Standing Well Back

1830-1840

Command Wire Devices – Land, Sea and Air

I’ve written before how command-wire electrically-initiated explosive devices have been around for a couple of hundred years now. But I want to look at the subject again, obliquely, by highlighting the different environments in which these devices have been used. There are one or two fascinating diversions in this post.

Clearly, command wire devices on “land” have been around for centuries, derived originally from the “string” or “cord” pulled devices of the late 1500s such as the one discussed in an earlier post here.  Then in the early part of the late 1700s/early 1800s (started by Benjamin Franklin who was the first to electrically initiate an explosive (I think) they spread into broader use. See these earlier posts here and here.  In the 19th century, “minefields” were sometimes not  constructed from autonomous victim operated mines, but rather command initiated devices, controlled from some form of command post.  See this one below from the US Civil War era, showing an underground store from which “torpedoes” (buried mines) were initiated on the battlefield in front.

Today electrically initiated command wire land based explosive devices are pretty common as terrorist ambush devices, with the only issue being the potential visibility of the wire or the process of laying the wire between device and firing point.

Various engineers and inventors in the early decades of the 1800s refined electrical initiation and waterproofed systems to allow them to be used for command initiated defensive minefields on coasts or in rivers – these include the German, Siemens, the Prussian Schilling, the Russian Schilder and Pasley, the British Royal Engineer used such waterproofed electrically initiated charges for demolition purposes. By far the most interesting use, however and one which strangely receives scant attention (perhaps not so strangely given the secrecy of the project was Samuel Colt’s 1836 concept of an “Underwater Battery”).  This was an electrically initiated complex defensive array of underwater mines designed to protect ports and rivers.  They key part of this invention however was not the electrical initiation but Colt’s remarkable command system which I’m 99% certain used a “camera obscura” to project a live image of the area in which underwater mines had been carefully placed. The image was projected onto a “command panel” with electrical contacts built in so that when a ship approached the position of the mine the image of the ship was projected onto one of many metal contacts on the  “command panel” . All the operator had to do was to use an electrical cable from the battery stored underneath to the contact where the ship was displayed on the command panel when the live image of  the ship covered it and that device would be initiated.  Rather like a “magic wand” – touch the live image of the  ship you wish to destroy and it will explode  Such a remarkable integrated “augmented reality” observation and command system seems to be 200 years ahead of its time. I have written about the system before here. Someone needs to recreate one of these for a TV show.

Colt’s control panel. Note the convex mirror reflecting the image of the minefield from above.

Colt wrapped his invention in secrecy, but I think its pretty clear to me that his ingenious observation and control system was a first for initiating complex command wire minefields.  Interestingly, a few years later it appears the Austrians used such a system to protect Venice around 1860. How they got hold of Colt’s idea, I have no idea. Here’s how it was described:

Here’s an image of the Austrian command post.

 

I remain  fascinated by this system. A remote, visual, augmented-reality weapon system, invented by Samuel Colt in the 1830’s. Kept secret, then deployed by the Austrians in the 1860s then forgotten about. Wow!  And only a few years ago people were shocked when terrorists in Iraq used a video camera overlooking an IED to know when to initiate a device, but Colt beat them to it by 170 years on the Potomac!

So that’s land and sea, but what about air – surely command wire initiated explosive devices haven’t been used in the air ?  Well, actually they have, over 100 years ago. During the Salonika campaign in 1917, some balloons were used by British Forces as observation platforms.   German pilots decided to take on these balloons and shot down several, one pilot alone claiming 18 balloons .

A German aircraft attacking an observation balloon

Lt Finch of the British Army Ordnance Corps was asked to design a charge to be placed on a balloon, and this was to be detonated electrically when an enemy plane was close. He placed a 500 pound ammonal charge in a  60 gallon galvanised water tank and “the balloon went up” carrying the explosives connected to a 3000ft cable, on 28 November. As a German plane approached, piloted by Oberleutnant von Eschwege, it was exploded, and the enemy aircraft’s wings were blown off, killing him. Here’s some details of the aftermath which is interesting:

There was no celebrating, no cheering. The British official history states:

He came to his end as a result of a legitimate ruse of war, but there was no rejoicing among the pilots of the squadrons which had suffered from his activities. They would have preferred that he had gone down in fair combat.

Eschwege was given a burial with full military honors; six British pilots carried his coffin to the grave. A message was dropped over Drama airfield:

To the Bulgarian-German Flying Corps in Drama. The officers of the Royal Flying Corps regret to announce that Lt. von Eschwege was killed while attacking the captive balloon. His personal belongings will be dropped over the lines some time during the next few days.

The next day a German plane dropped a wreath and a message:

To the Royal Flying Corps, Monuhi. We thank you sincerely for your information regarding our comrade Lt. von Eschwege and request you permit the accompanying wreath and flag to be placed on his last resting place, Deutches Fliegerkommando.

A similar but unsuccessful device was used on the Western front.

So there we have electrically-initiated command-wire explosive devices on land, on sea, and in the air.

To close though, my favourite Salonika campaign story. Nothing to do with explosive devices!    The British army’s  efforts in the multi-national campaign in Salonkia did not go unnoticed. The Serbians, ostensibly the British Allies in the Macedonia  campaign, of which Salonika was a part, were most grateful for the arduous efforts of their allies.  They therefore proposed a glamorous medal be minted, something like “the Glowing and Glorious Order of the Serbian White Eagle”.  They proposed awarding 5000 of these medals to a random selection of the British forces who had taken part as a visible sign of their gratitude.  The superior Headquarters of British Forces in the Eastern Mediterranean was based in Cairo and an overworked staff officer in G1 was tasked with providing a list of the assigned honourees. Somewhere along the line the list was accidentally put in the wrong envelope. As a result, a list of 5000 soldiers across the Near East, many of whom had hardly even heard of Salonika but who “had not yet received a typhoid injection” were surprised to receive a flowery, ornate and shiny medal through the post – and 5000 hardened Salonika veterans probably got another typhoid jab.

20th Century

A wire to pull a trigger

Historically, firearm mechanisms have often been used to initiate explosive devices, and I’ve blogged about plenty over recent years. Most recently this device here from 1582  shows a very early and very simple example.

I’ve come across a few more devices from the early 20th Century that apparently used a similar technique, perhaps perpetrated by Harry Orchard (aka Albert Horsley, aka Tom Hogan)  as part of the Colorado labor wars in 1903-1905.  I’ve blogged about some of Orchard’s stranger command IED switches before but I didn’t mention then the use of a command pull to pistol trigger.   Orchard was certainly comfortable making, placing, and laying command pull switches and perhaps he saw a pistol trigger as a more reliable system than pulling a cork from a bottle of acid!

Orchard’s case is complex – he worked, apparently, for both sides of a violent labor dispute and there are many accusations of “false flag” attacks. As to whether he committed the crime I’m about to mention, and why, I can’t be certain, but in one sense, for our purposes it doesn’t matter because we are interested in the mechanism and not the motivation or perpertrator.

On 5th June 1904, about 60 strike-breaking miners were on the platform of the Independence Railway Depot in Colorado. They were waiting for a train to take them home in a nearby town. The miner’s union had been in a long and violent dispute with the mine owners.  The perpertrator had planted explosives under the platform, to be initiated by a loaded and cocked pistol placed immediately next to it. A 200ft (some reports suggest 400ft) wire had been  tied to the trigger and led away to a firing point at a safe distance.  The wire was pulled, the device exploded and 13 miners were killed and 9 injured, perhaps one of whom died subsequently.

There are conflicting reports about the nature of the explosive itself – some saying blackpowder, some dynamite.

It also seems likely that a similar device may have been used to cause an explosion in the Vindicator Mine, probably by Orchard, in 1906, albeit that may have been set to act as a booby trap /victim operated switch.

20th Century

EOD “Industry” cartoon 1913

Further proof that there have been times in history when awareness of IED threats was much heightened.  In 1913 the Suffragette campaign was ongoing, and clearly there was increased security to spot and deal with suspect packages.  This “Punch” cartoon of June 1913 has a gentle dig at the bomb security industry. Note the steam powered Westminster council EOD vehicle with containment system in the background, with a useful red flag flying….

1910-1920

More “Stay behind” devices

In a couple of posts over the last few months I’ve discussed “stay behind” devices.

In this post I discussed Russian stay-behind devices in the Crimean War in the 1850s .  The Russians, in ceding Sebastopol to the French and British, were able to predict where attacking troops would be – whether that be to seize high profile buildings or munition dumps, and lay “booby-traps” which caused significant problems.

In this post I discussed Russian stay-behind explosive devices in WW2, used to attack the invading Nazi army. In particular the Russians in many instances were able to predict the sort of buildings that the Wehrmacht would be attracted to use as headquarter buildings – typically large imposing buildings with large rooms suitable for converting into the various facilities needed by a military headquarters. Using both long delay mechanical timers and radio-controlled F-10 devices they had considerable success in Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa, targeting incoming headquarter units , in many cases several days or weeks after losing the territory.  In many cases, including a device personally emplaced by Ilya Starinov,  deliberately “poorly concealed devices” were laid “on top” of the deeply buried device. EOD troops inspected the proposed building, and cleared the obvious device in the cellar  (not realising another much larger device was hidden under it). Three weeks later the massive device was detonated, successfully taking out an entire headquarter staff.

With all that in mind, I have found another use of a very similar tactics, but used by the Germans against the Allies, in WW1. Booby trapped explosive devices were used extensively by the Germans in WW1. In this example, the tactic used by the Russians, against the Germans seems to be identical.

On about the 18 March 1917 Bapaume, a small but strategic town was captured from the Germans. After taking the town, an EOD unit found a mine of some sort in the cellar under the Town Hall, a prominent building – whose cellars were deep enough to provide shell shelter – so an attractive structure for forces “moving in”.  It is believed that the Germans may have expected or hoped that a Divisional Headquarters may have decided to use the place.  I think that in an earlier part of the war the Town Hall had been  indeed previously used by a British or French headquarters.  As it happens that did not occur but about 30 Australians had “moved in” along with a tea stall from the “Australian Comforts Fund”. On the night of 26 March, so about 8 days later, a timer, set before the Germans retreated, caused a massive device to explode, killing most of the occupants.  I have found reports that the charge could have been as large as 10,000lbs, (but I think that unlikely, more likely maybe a couple of hundred lbs) and had two independent “time pencils”, of the type where the delay is provided by acid eating through a steel thread holding a striker under spring tension.  Interestingly there is a suggestion that the German Pioneers who laid the devices defecated on the ground above it, to dissuade careful inspection.  I also understand that the German withdrawal from Bapaume was part of a carefully planned operation to fall back to the Siegfried Line, which will have given time for the preparatory effort.

UPDATE:  I have learned from Ian Jones that the details of the incident aren’t quite as I described. A large, easily found device was discovered and made safe in the cellar. a somewhat smaller device carefully hidden in the tower of the Town Hall was the device that exploded, collapsing the cellar trapping people in there.

Shortly later a German was captured nearby and interrogation of him suggested there were other devices in the area.  Before this warning could be circulated, at 12.37 p.m. On March 26th, the luxurious dugout system on the edge of Bapaume, in which a headquarters had been set up was entirely destroyed by a similar mine. Several other similar devices appear to have been used in the area.

Here’s a diagram of a German delay switch. I think the Germans also had mechanical clockwork delay switches.

German WW1 Boob-traps are very well explained in Ian Jones’s excellent book “Malice Aforethought”   Anyway, I think its interesting that a tactic perfected by the Germans in WW1 was used by Russians against the Germans in WW2.  There are lessons here too about “predictability” of the target’s behaviour in terms of choice of location for an explosive device, and also in terms of disguising stay-behind devices. Of course, booby traps were used by the British, French and Australians too.

Sabotage During World Wars

Colin Gubbins – Gamekeeper turned Poacher

As part of my research into the use of IEDs for sabotage in WW2, I wrote an earlier piece about Colonel Ilya Starinov, the key person in developing Russia’s sabotage activity in WW2.  More recently I’ve been looking at Britain’s role in encouraging sabotage efforts using IEDs in the same war.  Of course there are differences but the parallels between Ilya Starinov, and his counterpart in Britain, Colin Gubbins are actually pretty interesting.

Steely-eyed Gubbins. 

Gubbins is well known for his role in leading the SOE during WW2, but his influence I think is broader than that. He was also responsible for implementing the ideas of Churchills “Auxiliary Units”, a plan to mount partisan operation in England if the Germans had invaded in the early part of the war.  His 1939 pamphlets on how to conduct partisan warfare were distributed across Europe during the war.  I was interested how this apparently traditional Artillery officer became such source for partisan warfare ideas, and it’s an interesting story, and some of the things I have found are startling, to me anyway.

As a young man he was already a German speaker and perhaps comfortable with the concept of living in a foreign country, having lived for a short time in Heidelberg before the war started.  His WW1 career was fairly standard for a Gunner officer fighting at Ypres, the Somme and Arras.   He was wounded and gassed.   It was only in 1919, after the end of the Great War did Gubbin’s experiences slightly leave the norm.

  • In 1919 he served for a time on the staff of the British Forces in the North Russia Campaign. This was a peculiar and unusual campaign by any standards. Gubbins would have been aware of activity by Bolsheviks to sabotage railways as part of their battles with the Allies who supported the White Russians. He would have also been aware of British encouragement (by MI6) of IED use by their agents and white Russians in Petrograd,
  • At the end of 1919, Gubbins was then posted to Ireland as an Intelligence officer, during the busy years of 1920 – 1922. During that time he attended a three day course in guerilla warfare. Most of his duties will have involved understanding the threats faced by the British Army by the IRA, who were operating a guerrilla campaign. The 18 months or so of this experience as an intelligence officer against an insurgent campaign seems to have sparked a longer term interest in irregular warfare , and started his thinking, in the reverse of poacher-turned gamekeeper. Gubbins was to think hard about gamekeeper-turned-poacher  in coming years.
  • In 1922 he continued his intelligence career in Signals Intelligence in India, before a range of staff, training and policy posts.
  •  In the late 1930s, as a Lt Col, Gubbins started to crystallise his irregular warfare thoughts by being the author of key pamphlets such as “The Partisan Leader’s Handbook”. This is actually a fascinating document, for a number of reasons. Firstly it shows that at least someone, in 1939, in the War office was thinking about irregular warfare. secondly I think I can see hints that the author, Gubbins, had studied earlier campaigns and drawn from not only his own experience in Russia and Ireland but also other campaigns I have discussed in earlier blogs such as the efforts of the Arab Bureau in Arabia in 1917 and the German WW1 Lettow-Vorbeck campaign in East Africa. I also sense that his advice on OPSEC is drawn from his experience as an intelligence officer “from the other side of the fence”

As a small diversion in this blog post, I’d also like to highlight a couple of other aspects of the Partisan Leader’s pamphlet that I think are worthy of attention, and that’s to do with the utter ruthlessness prescribed by Gubbins, which in modern eyes are startling.  Here’s a couple of examples, but remember this is a pamphlet produced by a Lt Col in the War office in 1939:

  • One method of sabotage that is recommended is the contamination of food by “bacilli, poison”.  So here is the British War Office advocating biological warfare by partisans in 1939
  • Gubbins is equally ruthless on the subject of “informers” within partisan groups. Informers must be killed “immediately ” or at “the first opportunity” and “if possible a note pinned on the body stating the man was an informer.  Having personally once had to retrieve such a body that’s a bit shocking as a British document.

Then later in 1939 Gubbins was posted to be Chief of Staff to one of this blog’s favourite characters, General Carton De Wiart, as part of a mission to Poland just before the Germans invaded and war started, advising on Polish partisan tactics.  He was with de Wiart as they crossed the Romanian border escaping from the German advance.  After that he went on to form commando units which deployed to Norway, and after was tasked  to set up the Auxiliary Units in preparation for a German invasion of England, and clearly applied much of his irregular warfare thinking into that.

I find it fascinating to look at a time line of Gubbins’ career with that of Starinov, from about 1918 to 1945. Both experienced in Russia, but on different sides. Starinov starting more lowly but with stronger technical skills, but importantly both learning from their experience and deriving very similar irregular warfare policy developments. Putting aside political differences, both came up with similar solution sets of irregular warfare based around explosive sabotage.  Both put huge effort into developing “stay behind” guerrilla operations against invading forces – for Starinov it was the plan to operate partisan groups in Ukraine if it was invaded, developed as a detailed plan by Starinov in the mid 1920s – 1930s, for Gubbins it was the Auxiliary units developed in 1940 to counter German invasion.  Gubbins formed the first British Commando units, Starinov formed the first Russian Speztnaz units.   Both men ended WW2 running very extensive partisan operations against the Germans. One can’t but help see certain symmetries. One can’t but help see their influence in all sorts of conflict types since WW2.  2003 in Iraq is just one example that could have been based on either man’s plan.    I wonder if they were aware of each other?

Gubbins in retirement

(Note: Copies of Gubbins’ partisan pamphlets and other Auxiliary Unit material including a fantastic explosive demolitions document, disguised as a British Farmers Diary, 1939, are available. Ping me and I might tell you where from). Here’s a couple of pics – some of you will work out the link to “Highworth”.

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