Black Tom Island Explodes

image icon - click to for more details about the image WWI Liberty Bonds poster
image icon - click to for more details about the image The Statue of Liberty; Recovering debris at Black Tom; Damaged Black Tom Island pier

Explosions
rocked
the New York City region in the early hours of the morning of July 30, 1916. The massive blasts obliterated Black Tom Island, the largest munitions depot in the United States, located in New York Harbor and connected by rail bed to Jersey City, New Jersey.

image icon - click to for more details about the image WWI Liberty Bonds poster

Black Tom was a distribution point for thousands of tons of munitions, explosives, and black powder shipped across the Atlantic to Allied forces fighting in Europe. Vast quantities were stored in barges moored alongside a mile-long wharf, with one barge alone holding fifty tons of TNT and 25,000 detonators.

Planning for the sabotage of Black Tom began more than a year before the explosion, when German spymaster Franz von Rintelen started surveilling and mapping out storage sheds on the Black Tom piers. Three men were eventually recruited to carry out the operation: Michael Kristoff, a 23-year-old Austrian immigrant who served briefly in the U.S. Army; Kurt Jahnke, a naturalized American citizen and former U.S. Marine, who was recruited as an operative by the German Consul General in San Francisco; and Polish-born Lothar Witzke, a young German naval lieutenant who survived his ship’s sinking by the British Navy off the South American coast in late 1915. After escaping from internment, Witzke traveled to San Francisco, where he met with the German Consul General there and was paired to work with Jahnke. In June 1916, Witzke and Jahnke left San Francisco for New York City, where they connected with Kristoff.

image icon - click to for more details about the image German saboteur Kurt Jahnke; German saboteur Lothar Witzke; Wanted poster for German saboteur Michael Kristoff

On the evening of July 29, 1916, the three saboteurs easily infiltrated the lightly-guarded depot, with one entering on foot as the other two approached by rowboat. After wiring the facilities with explosives, the trio set small fires in boxcars brimming with TNT and gunpowder and loaded other time-delayed bombs and incendiary devices onto a barge tied to a pier. They then fled the scene.

image icon - click to for more details about the image German saboteur Kurt Jahnke; German saboteur Lothar Witzke; Wanted poster for German saboteur Michael Kristoff
image icon - click to for more details about the image Wreckage at Black Tom Island
image icon - click to for more details about the image Storefront damage from the Black Tom Island blast; Black Tom Island explosion headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer
image icon - click to for more details about the image Diving for debris at Black Tom Island; Sorting recovered artillery shells; John J. McCloy of the Mixed Claims Commission

Shortly after 2:00 am, an earsplitting explosion rattled the Brooklyn Bridge, swayed skyscrapers, and shattered glass windows throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was heard and felt as far away as Philadelphia, and in Baltimore, people spilled from their homes, fearing an earthquake was underway. Scientists would later assess the magnitude of the blast at 5.5 on today’s Richter scale.

The damage was estimated at $20 million – the equivalent of more than $500 million in 2021 dollars. Five deaths were officially recorded in the attack, including a ten-week-old baby thrown from its crib, but the true death toll was likely much higher, as many of the destroyed barges were commonly used as shelters by vagrants and immigrants.

For days, artillery shells and other munitions continued to explode, showering New York Harbor, to include Ellis Island, with embers and shell fragments. With debris raining down, authorities were forced to evacuate hundreds of terrified immigrants – having just escaped from war-torn Europe – from Ellis Island to the mainland. The nearby Statue of Liberty suffered severe shrapnel damage, closing visitor access to the Statue’s torch for good.

image icon - click to for more details about the image Diving for debris at Black Tom Island; Sorting recovered artillery shells; John J. McCloy of the Mixed Claims Commission

The Bureau of Investigation initially concluded the explosion was an accident, but doubts were widespread. The blast was believed by some to be the work of the same German operatives responsible for the numerous explosions and fires that had bedeviled ships and factories involved in the munitions trade for more than a year. They were right. Three years after the war ended, the United States and Germany formed the quasi-government Mixed Claims Commission (MCC) to investigate claims and negotiate financial compensation for wartime damages to commercial and private property. It took seventeen years for the MCC to find Germany responsible for the destruction of Black Tom Island, ordering the German government to pay the United States $50 million in damages. The Nazis paid little mind to this finding, and Germany would not settle the debt until 1979.

image icon - click to for more details about the image Diving for debris at Black Tom Island; Sorting recovered artillery shells; John J. McCloy of the Mixed Claims Commission

One of the American MCC investigators was Harvard Law School graduate John McCloy, a 12-year staff member for the Commission. In early 1941, McCloy was named Assistant Secretary of War, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, helped craft the policy to intern more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans in remote facilities for much of the duration of World War II. The policy was clearly rooted in McCloy’s experience with German sabotage, views that were shared by President Roosevelt who had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, and who attempted to justify this indefensible action, by declaring “We don’t want another Black Tom.”

image icon - click to for more details about the image Black Tom Island stained glass memorial

As for Black Tom Island, it would eventually sink into the bay. And what of the Black Tom saboteurs? Kristoff was arrested by the Jersey City police on suspicion of involvement in the blast, but they released him for lack of evidence. Drifting in and out of prison for various crimes, he died of tuberculosis in 1928. Jahnke and Witzke fled to Mexico shortly before the United States entered the war and were among the German agents who stirred anti-American sentiment and organized sabotage operations from across the border. Witzke was arrested in January 1918 by the U.S. Army after decrypted German cables alerted authorities to his movements; he was later found guilty of espionage. Sentenced to death, he was pardoned in 1923. Jahnke was never apprehended, and he returned to Germany in 1921. He served for years as an intelligence agent for the Nazi regime and was executed by the Soviets after his capture in 1945.

image icon - click to for more details about the image Firefighters at Black Tom Island