irishrepublicanarmy

It's all about mobility. Up and including the first years of WW2, most European armies had troops that used bicycles for speed and mobility. It's quicker than walking which is how most soldiers got from A to B 😀

Who stole his saddle?

Flickr is sometimes amazing! Via Indread Coal who says before 1903

beachcomber australia Looks as if there was a proper clip type yokey to keep the gun in place. It's the local innovation, the proposed boot mechanism, that I fell in love with when I saw this letter.

Tintin et Milou As long as the roads are somewhat paved.

at first glance it could be mistaken for an alpine hunting party. they seem not to be dressed to rough it as a flying column, so it would have been a prepared photocall?

May be a red herring, but a Capt. McGrath was appointed Quartermaster to the 55th Infantry Battalion in a list issued in March 1923 (Freeman's Journal). Would he have been based at the Prison Garrison in Waterford? Bit of a stretch?

Foxglove Was just reading recently that the shirt, collar, and tie (though not everyone here has one on) were to denote respectability. Also learned the Irish for Flying Column is Colún Reatha (running column) which I think is lovely.

Foxglove yes that was my thought.

Wonder was Mr.Poole blindfolded on his way to take it ? Lots of "photoshopping" on the background...... I have a similar posed photograph from Castlecomer.

NLI, I don't think this is suitable for public distribution . . . The way the world is today. Too many wannabe martyrs . . . I mean nitwits without any other purpose in life.

Taken from the link below:

"James O’Donovan was the primary ‘chemist/inventor’ of explosives for the IRA, and the person most responsible for developing and establishing Irish-centered explosive manufacturing. He was a post-graduate chemistry student at UCD and worked directly for Collins.

He began producing fulminate of mercury explosives in 1918 – a notoriously unstable compound. In 1919 Collins directed O’Donovan to develop an explosive that was more powerful, but that ‘men with no technical skill could produce it in a farmhouse kitchen… They have to be fairly foolproof because we can’t have people all over the country having their heads blown off!’

Irish War Flour was O’Donovan’s first original explosive, named after its appearance: it was a nitrated resin using the ingredients of resin, flour, acid and potassium chlorate. Irish War Flour was quite unstable and didn’t have the explosive power he wanted so he kept experimenting.

He called his second explosive compound Irish Cheddar, again named because of its looks. This was his nickname for a form of cheddite, an explosive used quite extensively in the early 20th century. Its ingredients were paraffin, potassium chlorate, nitrobenzene and castor oil."

www.irishcentral.com

Nicknames of the explosives ...

“Warflour”: Warflour was a nitrated resin, using the ingredients of resin, flour, acid and potassium chlorate.
“Irish Cheddar”: This was the nickname for a form of cheddite, an explosive used quite extensively in the early 20th century, its ingredients being potassium chlorate, nitrobenzene and castor oil. Some sources suggest that “Cheddar” included home made DNT.

Also "Paxo" a while later. See - www.standingwellback.com , which also has ...

The IRA also developed its own detonators at the time, and I won’t describe them here other than to say that interestingly they were non-metallic and quite an effective design.
In terms of IEDs, and further to my earlier post, the IRA of the time made several thousand grenades, mostly under the Dublin Bicycle shop at 198 Parnell St and latterly at other facilities. It appears that the design of these were copied from the German “Egg” grenade of WW1. These were essentially quite a simple design,small and preferred because they were easier to conceal than a larger grenade. They used the standard sort of fuze with a spring-loaded fly-off lever. Occasionally larger improvised grenades were used – this is a diagram of one of them, made by an IRA engineer involved in their manufacture.

CASSIDY PHOTOGRAPHY I really do take your point, Mr Cassidy, but I would suggest that people with harmful intentions and access to the internet can very quickly and easily find far more effective instructions, including step-by-step videos, than this sketch. It is a part of revolutionary Irish history, just like the gun carrier on a bicycle that we featured a while back, so we considered it worth including. Mary.

The bicycle shop Lawless and Heron was raided in December 1920 -
www.museum.ie

Read All About It ! via Trove - trove.nla.gov.au