Thursday, October 6, 2011

Bombs and Explosives handbook





I found this handbook of bombs and explosives -17th Century- in the Bavarian State Library during my travels through open virtual libraries around the world. But my investigation about author (Hans G Schirvatt?) concluded with a poor-to-nothing result. The only reference I could find is that all weapons shown in this handbook were used during 17th century first quarter European wars, and were contemporaneous to Flandes war –also known as eighty years war or Netherlands independence war from Spain-.
Was during this war when the use of bombs with temporizers reached an incredible level of perfection, because some episodes –especially for city sieges like Breda- were based on “underground techniques”: an special task force of military engineers dig tunnels to approach enemy troops, put the bombs and grenades with combustion or mechanical based temporizers and escape using the same tunnel, with time enough –sometimes not- to avoid explosion. An authentic massive destruction weapon manual in 17th Century.
Some episodes of the eighty years war here.






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Where can I view the book on its entirety ?