Posted on 07/30/2006 2:06:15 PM PDT by Coleus
The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia. The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange. From Bayonne to Brooklyn and beyond, people were jolted from bed as windows shattered within a radius of 25 miles. The Statue of Liberty, holding high its torch less than a mile from the epicenter, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel. On nearby Ellis Island, frightened immigrants were hastily evacuated to Manhattan.
Ground zero itself -- a small island called Black Tom -- all but disappeared, "as if an atomic bomb fell on it," says historian John Gomez. It was 2:08 a.m. on Sunday, July 30, 1916, when what was then the largest explosion ever in the United States erupted. It destroyed an estimated 2,000 tons of munitions parked in freight cars and pierside barges, awaiting transfer to ships destined for Britain and ultimately, the World War I battlefields of France.
Evidence pointed to German sabotage, and some historians regard it as the first major terrorist attack on the United States by a foreign party -- 85 years before the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Marked today by a plaque in a corner of New Jersey's Liberty State Park, the blast site lies less than two miles from lower Manhattan, within sight of where the Twin Towers were brought down by terrorist hijackers on 9/11.
No comparable explosion would occur on American soil until World War II, when the Port Chicago naval arsenal on San Francisco Bay blew up accidentally on July 17, 1944, killing some 200 sailors. Almost a year to the day later, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested at the Trinity site in New Mexico. Black Tom was one of several World War I conspiracies that have been given little attention over the last 90 years.
A 1989 book, "Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917," by former Washington Post reporter Jules Witcover, details various plots that also included infecting horses bound for war duty with deadly anthrax. "Black Tom was the centerpiece of everything that was done," Witcover said in an interview.
In 1916, the United States was still officially neutral but supported the Allies, led by Britain, against the Central Powers -- Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. That Berlin had been barred from buying American munitions was a further reason for its agents to engage in sabotage. "There was no question about Black Tom being an act of terror, and I believe the Germans were responsible -- their spy network was based here in Hudson County -- but the case has never truly been solved," said Gomez, a historian and founder of Jersey City's landmarks conservancy. "I think the real answers are still in Germany."
Black Tom -- the name supposedly came from a fisherman who once lived there -- was an especially ripe target, isolated at the end of a mile-long rail causeway and accessible by water. According to Witcover's book, investigators found security was lax and company officials had violated time limits and other rules for storing explosives. It was perhaps miraculous that only seven people were killed, among them a barge captain, two policemen and a child tossed from a crib in Jersey City. Black powder, TNT and ammunition continued to "cook off" through the dawn and into daylight.
At the Statue of Liberty, 2,000 feet northeast of Black Tom, damage to the torch resulted in its being closed to the public after 30 years. Farther north, iron beams bent by the explosive forces are still visible at Jersey City's century-old Central Railroad Terminal, Gomez said. The rippling shock waves blew out windows of Manhattan skyscrapers, cracked a wall at Jersey City's City Hall and stopped the tower clock at the local newspaper, The Jersey Journal, at 2:12 a.m.
A recent study theorized that Black Tom would have measured 5.5 on the Richter scale, had the earthquake rating system then existed -- the equivalent of a moderate temblor, but more than 30 times greater than the collapse of the World Trade Center's north tower, which registered 2.3 at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Palisades, N.Y. At first, the blast was blamed on sparks from smudge pots that guards at Black Tom had lit to keep mosquitoes away, but suspicion soon focused on German espionage activities.
Although no one was ever convicted, a postwar claims commission spent 17 years weighing demands by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which owned the island, and other companies for reparations by Germany. In 1939, on the cusp of World War II, the commission found Germany liable for $95 million in damages. The then-Nazi regime refused to pay and it was not until 1979 that the case was finally settled.
State sponsored terrorism is not a new thing.
Shockwave bump!
And I love the story of the reparations case that (probably) outlived the
original people involved "at the birth" of the proceedings.
never heard of this explosion before
seems to be true
http://www.njcu.edu/programs/jchistory/Pages/B_Pages/Black_Tom_Explosion.htm
It's true alright. It was a big story for my uncle who worked the rail yards in Jersey City (albeit 30 years later).
Yes, it's true. "Neutral" America was shipping war material to Britain.
I guess everyone has a definition they prefer for terrorism but for me this isn't terrorism. Terrorism's primary target is civilians. I'd call WWII bombing done by both sides which deliberately targeted civilians more like "state-sponsored terrorism".
I wonder if the same conditions were in effect as with the battleship Maine in Havana harbor ... tightly packed explosives giving off fumes? A small spark? Could have happened ... but I've read the story too and German agents might have done it .....
I'm moving all my ammo to a more secure location.
bttt
http://home.twcny.rr.com/splitrock/index.html
I had a relative killed in this one back in 1918
Geez... what was the outcome? Did the Great Grandchildren receive $25.00?
BTTT
BTTT!
Great Article!
However, if you look a couple of thousand feet northwest of the Statue of Liberty on this Terraserver map, the problem is solved. Since 1916, the entire area surrounding the original "Black Tom's Island" has been filled in -- and the filled-in area of wharves and piers still retains the name, "Black Tom".
Thanks for posting, very interesting.
A year and a half later, another huge explosion, the result of a ship collision, would happen in nearby Halifax, Nova Scotia, killing 2,000 people and injuring 9000.
I saw the Texas city explosion from a safe distandce of seven miles -- out the windows of my fourth grade schoolroom in Webster, TX... When we saw the mushroom cloud, kids started shouting, "an 'A-bomb'!" -- but I remember saying, "Nope -- a Texas City chemical plant or refinery -- there was no bright flash."
And, then lots of us realized that our dads worked in those plants...
Also...there's no charge for the extra "l" in "Geological" in my preceding post...;-}
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