In 1940 the Wehrmacht had taken control of most of Europe and the inhabitants of the island of great Britain was desperately looking for a way to delay the inevitable violence and over them. With this goal, the British actively supplied arms to the numerous rebel groups across the continent. For them we developed a new instrument, explosive coal, as a means to sabotage on the objects in the field of energy.
On the Railways then went the locomotives, the seas were ships, in factories and thermal power plants worked with steam power plant. The explosion is small but powerful charge could seriously damage the boiler and surrounding equipment, as well as to start a fire among fuel reserves. Throw a fake lump of coal in the furnace or trolley was easy, and compute when and where it happened – an almost impossible task for future investigation.
It is the complexity of detection of explosives and was the most disruptive factor in the new sabotage method. Even when the British tired to carefully drill the coal and started to throw up just caked with mud and colored the explosive charges, the German command was unable to provide protection for all vessels with coal from sabotage. For this purpose diverted a huge number of soldiers, which greatly reduced the combat readiness of the troops, so no explosions sabotage effectively achieved its goal.
American strategists have learned the lesson and during the Vietnam war, launched the project “Eldest son”. They threw in a jungle of boxes with defective ammunition. Because of this, the weapons the Vietnamese so often failed, that they quarreled with the Chinese manufacturers and also began to experience serious supply problems.
Source — The Armourers Bench