Kingsland
Burns (an excerpt from Codes, Ciphers and
Spies by John F Dooley)
The
Canadian Car and Foundry Company was based in Montreal, Canada and in early
1915 the company signed a contract with Russia for $83,000,000 to supply
artillery shells for the Russian army. Because they didn’t have enough capacity
at their Canadian plants for this contract and all their other war work, the
company built an assembly plant in Kingsland, (now Lyndhurst) New Jersey. The Kingsland plant opened
in the spring of 1916 and by early 1917 had 38 buildings on the site, all
surrounded by a six-foot high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. All the
employees entered and exited the plant through a single gate and searches were
common. Explosives, shell casings, shell warheads, and fuses were shipped to
the plant and assembled there and ultimately loaded on transports in New York
harbor and shipped to Russia. By 1917 the plant could produce upwards of
3,000,000 shells per month. (Landau 1937, p. 93)
A
little after 3:00PM on the afternoon of January 11, 1917 Theodore Wozniak was at his
bench working on cleaning shells. He apparently spilled some gasoline and
suddenly a small fire broke out. The fire spread quickly across Wozniak’s bench
and leapt to adjacent benches. The men in the building ran as the fire engulfed
the entire building within minutes. The fire spread to other buildings, setting
off the explosives stored there in a series of titanic explosions heard in New
York City and as far north as Westchester County and as far east as Long
Island. The fire and explosions went on for more than four hours. According to
Witcover, “The Kingsland plant itself
was completely destroyed, with estimated damages of seventeen million dollars.
A later inventory indicated that 275,000 loaded shells and more than a million
unloaded shells, nearly half a million time fuses, 300,000 cartridge cases, and
100,000 detonators, plus huge amounts of TNT were destroyed in the fire.” (Witcover
1989, p. 193) The only saving grace was that no one was killed. All 1,400
workers managed to get through the fence and escape across a frozen marsh to
safety.
Suspicion
that the fire was intentionally set surfaced immediately. Several of Wozniak’s co-workers in
Building 30 testified that the fire had started at his workbench. Wozniak
himself admitted as much, but claimed that a spark from a rotating machine
designed to hold the shell casings while they were being cleaned was the
culprit. No one, however, could say whether Wozniak had deliberately started
the fire, so he was never charged. Wozniak disappeared shortly after the fire
and was not found again until more than a decade later when the American and
German Mixed Claims Commission was looking for evidence of complicity in the
fire. And it would be a decade after that, in 1939, that the German-American Mixed
Claims Commission would finally decide that Hilken, Hinsch, Herrmann, and Wozniak were indeed
responsible for the devastation at Kingsland. (Mixed Claims Commission 1940, pp. 308-310) The key
evidence in their decision was not any documentation written before the event,
but a message that Fred Herrmann sent to Paul Hilken from Mexico City in April
1917. This message was in code and written in two parts. First Herrmann wrote
the text of his message on several consecutive pages of the January 1917 issue
of Blue Book magazine using lemon
juice as an invisible ink. The lemon juice disappears when dry and can be
revealed using heat; Hilken used a hot iron to reveal the message. (Macrakis
2014, p. 25) In the message Herrmann used a numerical book cipher to hide the
names of various people mentioned in the message. These numbers embedded in the
cipher message were always four digit numbers and were constructed as follows.
The first digit of the number was dropped. The remaining three digits were then
reversed and these numbers indicated a page in the magazine. On these pages,
over certain letters were tiny holes made with a pin that spelled out the name
of the person or place in the message. If one holds the page up to a bright
light, the pinpricks can be read and the rest of the message deciphered. The
entire deciphered and translated message is:
Have seen 1755 [Eckardt] he is suspicious of me Can't
convince him I come from 1915 [Marguerre] and 1794 [Nadolny] Have told him all
reference 2584 [Hinsch] and I 2384 [Deutschland], 7595 [Jersey City Terminal],
3106 [Kings- land], 4526 [Savannah], and 8545 [Tonys Lab] he doubts me on
account of my bum 7346 [German] Confirm to him thru your channels all OK and my
mission here I have no funds 1755 [Eckardt] claims he is short of money Send by
bearer US 25000. Have you heard from Willie. Have wired 2336 [Hildegarde] but
no answer Be careful of her and connections. Where are 2584 [Hinsch] and 9107
[Carl Ahrendt} Tell 2584 [Hinsch] to come here I expect to go north but he can
locate me thru 1755 [Eckardt] I don’t trust 9107 [Carl Ahrendt], 3994
[Kristoff], 1585 [Wolfgang] and that 4776 [Hoboken] bunch, If cornered they
might get us in Dutch with authorities See that 2584 [Hinsch] brings with him
all who might implicate us. tell him 7386 [Siegel] is with me. Where is 6394
[Carl Dilger] he worries me Remember past experience Has 2584 [Hinsch] seen
1315 [Wozniak] Tell him to fix that up. If you have any difficulties see 8165
[Phil Wirth Nat Arts Club] Tell 2584 [Hinsch] his plan O.K. Am in close touch
with major and influential Mexicans Can obtain old 3175 [cruiser] for 50000
West Coast What will you do now with America in the War Are you coming here or
going to South America Advise you drop everything and leave the States regards
to 2784 [Hoppenburg] Sei nicht dum mach doch wieder bumm bumm bumm. Most
important send funds Bearer will relate experiences and details Greetings (Landau
1937, p. 245)
The
Kingsland explosion was
the last big effort of the German spy network in Baltimore. Less than a month
after the Kingsland explosion, on February 1, 1917, Germany would resume
unrestricted submarine warfare and the United States would break diplomatic
relations with Germany. Later, in March, the Zimmerman telegram would be
released and the United States would declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917. The
saboteurs would all disappear soon after that.
References
Landau, Captain
Henry. 1937. The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of German Sabotage in
America. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Macrakis,
Kristie. 2014. Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink
from Herodotus to Al-Qaeda. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Mixed claims
commission (United States and Germany). 1940. Opinions and Decisions in the
Sabotage Claims Handed down June 15, 1939, and October 30, 1939 and Appendix.
Washington D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015073384821.
Witcover,
Jules. 1989. Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America
- 1914 - 1917. New York, NY: Algonquin Books.
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