The Fake Coal That Destroyed 1,000 German Trains WWII's Most Ingenious Sabotage Weapon

[Ptah]

This is the first time I have learned of this.

18 minutes:

During World War II, German supply trains across occupied Europe began exploding without warning. Boilers tore apart. Locomotives vanished in fire. Thousands of tons of ammunition, fuel, and winter supplies were destroyed — yet investigators found no wires, no timers, no evidence of sabotage. Just coal.

This documentary tells the shocking true story of explosive coal, a brilliantly simple weapon developed by Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Disguised perfectly as ordinary fuel, these fake coal lumps were planted by resistance fighters inside rail yards and tenders. Once shoveled into a locomotive firebox, they detonated from heat alone, destroying the engine from the inside.

By war’s end, this invisible weapon had destroyed over 1,000 German locomotives, paralyzed rail networks, and spread paranoia through the Nazi logistics system. Even after German engineers understood how the weapon worked, they could not stop it — because you cannot guard against something that looks exactly like what you need to survive.

This is the story of the fake coal that crippled Hitler’s railways, turned fuel into fear, and proved that sometimes the simplest weapons are the most devastating in war.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Confederate agents used these to blow up Union steamships. I don't know if they ever used them on locomotives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_torpedo

After the Civil War

Courtenay had traveled to England in 1864 and remained there until 1867, trying to sell the "secret" of the coal torpedo to foreign governments. He approached the British War Office, but they turned him down after he would not agree to allow them to examine his invention before purchasing it.[10] When Courtenay returned to the United States, one or more business partners to whom he had entrusted the secret remained in England. The Times in 1873 reported rumors that disreputable ship owners were purchasing coal torpedoes to put in their own ships as a form of insurance fraud, so that over-insured ships and cargo would sink while far out at sea, leaving no evidence.[13][14] Other reports scoffed at the rumors, suggesting they were false stories planted by supporters of Samuel Plimsoll, a Member of Parliament who was trying to pass a bill reforming the shipping industry.[15] Nothing was ever proven, but the reports stirred up popular interest in various supposed methods of sabotaging ships, and the coal torpedo even made an appearance in the short story, "That Little Square Box", by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in the collection The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales in 1890.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Wow.