The Black Tom Explosion

  Did you ever here about The Black Tom Explosion?  I never did until now.  What is it you say?  The Black Tom explosion of July 30, 1916 in Jersey City, New Jersey was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materials from being used by the Allies in World War I.  I asked around and noone I know heard of it.  Well here is a bit of World War I on American Soil.

  After midnight, a series of small fires were found on the pier. Some guards fled, fearing an explosion; others attempted to fight the fires. Eventually they called the Jersey City Fire Department.  At 2:08 a.m., the first and biggest of the explosions took place. Shrapnel from the explosion travelled long distances, some lodging in the Statue of Liberty and some in the clocktower of the Jersey Journal building in Journal Square, over a mile away, stopping the clock at 2:12 a.m. The explosion was the equivalent of an earthquake measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter Scale and was felt as far away as Philadelphia. Windows broke as far as 25 miles away, including thousands in lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were completely shattered. The outer wall of Jersey City’s City Hall was cracked and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. People as far away as Maryland who were awakened by it thought it was an earthquake.

  Property damage from the attack was estimated at $20 million ($377 million today). The damage to the Statue of Liberty was valued at $100,000 ($1.9 to $2 million today) and included the skirt and the torch. The arm has been closed to visitors ever since. 

Immigrants being processed at Ellis Island also had to be evacuated to lower Manhattan. Reports vary, but as many as seven people may have been killed.  Injuries numbered in the hundreds. Smaller explosions continued to occur for hours after the initial blast.

Two of the guards who had lit the smudge pots were immediately arrested. However, it soon became clear that the blast had not been an accident. It was traced to a Slovak immigrant named Michael Kristoff (probably a stolen identity), who had served in the U.S. Army, but admitted to carrying suitcases for the Germans before America entered World War I. According to him, two of the guards were German agents. It is likely that the bombing involved some of the ingenious techniques developed by a group of German agents surrounding German ambassador Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, probably using the pencil bombs developed by Captain Franz von Rintelen. Although blamed at the time solely on German agents, later investigations in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen affair unearthed links between the Ghadar conspiracy and the Black Tom explosion. Franz von Papen is known to have also been involved in both. Later investigations by the Directorate of Naval Intelligence is known to have found extensive links to the Irish movement, the Indian Movement, as well as the Communist elements^.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company sought damages against Germany under the Treaty of Berlin with the German-American Mixed Claims Commission. The commission in 1939 declared that Imperial Germany had been responsible and ordered damages. The two sides finally settled on $50 million in 1953. The final payment was made in 1979.

Check out the FBI article on this at:  http://www.fbi.gov/page2/july04/blacktom073004.htm