AD to 1500AD, there was only gunpowder, a low explosive, and this mix of chemical solids could be brought to change to gaseous products with the application of a naked flame which starts essentially a combustion process. So by introducing a naked flame, or equivalent amount of heat, it starts the reaction, and causes the explosion of hot gases. Until about 1500 the only way of igniting gunpowder was by heat or flame. You can see my earlier post about other related technologies here.
But having to have an already burning flame or equivalent is tricky. You can’t disguise it easily. If your “match” is unlit you have too start a fire somehow and that takes time, even more so before the age of boxes of matches and cigarette lighters. All this led to practical challenges in the use of firearms and explosives. The most efficient method until 1500 (and indeed for many years later) was to have ready a slow match burning well in advance,
The time was ripe then in 1500 for a more flexible way of initiating gunpowder, either in a firearm or for an explosive device or indeed nay kind of munition that used gunpowder. There then appears to have been a key turning point enabled by a number of disparate technologies. These include:
Around 1500 the wheel lock was developed, perhaps in Germany or perhaps by Leonardo Da Vinci. The mechanism of the wheel lock is that potential energy is stored in a spring. When the spring (carbon steel enabled by metallurgy) is released, this spring (a coil) typically causes a steel wheel to turn around a spindle as in clock technology. The wheel , with a jagged edge turns against a quantity of pyrites, causing sparks to occur. The sparks drop into a container of ignitable material, typically gunpowder in our case. In preparation to ignition a key is used to tension the spring, which is held on a latch. That spring can be held indefinitely, with only the release of a latch needed to initiate the mechanism and whatever combustible is placed next to it. When the latch is released by a trigger, the wheel spins and another spring loaded lever pushes the pyrites into contact with it. Interestingly the “wheel” also needs to ideally be carbon steel to get the best sparks, so the development of these two key components were driven by clock makers developing springs for their mechanisms using carbon steel, and understanding how energy could be released from a spring and applied usefully. After all, engineering is often about how energy is turned from one form to another.
I’ve written before about a lovely diagram from the 1580s of an IED initiated by a wheel lock , with a fantastic picture I found in a book in the British Library. That post is here, but I’ll repeat this diagram below for convenience – it’s one of my favourite historical IEDs. One doesn’t need to understand the writing to work out what’s going on – note the string attached to the trigger, the wheelock mechanism and the fuze leading to a barrel of gunpowder.
So this image was a wheel lock initiated IED from 1582, and I wanted to find an earlier example. Some sources suggest that Leonardo Da Vinci was the “inventor”, so I’ve been hunting for Da Vinci diagrams. Here, below, is one from the “Madrid Codex” . Whether Da Vinci actually designed this or was simply copying a design made by a German inventor is an issue for the academics. If I’m honest I can’t quite understand the diagram (and also the accompanying text!) but I have picked out some key points. Let me at least point these out to you:
In doing some more digging I found a couple more interesting diagrams that are worth showing in the context that I think they may not be to ignite explosives, but rather to light tinder, which in effect meets the same requirement. Perhaps these “mechanical tinder igniters” were precursors to the wheel lock. They date from the first decade of the 1500s, right in the early days of match locks and I have lifted them from the “Loffelholz Kodex”. Here’s the first:
This is really a beautiful diagram, from 1505, and I think shows a pocket-sized igniter. A portable “everyday carry” from 500 years ago. The box container contains tinder” or , if you like, gunpowder. The brass slide holds the tinder in a box. A cord is fitted to a spindle, and wound round and round. Also attached to the spindle is a steel wheel, and the serpentine holds the pyrites. The user, with a ring on his finger to which is tied the cord, pulls, the wheel spins, the pyrites is engaged , sparks fly and light the tinder. Replace the tinder with gunpowder, and run the cord as a trip wire and you have a booby trap IED. You can see that with the addition of a clock spring , a release catch to allow the spring to act on the wheel and another spring to engage the pyrites, it is the same idea.
The second diagram is more complicated, and I confess I can’t quite work it out. But it is clearly a wheel lock device for some purpose or other. If you can interpret the action here, please let me know your thoughts. I can see the “wheel”, the tinder box, the serpentine holding the pyrites and one , if not two triggers, but I can’t quite work out the springs. Clearly this is meant to be screwed onto the side of something.
What these inventions do, that previously wasn’t very easy to achieve, are:
So these are startling new offensive capabilities for explosive devices. As such, the development of the wheel lock had perhaps more of an impact on explosive device design than on firearms. where , in battle at least, the need to conceal a burning match was not an issue. Perhaps there was an impact though on the use of firearms in ambushes and for highway robbers, when firearms could be concealed under a cloak. Such mechanisms in firearms were quickly banned in some countries – again showing the potential for the illicit use of a mechanism such as this for nefarious effect.
As such I think that historically speaking the development of the wheel lock is one of the most significant engineering developments in the history of explosives as it provided several distance new IED capabilities. Wheel locks were expensive to produce so the use of match locks continued for some time – flintlocks which came some time later were simpler and therefore cheaper to produce, eventually phasing out the wheel lock. That development is in itself interesting because it was a “simpler” technology replacing a complex engineered device.
Before I finish, there’s two interesting aside. Most wheel locks used a concentric spiral spring to turn a spindle that ran through its middle. But there’s two other initiating systems , one a variant of the spring construction. This is it below, another Da Vinci Drawng, this from the Codex Alantic and you can see that the spring is a longitudinal coil rather than a spiral, but it still acts on a “wheel” that is perpendicular to the length of the spring.
Finally another approach to the same problems this not using a wheel at all but a longitudinal bar of steel pulled so that it scrapes along the pyrites. This is the Monk’s Gun, held in the Dresden Armoury. This dates from somewhere between 1480 and 1550.
Although it has no “wheel” it has the advantage (?) of being somewhat simpler. You can see the “serpentine” holing the pyrites, and the ring on the bottom is pulled to the right, causing the teeth on a steel slide to act on the pyrites producing a spark – hidden behind would have been a touch hole leading to the chamber of this simple gun.
Last year I wrote two important blog pieces. The first was about the Russian IED expert Ilya Starinov – certainly the most important person in the history of explosive sabotage. The second post was about the Russian F-10 radio controlled demolition device, used successfully by Starinov in WW2.
Since than I have been digging to find more details of Starinov’s devices, which I have finally successfully done, and there are some very interesting findings. I’ve also uncovered other anecdotal stuff about Starinov and indeed about the broader history of IEDs which I’ll post in coming days and weeks. I also have more technical detail on the F-10 to discuss in future posts.
Now, firstly, a caution. Some of the material I have found regarding the construction and design of certain IEDs could be abused by people with ill-intent. All the material I am going to post is unclassified, but I’m going to obscure parts of it and discuss things in some vague terms to make it much less useful to those with criminal intent. If you want to know the source and you know me or can prove you have a legitimate need to see the sources I am using, then get in touch. Otherwise I make no apology for being deliberately non-specific about some of this material. Now, I found the source of this material on line, and others may be able too, but I am going to limit my helpfulness towards those who shouldn’t have this detail. If you want to challenge my assessments and why I draw the conclusions I reach below, I’m very happy to do this off-line. This means, perhaps, you are going to have to trust me on some of my assessments. Or not! Finally I should also point out, sadly, that there is no shortage of detailed technical instructions for miscreants to find how to make bigger and better IEDs then these here discussed in an openly available 70-year-old document, discussing devices from the Eastern Front in 1942. The horse of IED knowledge bolted a long time ago. Close the stable door if you can – I can’t.
The document I found was developed not from Russian sources, but from US sources, who clearly in the immediate post-war period of 1945-1950 had access to German Wehrmacht engineers reports. These engineers had conducted thousands of successful EOD operations. By gleaning reports of Soviet demolition activity, dealt with by the German engineers in WW2, the US military tried to gain a greater understanding of Soviet capabilities in the 1950s. So this was real technical intelligence on Soviet explosive technology, and explosive sabotage tactics, as the Cold War span up. So here we have, in 2020, the opportunity to examine 1950s US military technical intelligence, derived from Nazi German technical intelligence from the period 1940-1945, about Russian explosive devices. So this isn’t exactly a primary source. But some of the detail I’m going to show you makes me convinced this is worthwhile, valuable historical material, and there are certain aspects which surprised me.
Firstly to remind you of the context. It is apparent that the Soviet soldier of WW2 was pretty familiar with improvising explosives charges, either using his own munitions or captured German munitions. The Germans state that the Russian soldier is “particularly ingenious in installing improvised mines and booby traps“. During the latter part of WW2, the Russian use of sabotage explosive devices went way beyond anything seen before or since. Furthermore partisans in Eastern European countries were trained to improvise yet further. Thousands of railway lines, trains and vehicles were attacked explosively by Russians or Russian sponsored partisans in eastern Europe. Much of this was coordinated by Ilya Starinov, who also designed explosive devices , trained the perpetrators and on many occasions planted key devices himself. Starinov survived numerous purges, and went on to develop spetzntaz units and tactics, and taught revolutionaries around the world in the 1950s and 1960s.
In this first post, I’m going to highlight some very interesting similarities between Soviet sabotage devices from WW2 and (get this) IRA devices of the 1970’s, 1980’s and even 1990’s. These similarities go beyond just application of general explosive/sabitage principles – there are significant design similarities in aspects of the devices. Here’s some examples, and a final, highly technical device that I won’t comment on too deeply.
3. In the late 1980s, PIRA developed the “Mk 12” mortar as British Forces called it. This was followed in 1993 by the smaller “Mk16” Mortar. These were missiles that had a shaped charge in its front end, a hollow pipe behind it containing a fuze and tail fins to stabilise in flight. This wasn’t really a mortar but a horizontally fired missile typically fired at vehicles. It had a shaped charge warhead and a fuze set in the hollow tube behind, with simple fns to stabilise it in its short flight. Here’s a picture of a PIRA Mk 12 Mortar. disassembled:
4. In WW2 Russian partisans developed a device that is remarkably similar. Not tube-launched but built for a similar purpose and with almost identical design principles. Here’s the pic from the 1950 report:
5. The Russians also concentrated significantly on additional circuits or mechanisms to booby trap charges. By introducing anti-handling and anti-lift charges, several of the devices used by the Soviets appear remarkably similar to what the British EOD community of the 1970’s refer to as “Castlerobin” devices. I’m not going to discuss this further here. But clearly there is a thought-process going on to prevent the render safe of devices, and target the EOD operator. The parallels in design are clear.
6. The creation of devices which target EOD activities went a step further with the introduction of a RF sensitive switch designed to initiate an explosive device when certain mine detection equipment was used. This was fielded in December 1943. Some of this equipment was captured by the Wehrmacht in January 1944, and rapidly exploited. 70 years later , technology which is triggered by the RF signature of certain EOD equipments would be regarded as a very high threat indeed – yet, here the Russians were in the early 1940s developing such technology. The device responded to a frequency of 800-2000Hz at short range, emitted by German EOD equipment. What is more, the Germans recognised the importance of such an advance, examined the Russian technology, identified some flaws, and developed their own version of the equipment. They also developed technical solutions to the threat. I find that remarkable, and some of you will share my surprise for reasons we won’t go into. Here’s an excerpt from the report showing the circuit to prove it is what I say it is – (I have obscured part of it for reasons explained earlier).
To be clear in my assessments: I’m not saying that the IRA devices of the late twentieth century were designed by the Russians – just that there are some odd parallels, that may be coincidences. Direct influence is possible but so, theoretically, is the potential for the IRA to have got hold of the American report written in the 1950s. It’s not secret. But we shouldn’t underestimate the fact that Starinov was training revolutionaries from around the world. I do think that these parallels once again highlight the importance of understanding the history of IEDs. The fact that Russian devices were so focused on countering EOD action is interesting and significant and deserves wider understanding. The general under-appreciation of the extensive, WW2 Russian sabotage campaigns using improvised explosive devices is barely recognised and deserves a much greater level of attention. Frankly it makes the efforts of the British SOE or American OSS look very paltry in comparison.
In future blogs related to all this I will address the following:
All in all, this document is a bit of a treasure trove when put within the larger context of the history of IEDs over several centuries.