TACTICAL TUESDAY: WW2 SOE Bridge & Rail Demo

Up a broadcasting network. We have to hit the reset, butudy to create a true culture preparedness, starting at a very young age and filtering all the way up. Welcome to the gun Metal Armory. Here's your host, Dan Dy. What's up everybody. This is day from the gun Metal Armory. Tonight, I am pre recording you guys a show because I do not have enough time to do a full show, so I'm going to record you guys some thing while I'm at work. What I wanted to go into is surrounding the World War Two side of escape and evasion and you know, building resistance groups and things like that. But tonight, being that, you know, there's a lot of talk of camps and stuff out there, and you know, COVID camps and Australia and all that bullshit, I figure maybe we should have a talk about sabotage, you know, and how a sabotage railways and you know how they did that, you know, back in World War Two, purely for historical reasons. You know, we're looking at it from a historical perspective of course, so even back during World War Two, and yes, I am starting this quickly, even back during World War II two, they were using pe or plastic explosives. The average explosive making kit or let's see sabotage or demolitions kit that the SOE would use or the OSS would use, would basically consist of igniters, safety fuse, some copper tubing. They'd have a probably a rather large roll of trip wire. They have a lot of percussion caves, pencil fuses. They would have disguised igniters, like for example, during World War two, or not during World War two, but throughout the time that I'm not sure exactly when they were designed and put into production, but there was something called a fog signal, and it was this small disc shaped object that they engineers and railway workers would put onto the train tracks and that would let the train conductor know that coming up ahead there was fog or there was an accident or whatever. But they would put these fog signals onto the railroad tracks so they could signal the engineers. Well, SOE and OSS got a hold of this concept and made a disguised version of the fog signal, and instead they used theirs to ignite plastic explosives or something like that. So they they they took that concept and made a run for it. Basically, now there was all sorts of different types of igniters and detonators and things like that. They had the time pencil ones which you would crush an acid tablet or whatever and it would start to eat through the metal or whatever material it was that the acid would eat through, and then when the two chemicals mixed together, that would set off the igniter, and that would set off the plastic explosives. There were pull switch detonators or debt cord. There were just a bunch of different ways percussion caps. There was just tons and tons of different ways that they would use to set off their different types of explosives that the SOE would use for demolitions. They had all kinds of kits too that you could get from the SOOE catalogs and the the suppliers for the SOOE. So they had delayed action fuses that you could get. They had the time pencils, which you know, looked about the same size as a number two type pencil, not exactly the same size, but pretty close. They had all sorts of booby trapped items that you could get from the from the SOOE you know, Q Department basically, I think it was called m I nine if I remember correctly. But they had a whole entire section dedicated to disguised weaponry, demolitions, things of that nature because it was extremely and I mean extremely important for them to be able to justis their weaponry. So anyways, they also had various size ready made charges of PE. They had various different types of detonators like we talked about, and a lot more. Apparently they had a standard one and a half pound charge of plastic plastic explosive. They had the detonating cort attached to it with the time pencil. Of course, they would of course, like we said, they would have the delayed action fuses and a lot more. Now, according to historical documents, demolitions training was a major part of the SOE training syllabus. They would put a lot of emphasis on anti railway sabotage, you know, like those rail lines that were taking all the innocent people to those camps. Yeah, like those They put a lot of emphasis on railway sabotage. Okay, they would use the like the West Highland Line in Scotland. They would actually use the tracks and even the one of the old trains they would use for the agents, the SOE people to practice their art on, because demolitions is one of those things that you actually have to practice at. You can't just read a book and go for it. It doesn't work that way because it's very, very dangerous stuff that you're dealing with. So it's not as simple as oh, you know, I read, I read a book, and now I know what to do. They they talk about the agents working with a large array of different types of explosive materials. They had stuff like amatol, jelig nite of course, pe or plastic explosives. I believe they still worked with tn T. I think they worked with rd X. There was a lot of different different types. But the s OE and OSS agents were also instructed how to make homemade explosives and they, of course, you know, use the time Time Timeless classic, I guess if you want to freaking say that. But they were taught how to do it with fertilizer. You know, we've all heard about that crazy ass shit. You know, they also talked about doing it with weed killer. But you know, keep in mind that a lot of those materials aren't even available anymore that they would use for that stuff, so, but that was how they did it back in the day. There was also a three week class that they would go through at SDS seventeen or one of the training schools sabotage training schools. It was a three week specialist course for industrial sabotage that was going to be taught at Brixtonbury Manor that was near Hertford. And that course was one of those courses that you already had to have the experience to get into. You couldn't just sign up for it. That was one of those courses that you had to already have previous experience. You had to know how to work with explosives. It you know, it was a advanced level class. I guess is maybe one of the best ways that you could describe that course, the industrial sabotage course. Let's see, they they basically that course was meant to hone the skills of the soe or the oss agent and make them better at sabotage or demolition. I'm still looking for information on whether that was a required course for them or if it was something that they could sign up for or volunteer for. Now. I know that a lot of the courses that the SOE SS did were required, but I'm not one hundred percent sure if that one was or was not. So the SOE you know, the Special Operations Executive, they say that their favorite explosive, their favorite type of kaboom boom, was definitely PE. It was definitely plastic explosive. And of course we still use plastic explosives to this day. We still use C four almost every day in this country and overseas and all over the place. I mean they even use various types of things like that to do mining, you know, all over the world. So plastic explosive is definitely one of those things that is well known and has been for many, many, many decades now. They were so in love with PE because it was able to be shaped into all kinds of different shapes. It was like clay, so they could shape it into all sorts of shapes. It was stable, it could be you know, transported without any problems. It would only go off when paired with a detonator, so extremely safe to use and to carry in the field. It was just very very well suited to their particular needs, I guess, is the best way to put that. Even they even talk about it. You know, if it was struck by a bullet, it still wouldn't go off. It was set on fire, it still wouldn't go off. There you have to have a detonation or demolition pencil, or a time pencil, or specific type of way to set off that charge. Let's see. That is not to be said for something like tannerite, which is a modern day binary explosive that is available in a lot of sporting gosaurs and gun soars and things like that. It is extremely stable as well, especially in its form where it hasn't been mixed together yet. The two parts have not been mixed again the other yet, with the two parts separate from each other, Tannerit's extremely stable. And even when the two parts have been mixed together, tannerite is still very very stable. I don't know any other way to put it. It is extremely stable for what it is. You have to now. Conversely, as opposed to pe, tannerite can be set off by a cartridge. It can be set off by a bullet, but the bullet has to be going a specific speed or a specific fps. I know this from experience because I've played with tannerite out in the desert before myself and I believe they do have different forms of it, but the form that we were using out there when I was in school was the form that has to be set off by a rifle cartridge. It wasn't as simple as just shooting it with anything you wanted, like a twenty two. Now they do have versions that can be set off by a twenty two, but that's not what we had. Anyways, PE would not be set off by a bullet. To set off plastic explosives, you needed the primer, you needed the time pencil. Otherwise it wasn't going to happen. It was basically inside the primer was going to be some sort of small electrical charge or small explosion. That's what would set off plastic explosive. Now, I don't know if PE back then could be set off with an explosive bullet, not one hundred percent sure on that, or if that would even work. Might be an interesting thing for MythBusters to try or you know, well, I guess they're not around anymore, but I don't know. Maybe one of these cool like demolition ranch or something, maybe they could try it. But anyways, it is one of those things that is interesting to look at throughout history. So the advantage that the agent would have with plastic explosive is he could basically he could detonate that charge whenever he wanted to, because it didn't matter. He didn't have to worry about the charge going off by itself. He would have to use something specific to make it go off. The only problem at the time was how close the agent had to be to the plastic explosive to set it off. So that was a bit of an issue, something that obviously they have fixed now. But they also had those time pencils that they could break the small vial of acid in there and they would Basically each different color of pencil was rated to a certain time, you know, eight hours, four hours, six hours, whatever it may be, which is interesting. Nonetheless, so they say that the well, the time pencil, they call it switch number ten. But the time pencil was basically a brass or an aluminum tube. There was about five inches long. It had a spring like a spring loaded detonator, and behind that there was a copper section that contained a glass vial that was full of copper chloride. To activate these time pencils, the the operator would all they would do was crush the area that small copper section. They would crush that area and the area containing the ample, and that would release that copper chloride into an iron wire. The safety strip should be removed, of course, and the time pencil would be armed at that point. Now, they said that if the strip couldn't be taken out of the time pencil, it would tell the operator that the wire had already been broken and was actually resting right on top of the safety strip. A they would always tell the operators the agents that you need to use a new time pencil if that's the case, because that one could not be relied upon for detonation. Now, if their little time pencil thing was working the way it should be working, pulling out that safety strip should actually arm the safety pencil or the sorry not safety pencil, the time pencil safety strip. The actual copperchloride liquid from that glass vial that was broken would corrode that wire, which, of course, the wire would break, which would release a spring that would fly into a percussion cap and set off the detonator. Okay, pretty simple construction. We're talking nineteen thirties nineteen forties here. This is not computer to America controlled stuff. Okay, and even C and C stuff is really not all that complicated either. Okay. They said that the time delay was by the type of pencil that was selected. Now remember we're just talking about this a few minutes ago. It was based around the actual concentration of copper sulfide, which the stronger it was, the quicker it would dissolve the wire. Now I have heard of them using copper sulfide and copper chloride, but I think that's probably an issue for another day. The time pencil would have needed to be inserted into the explosive at that point. Basically, as soon as you've armed that pencil, it's in the plastic explosive. At that point you need to get your bought out of there. Basically, what they'd tell these saboteurs, they would tell the Asians, it's time to go now. The time pencils, remember I was telling you earlier that they were color coded. The information on that is the black pencils were a ten minute explosive time it would go off in ten minutes. The red ones you had thirty minutes, the green ones you had five hours and thirty minutes, the yellow ones you had twelve hours, wow, and the blue time pencils, you had twenty four hours. Apparently. The big deal though, is that the delays were not exact. That's something that they could not work out back then. They couldn't get it exactly exactly exactly, like you know, right on the dot on the time. Sometimes there were you know, it could be a few hours difference, a few minutes difference. There were some time differences there, so the agent needed to keep all that stuff in mind. Some agents, some operators would prefer to use really long fus. Some would completely throw out the black and the red ones because they were too short, you know, the black one being ten minutes, the red one being thirty minutes. You know, they could use the green ones at five and a half hours, the yellow ones at twelve, or the blue at twenty four. Me personally, I don't really even like that. I think that's I don't know. I think it should be you should be able to set it for whatever you needed to be. But again, you know, it's old schools, so we worked with what we had back then. They would also recommend during training that for super high value targets, you know, if it was someone that absolutely had to be taken out, they would make sure that they added two time pencils. It was important that they would add two of them instead of just one to make sure that the plastic explosive would go off. Okay, So they talk about attacking railways. The SOE was pretty dog gone good to target the rail network. They really super keen on that. Okay, take from that what you will. One of the devices they would use was, again like we talked about, the mounted out fog signal. Okay, the intention was to detonate the main charge some distance in front of the train. That way, that charge would be attached to the fog signal switch. Okay, And then of course you would have that length of detonator chord or instantaneous fuse. They had stuff that was cortex or private cord. There was the option that the savageur might choose to use a pressure switch actually underneath the rail itself, if they wanted to go that direction. It was a little bit more hidden, a little bit more surreptitious. It was. It was a personal choice and it kind of probably depended on where they were and how they wanted to get this done. Let's see, there there were certain things that had to be done though. The way that they had to set this stuff up signal or the pressure pad or any of that stuff. It all had to be set up, and trying to do that at night was obviously not going to be easy. So generally they would try to get this stuff done, you know, first thing in the morning when they had the light, but they wouldn't be as easily. Let's see, there was also, I believe if I remember correctly, there was the Ember switch which actually could be set up to go off after multiple trains had already run over it. I think it was up to eight if I remember correctly, that they could use to basically delay this going off. So and you can also look at the Soviet partisans. They were they were extremely keen to take out trains as well. They had let's see, Foreigner Grand's one pound of T and T, which the Soviets considered somebody is considered TNT pretty safe to work with. I don't think we do, nor we did back then, but they sure did. They also had that melantite I think, or picric acid I think is what they called it. That stuff was super unstable, but they could take out a railway track pretty easily with that stuff, no problem at all. The points on the track basically could be destroyed with two charges. One they would use between the track and the narrow end of the points and the other at the narrow section itself. Let's see, they had specific techniques for destroying a cross track. They would put the charge between the crossow and the track, or they could also destroy the cross mechanism or the cross joint itself with a crow bar. They could do it with sledgehammer, they could do it with a all kinds of stuff. Do you wrap a chain around that? You can get it around there and yank that thing right out of there. And there were just so many different ways that they could do that. It was not out of the realm if possible for them. So they had all sorts of different ways that they could sabotage rails. They would have a block of plastic explosives that they would attach to the rail itself and they would detonate it with two of the dummy fog signal igniters, so the train would have to run over both to ignite the plastic explosive. See, they would use deck cord, crimping wires PE number two, plastics WLID number two, and they also of course had those imber switches that we were talking about, where the multiple trains could easily run over them without setting them off. As far as rail points go, there were specific areas of the train track that were considered to be the most vulnerable. There was the frog section or kind of like a pointed section. There is the crossover that's a vulnerable area, and of course there's the track switch that was a super vulnerable area. As for placing the plastic explosives, what they would do back in World War two is you know how the train tracks look like a T shape or an I shape, basically with a skinnier part on top of the eye and the wider stretched out part of the eye on the bottom. Well, they would put the plastic plastic explosives on the inside part of the eye. Okay, that is where they would tuck it. Okay. You know when you make an eye shape, you got a line on top, You got a horizontal line on top, vertical line going down, and then a horizontal line on the bottom. They would place the plastic explosives up against the vertical line on the left or the right hand side, or even on both sides sometimes, so your plastic explosives is right up against either side of that and it cuts right through that metal. There were other ways that you could sabotage a railway track. There are four different methods that they used to teach in in the sabotage schools Okay for derailing a train. The Soviet partisans knew all of these as well. You could remove the spikes that were holding the rails to the sleepers and shifting the rails, you could easily derail a train that way. A carefully positioned wedge you could put that in there and that would cause the train to derail. You could, of course attach the charge like we talked about with the trip wire. When you remove those spikes or the railway. You know that they make the knives out of those big long railway spikes. You remove those and you move over the tracks themselves, not necessarily the wood underneath, just the rails themselves, and that train is definitely going to derail itself, or failing that, if you have the ability to unscrew through the nuts from the railway track that connect two pieces of track together. That was another way that the Soviets would remove or derail a train. Rather, you could dig a hole beneath the cross beams or they call them sleepers, but beneath the wooden railroad ties, you could dig a hole beneath that. That was an option there because they would split, you know, that was another good way to derail the train. So there were also multiple ways to attack bridges, railway bridges. That was another big one. I'm going to cover a few of these and then that's going to have to do it for me. Okay, attacking railway bridges, there were there were ways to attack them because sometimes the bridges were more valuable to target, especially if you need to put a hurt in on your enemy. Now, depending on the type of bridge, you may not get your desired effect, but you can definitely put in the work and see how it goes. So, you know, at least that was their thought back in the day. If the bridge was made out of wood, yeah, it would be a little bit easier to take out. But if the bridge was made a metal, of course they were going to have to use, you know, their different types of explosives and things of that nature. So what are some of the ways that they could basically derayl or not derail but stop a bridge. How could they demolish a bridge. Well, there were certain things that the Soviet Partisans recommended as far as where you needed to put demolition charges for blowing a bridge, the Soviets recommended putting multiple charges around various areas on the bridge supports. Okay, it's kind of hard to explain this stuff without actually having this on video, but I'm gonna do my darndest and see if I can explain this to you guys. Okay, So the basic shape of a bridge. Okay, let's say you've got you've got a horizontal line and a bunch of vertical beams going down into a canyon. They recommend putting your explosives in between each of those beams. Okay, so at the very top, not directly on the supports that are going vertically, but in between those vertical supports, on the horizontal line, the other areas that you would want to put them. If it was an arch underneath the bridge. You got your vertical line, you're gonna want to put two demolition charges, one about I don't know. Let's say the bridge is forty feet long, one about ten feet in from the left, ten feet in from the right, and then down below if it's an arch, you want those demolition charges to be fairly close to the land that the arch is actually braced into. Okay, so let's say another ten feet out. If that arch is forty feet across, you want it to be about ten feet out from that piece of land right there on either side. Keep in mind most demolition charges placement is usually not always, but usually going to be symmetrical. So whatever you do to one side, you're gonna want to do to the other. There are specific ways to go after steel trusses as well. There are specific ways to go after span trust bridges, concrete candilever bridges, spandrel arc bridges, suspension bridges, and so on, like for example, suspension bridges, those ones you've got your vertical supports. On suspension bridges, you're going to want to go for the very top of the vertical support where the suspension lines the horizontal suspension lines connect, and you want to go for the very bottom right where it connects to the actual road of the vertical support. That's where you want to do for a suspension bridge. Now, if you've got a truss bridge, like one that's shaped like an arrow pointing upward, you know where it's got a horizontal line, and then it's got a angled beam going up at about a forty five or sixty degree angle, and then another beam going down at a forty five or sixty degree angle, kind of making like a like a peace sign, almost like the bottom part of a peace sign. And then you're going to have your vertical support. You're gonna want to have one at the bottom of the angle support on the left side, bottom of the angle support on the right side, and the middle of the vertical support at the top. Okay, same thing with the candle lever, except upside down. Okay, If you guys are having a hard time visualizing this stuff, feel free to email me. I'll send you, guys some of the pictures that I have for my history books. Just see what you guys think. You know, it's a very interesting part of history how they talked about this stuff. Sorry, I needed to drink. Anyways, if you guys find this stuff is in interesting as I do, which I'm sure some of you guys do, I think this would be a fun subject to tackle for the sake of history. But anyways, guys, that's gonna have to do it for me. I'm sorry about my latest shows here being you know, thirty forty forty five minutes long, thirty six minutes long, whatever it is. I am just so so so so busy now, guys. But I haven't forgotten about you, obviously. I'm still doing shows. So I hope everybody's having a great time out there. I hope each and every one you have a wonderful, wonderful holiday. I will not be here next week because I will be out of town. I want each and every one of you to know that I do care and I will be back after that. Okay, so we'll see you next time. Happy holidays, Take care. Until next time, we go deeper inside the gun Metal Armory. Good night, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time on the gun Metal Armory. Thank you for listening to the Prepper Broadcasting Network, where we promote self reliance and independence. Tune in tomorrow for another great show, and visit us at prepperbroadcasting dot com.