Simple Sabotage Field Manual Part 4

(5) If you have access to stocks of tires, you can rot them by spilling oil, gasoline, caustic acid, or benzine on them. Synthetic rubber, however, is less susceptible to these chemicals.

(8) Transportation: Water

(a) Navigation

(1) Barge and river boat personnel should spread false rumors about the navigability and conditions of the waterways they travel. Tell other barge and boat captains to follow channels that will take extra time, or cause them to make ca.n.a.l detours.

(2) Barge and river boat captains should navigate with exceeding caution near locks and bridges, to waste their time and to waste the time of other craft which may have to wait on them. If you don't pump the bilges of s.h.i.+ps and barges often enough, they will be slower and harder to navigate. Barges "accidentally" run aground are an efficient time waster too.

(3) Attendants on swing, draw, or bascule bridges can delay traffic over the bridge or in the waterway underneath by being slow. Boat captains can leave unattended draw bridges open in order to hold up road traffic.

(4) Add or subtract compensating magnets to the compa.s.s on cargo s.h.i.+ps. Demagnetize the compa.s.s or maladjust it by concealing a large bar of steel or iron near to it.

(b) Cargo

(1) While loading or unloading, handle cargo carelessly in order to cause damage. Ar range the cargo so that the weakest and lightest crates and boxes will be at the bottom of the hold, while the heaviest ones are on top of them.

Put hatch covers and tarpaulins on sloppily, so that rain and deck wash will injure the cargo.

Tie float valves open so that storage tanks will overflow on perishable goods.

(9) Communications

(a) Telephone

(1) At office, hotel and exchange switch boards delay putting enemy calls through, give them wrong numbers, cut them off "accidentally," or forget to disconnect them so that the line cannot be used again.

(2) Hamper official and especially military business by making at least one telephone call a day to an enemy headquarters; when you get them, tell them you have the wrong number.

Call military or police offices and make anonymous false reports of fires, air raids, bombs.

(3) In offices and buildings used by the enemy, unscrew the earphone of telephone receivers and remove the diaphragm. Electricians and telephone repair men can make poor connections and damage insulation so that cross talk and other kinds of electrical interference will make conversations hard or impossible to understand.

(4) Put the batteries under automatic switchboards out of commission by dropping nails, metal filings, or coins into the cells. If you can treat half the batteries in this way, the switchboard will stop working. A whole telephone system can be disrupted if you can put 10 percent of the cells in half the batteries of the central battery room out of order.

(b) Telegraph

(1) Delay the transmission and delivery of telegrams to enemy destinations.

(2) Garble telegrams to enemy destinations so that another telegram will have to be sent or a long distance call will have to be made. Some times it will be possible to do this by changing a single letter in a word -- for example, changing "minimum" to "maximum," so that the person receiving the telegram will not know whether "minimum" or "maximum" is meant.

(c) Transportation Lines

(1) Cut telephone and telegraph transmission lines. Damage insulation on power lines to cause interference.

(d) Mail

(1) Post office employees can see to it that enemy mail is always delayed by one day or more, that it is put in wrong sacks, and so on.

(e) Motion Pictures

(1) Projector operators can ruin newsreels and other enemy propaganda films by bad focusing, speeding up or slowing down the film and by causing frequent breakage in the film.

(2) Audiences can ruin enemy propaganda films by applauding to drown the words of the speaker, by coughing loudly, and by talking.

(3) Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows.

(f) Radio

(1) Station engineers will find it quite easy to overmodulate transmissions of talks by persons giving enemy propaganda or instructions, so that they will sound as if they were talking through a heavy cotton blanket with a mouth full of marbles.

(2) In your own apartment building, you can interfere with radio reception at times when the enemy wants everybody to listen. Take an electric light plug of! the end of an electric light cord; take some wire out of the cord and tie it across two terminals of a two-p.r.o.ng plug or three terminals of a four-p.r.o.ng plug. Then take it around and put it into as many wall and floor outlets as you can find. Each time you insert the plug into a new circuit, you will blow out a fuse and silence all radios running on power from that circuit until a new fuse is put in.

(3) Damaging insulation on any electrical equipment tends to create radio interference in the immediate neighborhood, particularly on large generators, neon signs, fluorescent lighting, X-ray machines, and power lines. If workmen can damage insulation on a high tension line near an enemy airfield, they will make ground-to-plane radio communications difficult and per haps impossible during long periods of the day.

(10) Electric Power

(a) Turbines, Electric Motors, Transformers

(1) See 5 b. (2) (e), (f),and (g).

(b) Transmission Lines

(1.) Linesmen can loosen and dirty insulators to cause power leakage.

It will be quite easy, too, for them to tie a piece of very heavy string several times back and forth between two parallel transmission lines, winding it several turns around the wire each time. Beforehand, the string should be heavily saturated with salt and then dried. When it rains, the string becomes a conductor, and a short-circuit will result.

(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production

(a) Organizations and Conferences (1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Ill.u.s.trate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarra.s.sments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

(b) Managers and Supervisors

(1) Demand written orders.

(2) "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.