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IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets: A History of Deadly Ingenuity, by A.R. Oppenheimer
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As a leading expert on non-conventional weapons and explosives, the author focuses on the bombs and explosives and shows how the IRA became the most adept and experienced insurgency group the world has ever seen through their bombing expertise and how - after generations of conflict - it all came to an end. The book is a comprehensive account of more than 150 years of Irish republican strategic, tactical, and operational details and analysis covering the IRA's mission, doctrine, targeting, and acquisition of weapons and explosives. Oppenheimer also colourfully presents the story behind the bombs; those who built and deployed them, those who had to deal with and dismantle them, and those who suffered or died from them. He analyses where, how, and why the IRA's bombs were built, targeted and deployed and explores what the IRA was hoping to accomplish in its unrivalled campaign of violence and insurgency through covert acquisition, training, intelligence and counter-intelligence. The book focuses entirely on the IRA's bombing campaign - beginning with the Fenian 'Dynamiters' in the 19th century up to the decommissioning of an arsenal big enough to arm several battalions - which included an entire home-crafted missile system, an unsurpassed range of improvised explosive devices, and enough explosives to blow up several urban centres. The author scrutinises the level of improvisation in what became the hallmark of the Provisional IRA in its pioneering IED timing, delay and disguise technologies. He follows the arms race it carried on with the British Army and security services in a Long War of Mutual Assured Disruption. Oppenheimer fully describes and assesses the impact of the pre-1970s bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and England to the evolution of strategies and tactics. He also provides an insight into the bombing equipment and guns from the IRA inventory held at Irish Police HQ in Dublin.
- Sales Rank: #518487 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Irish Academic Press
- Published on: 2008-11-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.30" w x 6.10" l, 1.45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 287 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Inside the Longest Insurgency's Lethal Arsenal
By A. Oppenheimer
Review by David Hambling
'IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets' by A. R. Oppenheimer, is a history of the long war fought by Irish insurgent groups; it has some vital lessons for the current conflicts. In particular, it describes the bombing campaigns, from the first gunpowder blast at Clerkenwell in London in 1867 to the immense "city destroyers" of the 1990's. Subtitled "a history of deadly ingenuity," it gives and detailed insight into how the improvised explosive device was developed by the world's most proficient insurgent group. And it examines the deadly, technological game between the bomb-makers and the authorities who sought to stop them across the course of some 19,000 bombings.
Oppenheimer really did his homework for this book, interviewing not only former bomb disposal officers but also individuals associated with the Irish Republican Army. He visits the headquarters of the Irish police in Dublin to see their unique museum of IRA weapons. As well as mortars, AR-15 Armalites (the IRA's favorite), booby-traps and letter-bombs there is even a partially-completed torpedo, intended for use against patrol boats.
Oppenheimer repeatedly shows how the Irish were highly adept at picking up the latest technology. Within two years of the invention of dynamite, Clan na Gael were starting to use it, and the subsequent campaign against the British was known as the "dynamite war." The new explosive was powerful, portable and stable, making it ideal for terrorist bombings. Gelignite was also adopted as soon as it became available.
But the IRA also excelled at home-made explosives. They pioneered fertilizer bombs using ammonium nitrate and developed several recipes or their own such as 'Donegal Mix' or ANNIE - ammonium nitrate, nitrobenzene and diesel. (The book recounts how fertilizer had to be ground up using coffee grinders - a slow process when making a 3,500 lb bomb.) The IRA were also masters at the use of Semtex, an advanced plastic explosive known as 'the magic marble' for its destructive power; although they acquired several tons from Libya, they used Semtex very sparingly, often as a 'booster' to set off cruder explosives.
Oppenheimer gives a good account of the arms race between bomb-makers and bomb-disposal, and the "deadly ingenuity" is very much in evidence. Sometimes, the escalation is simple. In the early days, the IRA used to lob grenades into open-top army trucks. The army put chicken wire over the top of the trucks so grenades would bounce off -- so the IRA started using grenades covered in hooks to catch on the wire. The game of cat-and-mouse eventually became far more sophisticated, with multiple bombs being set to go off in sequence, and devices with dummy mechanisms set as traps to catch bomb squad officers.
In an echo of the current anti-IED effort, the security forces produced ever more sophisticated jammers to stop radio-detonated bombs, while the IRA used ever more sophisticated detonation techniques, moving "up the spectrum" to devices triggered by infra-red beams and photoflashes. They also had devices triggered by a sniper's bullet -- line of sight, but hard to jam. One of the many incidental details is the use of a timing mechanism which employed a condom; this was something of a moral dilemma for the Catholic IRA, as supplies of condoms for bomb-making might be misused...
When it became difficult to plant an IED next to a target, the IRA developed a range of improvised mortars -- at least seventeen different versions over the years. Some of these were mobile systems with multiple tubes on time delay, left in the back of a camouflaged van be parked near the target. One of these nearly killed Prime Minister John Major on Downing Street in 1991. The largest were "flying car bombs" throwing a charge of 150 pounds of explosives. There were also improvised rocket launchers, recoilless rifles (one using a reaction mass of digestive biscuits), and even prototype anti-helicopter weapons.
Oppenheimer is unsparing in the description of the carnage caused by the bombs, and has many first-person accounts of the aftermath of explosions ("all I could make out was the top of a torso"). While the stated target was usually the British forces or police, and while warnings were often given, frequently things did not go to plan. Many women and children were "accidentally" killed. This was not a clean war; booby traps were attached to dead bodies, and hostages were forced to drive bomb-laden vehicles towards Army buildings. The British were also capable of ruthlessness in their turn.
Unlike some writers on this topic, Oppenheimer gets a three-hundred-and-sixty degree panorama, including the bomb-makers' point of view. You get a sense of the technical challenge, the exhilaration when a bomb goes off successfully. And the sense of complete justification: "I've never had a sleepless night over anything I did as an IRA volunteer. Bombs are weapons of war," one bomb-maker says. "Western states have used them far more brutally than we ever did." Because they saw their struggle as legitimate, any civilian deaths were seen as "an unfortunate consequence of war." All this chimes rather closely with more recent terror groups.
The book also gives a good account of the politics involved, and how the conflict eventually came to an end. 9/11 turns out to be a key date: up until that point, the U.S. paid little attention to terrorism in Northern Ireland and the IRA could count on aid from supporters in America. Afterwards, the situation changed completely, and this was a significant factor in the final negotiations.
This is a history book; the peace has been holding for years and the IRA has officially abandoned the armed struggle for good. But the book is well worth reading by anyone interested in the current "war on terror" to understand how a terror campaign works and how it can be tackled.
David Hambling December 2008 Wired/Danger Room
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A unique addition to the litterature of terrorism
By Richard S. Garber
Andy Oppenheimer's unique perspective as a scientist, journalist, and historian - with a deep knowledge of the weapons of low-intensity combat - has yielded an impressive addition to our knowledge of "The Troubles". IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets is a unique resource - particularly as Oppenheimer delves into the minutiae of explosive devices and especially their often ingenious triggers. His book shows a side of PIRA at odds with the unsophisticated Loughgall-type attacks, with JCB diggers filled bucket-loads of high explosives. The technical skills and impressive imagination of the PIRA bomb-makers is well show-cased throughout the book. Although a tighter job of editing would have been appreciated, this new work stands alone for those looking for a broader view of PIRA's operational capabilities than are typically produced.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent book
By Dana Roland
For anyone interested in the IRA and this aspect of Irish and human history, it is more than worth the time and money. If you have all ready read about the IRA (biographies, autobiographies, all-encompassing histories, histories focused on the modern era, etc.) then this book will add to your experience. It consolidates and presents information in a very accessible way - and this only underlines the huge human cost of this conflict.
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