My adolescent antics seem pretty tame in comparison: air rifle poaching, illegal fishing, scrumping etc. All good kids stuff. Illegally obtained fireworks were the pinnacle of horseplay, but back then (80s), you could only get fireworks in November. So in the long summer holidays, alternatives had to be sought. The tale of primitive IEDs ensued:
The dad of one of my mates had a collection of shotguns, all safely locked away, but his ammunition wasn't. The sight of hundreds of live cartridges was like a curry to a pisshead to bored and "scientifically curious" 12 year olds.
We initially experimented with homemade claymores using mecanno to form the breech to hold a cartridge, and trigger mechanism operated by a command wire to release the spring-loaded firing pin. We attempted to use it to blast pigeons after scattering bread in the killing zone - very unsuccessful - yanking the wire scared the birds. We soon got bored.
I suggested that we made a bomb. I'm not sure why? We began cutting open the cartridges to extract the powder. It was a slow process. Initially we had enough to half-fill a 35mm film canister (remember those?!), with an extended fuse made of petrol soaked string it went bang, well, more of a fizz-pop. Disappointing.
Now, being 12, I didn't fully understand the science of sympathetic-detonations, but I knew a percussion cap would initiate a secondary explosion, as opposed to a just a fizz-pop. And we needed more bang, so more powder. We must have sliced open at least 30 cartridges to obtain a reasonable pile of black-golddust.
Next, we required a housing for our device. A standard tin, jar or coke can was too big, but back then you could get half-size tins: beans, sausage & beans, spaghetti hoops etc - I dunno if they still exist - as luck would have it, it was lunch time and we had one such tin available. After a hurried lunch of cold beans and sausage, we cleaned the tin and used a hole cutter to bore out a housing for a brass cartridge end before carefully cutting off the cartridge head and securing it in place with some araldite glue.
In the shed we carefully poured the powder into the housing, which in reality had become a huge shell! My initial idea was to load the tin with all of the buckshot that we had amassed and create a pigeon massacre, but this would require adapting the firing mechanism to stealth mode, we didn't have time for that as I knew my mum would be home within the hour. We decided to conduct a test firing to check the principle and then we could work on the mechanism the next day for the pigeon Armageddon.
We jumped on our bikes and rode to a near-by wood which would be our test facility. At this point its worth saying two things, firstly I lived in a semi-rural area, so gun-shot, crow-scarers etc was not that unusual, but secondly, it was also at the height of the IRA mainland campaign and there were two barracks relatively close by (within 5/6 miles either direction). Lest to say, we never really considered the second point, but thought any sounds of shot would be hidden in the noise of the former.
We had adapted the original meccono to take the bigger shell housing, and the firing mechanism was the same sprung-loaded command wire. At the last minute I remembered reading something about WW2 artillery and compression of explosives enhanced the power, we paused temporary, as I dug out some heavy clay/mud and compressed it into the open side of the tin, using the disc from the top of the tin as a wad enabled a good tight compression. The tin was jam packed and felt very solid. We secured it to the ground and dressed back probably 20m, the command wire was a thick, strong nylon type.
Adie, my mucker had donated the powder so he had the pleasure to fire, so on a count of 3-2-1 he was to detonate....we took cover behind a fallen tree, like we'd seen in the WW2 commando comics...
3.....2.....1.....FU~CKI~ING BOOM....
To this day, and having been in proximity to explosions since, I don't recall ever being genuinely shocked & shaken by such an explosion. We literally shit ourselves and immediately went into self-preservation mode, firstly by trying to recover the device...aside from bits of meccanno stuck in tree bark, there was nothing left. We gathered what was left of the command wire, covered up the firing point and made a hasty exit. We agreed to tell nobody.
We made our way to the nearby rec where most kids hung put, playing football, riding bikes etc. Back then, adults didn't take their kids to the park, we were just left to our own devices, so we had to form cast iron alibis and quick! We joined in a kick about with some younger kids, before being joined by some lads from our year...they asked us if we'd heard about the bomb going off at the barracks....we said we'd heard something, but wasn't sure as we'd been here playing footy for hours, the little kids said nowt....!!
Tea-time came, now my mum could smell a rat a mile off, but by coming home slightly muddy, with a ball and Aidie, both hungry and needing tea, raised no suspicions. She was more concerned with recent events and trying to get news of the bomb at the barracks...we never messed about with homemade pyro again!