Black Tom Explosion 1916: German Cigar Bombs and Liberty's Sealed Torch

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The Statue of Liberty's torch has been closed to the public since 1916, and the reason is shrapnel. Next to Liberty Island, the Lehigh Valley Railroad had used landfill to turn a rock called Black Tom into a 25-acre promontory with a mile-long pier, the main munitions hub of the Northeast. The United States was still neutral, but the British blockade meant American arms flowed almost entirely to the Allies, so German naval intelligence turned to sabotage. On July 30, 1916, about two million pounds of ammunition bound for Russia sat on the pier, along with Johnson Barge No. 17, loaded with 50 tons of TNT and tied up to avoid a $25 towing charge. Fires broke out after midnight, and at 2:08 a.m. the first blast tore through the harbor, followed by a second at 2:40.

The explosion registered between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter scale, shook sleepers in Maryland, broke windows 25 miles away and left a crater 375 feet long. About seven people died, including a 10-week-old infant thrown from his crib. Local police first questioned watchmen who had lit smudge pots against mosquitoes, and Woodrow Wilson called it a regrettable incident. The country had no national intelligence service and no law against peacetime sabotage. The episode follows the agents behind it, including Kurt Jahnke and Lothar Witzke, the push for the Espionage Act of 1917, and a legal fight that ran until 1979.

• German operatives used cigar bombs, timed incendiaries disguised as ordinary cigars.
• Michael Kristoff, believed to have planted the devices, was arrested and released for lack of evidence.
• Shrapnel struck the Jersey Journal clock tower and stopped its hands at 2:12 a.m.
• John J. McCloy recalled Franklin D. Roosevelt saying we don't want any more Black Toms as he weighed Japanese American internment.
• A 1939 commission found Imperial Germany responsible, and West Germany agreed in 1953 to a $9.5 million settlement.