10 Diabolical Spy Weapons

The Bond movies popularized spy weapons, but real-life intelligence organizations had their own clever tools of the trade. The weapons on this list give us a glimpse into the realm of cloaks and daggers and make us wonder what else is out there that hasn’t been declassified.

10 The Mole

In the 1940s, the OSS developed an explosive device called “the Mole.” It was also ironically known as “Casey Jones,” a reference to the famous train engineer who prevented the deaths of his passengers in a serious train crash. The Mole used a photoelectric cell that charged during the day and then reacted to sudden darkness to set off an explosive. It was designed to be attached to a critical joint on enemy train cars and automatically [amazon asin=B00BPMGFLK&template=*lrc ad (left)]detonate when the train passed into a tunnel.

Disabling a train inside a tunnel would do more than just damage the train itself—it would cut off supply lines for days while the wreckage was removed. The Mole could also be used with any kind of explosive detonated by an electric charge, making it a very versatile weapon. According to interviews, the Mole had an official-looking warning label threatening heavy legal penalties enforced by the Third Reich Railroad Consortium if it was removed.

9 Coal Torpedoes

The “coal torpedo” was a bomb encased in cast iron to disguise it as a lump of coal. It was covertly placed in a steamship’s coal supply, where it was tossed into the boiler along with the real coal. The resulting explosion was enough to severely damage or even sink the ship.[amazon asin=B004BR7XLM&template=*lrc ad (right)]

It was invented by Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, an Irish immigrant whosympathized with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Courtenay eventually settled in St. Louis, but financial troubles sent him and his camouflaged bomb south to the Confederate government. The president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was enamored of his idea. He granted Courtenay a special “secret service corps” with the mission of planting his invention in Union steamships. The group went on to destroy an estimated 60 ships, one of which carried Union Admiral David Porter.

Later, coal torpedoes were used by the Nazis, several of whom were caught carrying coal-shaped plastic explosives in New York. They had likely been on their way to add them to the coal supplies of US factories. Since the Germans were already using coal bombs, the SOE—Britain’s World War II clandestine agency—designed yet another method for destroying enemy boilers. They skinned dead rats and filled them with plastic explosives. Much [amazon asin=B00C933ERM&template=*lrc ad (left)]like the coal torpedo, the rat bombs were to be covertly placed in a German train’s coal supply and shoveled into the boiler. Fortunately for German rail personnel, the first shipment was discovered, and the rat bombs never saw implementation.

8 The Stinger

The earliest pen guns first appeared around the 1920s and have been carried by spies ever since. The “Stinger” was the pen gun model of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. Like many generations of pen guns, it was designed for close range use and fired a small .22 caliber round. It was single-shot weapon that couldn’t be reloaded. Since the Stinger had to be cocked with a trigger mechanism, it also couldn’t be fired instantly, so OSS training manuals recommended that it be used from concealed locations.

The OSS’s Stinger shouldn’t be confused with the more modern pen guns that have adopted its name. These new models of Stingers were first produced in the 1990s, though they were reloadable and had to be folded into semi-handgun shape to fire. This categorized them as handguns by the ATF, which allowed them to be purchased without the mountain of legal documents required to own a true pen gun.

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