Concertina Bomb

CONCERTINA BOMB. (See also, EXPERIMENTAL WEAPONS, EXPLOSIVES) In the closing days of the Civil War, Samuel McCollin first conceptualized what would become the concertina bomb during the Siege of Petersburg. Traumatized by his experiences of trench warfare, he began working on designs for explosive devices which would render them obsolete. By the end of the Civil War, most of his designs had proved failures. But in 1873, while attending an agricultural fair in DeKalb, Illinois, McCollin came across a barbed-wire "bomb"design. While its intended application was far removed from warfare, McCollin was revitalized by the concept. He returned to the original device's design, experimenting with tightly coiled spools of "concertina'razor wire spooled around an explosive charge. When detonated, the wire unravels in all directions and produces a thicket of untraversable barbed wire.

McCollin secured a patent for the device in 1879 and did trials with it with the assistance of the U.S. Army in 1880. Unfortunately, the proposal was rejected, as it was deemed too cruel and expensive; those snared suffered unnecessarily and the mechanism was too complex for mass production. The rejection sent McCollin into a downward spiral, though what became of him afterwards is unknown. Crude homemade reproductions have since been found, so it seems the design remained in distribution.