The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 2 - Crazy Contraptions and Artful Ambushes

In the winter of 1938 Hitler was building his Kriegsmarine, the Nazi naval armada. Composed of almost 300 ships (most of them the dreaded U-boat) the British decided that even they, the preeminent naval power for years - centuries, really - couldn't compete with that level of production. So, they got a better plan: don't out-build the competition, just sink them. And who could do it better than our rag-tag bunch of inventors?

Ah, the mighty aniseed ball. The ol' Boom-Boom Bonbon,
the Ship-Stopper Sweets, the Delectable Detonator,
the Callous Confectionery...

The task fell to Cecil Clarke and Stuart Macrae, the caravan builders. What they had to create was a mine that would attach to ships underwater, as this would be a great way to sink the submarines that would prove to be so crippling in the war ahead. The biggest problem was finding a fuse that could work underwater and detonate reliably, which ended up being solved in a hilariously odd-ball manner. As it turns out, a child's aniseed ball (an old-timey candy that is undoubtedly terrible) proved to dissolve at just the right speed they needed. I'm picturing the discovery as something straight out of an episode of House; one of the inventors sees a kid chewing on a piece of candy, he pauses thoughtfully, typically in mid-conversation for added suspense, has his eureka moment, and boom, fantastic idea. It gets better, too. What did they use to protect it until the detonation was set to occur? Condoms, of course.

So two men were tasked with stopping the Nazi war fleet, and their solution was to go to every store in town and clear the aisles of all the candy and contraception they could find. And yes, it was just these two guys that were doing it. They were the ones going store to store, as this wasn't some massive government operation where you send some lackeys to pick up the supplies while the main guys get all the credit. It really was just the two for this particular operation (although they would expand later). They didn't even really have an official place to test this out, so they borrowed a public swimming pool after hours and worked on their detonators there. All of this hard work ended up with an incredible, cheap, and effective underwater explosive - the limpet mine. The whole thing, an explosive powerful enough to quite often down a ship, could be made for as little as six pounds - including labour!

A mighty warship of the Kriegsmarine. Caution:
keep away from children's candy.

Millis Jefferis loved these mines. He included it in what he called his demolitionist toolkit. "The irregular soldier or saboteur was fully equipped to blow up absolutely anything in any way he chose" using the explosives provided for him, Jefferis would say, and the limpet mine would be a tremendous addition. Unfortunately, getting the mines in the hands of those that would use them would prove to be difficult. The problem was this was still a secretive, underground group that was working for the government but in a disjointed, informal way. They had difficulties bypassing the Ministry of Supply which was severely hampering their efforts due to their belief that this style of warfare would be ineffective and immoral. The solution was to pay everyone under the table and have the two main men (and eventually plenty more once demand rose) build the explosives in their garages, carefully avoiding the proper channels while, paradoxically, still working for the same army they're avoiding. In spite of everything, they managed to make a heck of a lot of them. All told, the mines that were to stop the Nazi force were cheap as dirt, made with condoms and candy, tested in a public pool, and produced in a place where the caravan-maker inventors would have to move their car and park on the street. You can't make this stuff up.

Since the limpet mines were looking promising, the word eventually got out. Winston Churchill, at the time not yet Prime Minister but instead First Lord of the Admiralty, (perhaps the most British title since the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley) got word of the guys. His idea was to mine the Rhine river. Churchill, being the rough and tough type, was more than willing to abandon the traditional English holier-than-thou style and get down in the mud with dirty tricks as his forte. He took the idea to the French, and while they liked it, they were reluctant to pull the trigger and waited too long. By the time they had the opportunity to properly use them, it was already too late as the Germans had advanced far into the river. Nevertheless, 1,700 bombs would be placed in the Rhine and used to make a wonderful mess of things. While it certainly could have done a lot more, and it's hard to consider it anything but a missed opportunity, there were a few good things that came from it; Churchill was in their corner, their inventions were making a real impact, and the limpet charge was a wild success.

A limpet mine, and how a swimmer would
bring it to a ship. Sweater-vest
optional.

Meanwhile, Colin Gubbins was on the other end of production. While making explosives was great, there had to be someone to sneak in there and use them. Gubbins was put in charge of creating the first guerrilla units for the British in the war. The first was unsuccessful; sent into the recently attacked Norway, the men had little time to train, equipment was poor, and they couldn't figure out how to use the darn snowshoes they were given.  Eventually they started to get their act together and began taking out infrastructure, specifically bridges to slow the Nazi advance and limit their supply lines. But they would need to do more than that.

The first attempt at a more nontraditional style of warfare came through an ambush on a German patrol. A bicycle patrol to be exact, because yes, that's a thing. Nazis on bikes. Waiting for them to cross a bridge and have to dismount, they hid in the bushes until the most opportune time and killed all sixty of the patrol with the use of only fourteen men on their side. While these numbers were insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it did show something; hit and runs and small groups could wear down morale, take out key targets, and make a large impact with little investment. Churchill heard of this success, and the next time he would promise a much larger task.

That, and a blank cheque.