Nazi German saboteurs plotted unsuccessfully during World War II to ship explosives into Britain hidden in bars of chocolate and other products as well as in dead rats, archivists said on Monday.
British intelligence files released into the public domain at the National Archives in the last six months provided details of the plots accompanied by diagrams, they said.
Though the files suggested that the explosives-packed products were bombs in themselves, possibly targeting consumers, archivist Howard Davies said he believed the real intention was to smuggle in explosives for industrial or military sabotage.
”The bomb is made of steel with a thin covering of real chocolate,” said a note accompanying a diagram.
”When the piece of chocolate at the end is broken off the canvas shown is pulled, and after a delay of seven seconds the bomb explodes.”
However, Davies told French news agency AFP, ”I’m pretty certain that it wasn’t part of a plot to target the consumers… and just a way of delivering some explosives in a covert way.”
He added that ”the targets would certainly have been substantial: industrial, transport, communications, that kind of thing.”
Other plots were evident from photographs of explosives disguised as tins of Amieux Cassoulet stew and Smedley’s English Red Dessert Plums.
Explosives in soap, lumps of coal, car batteries, thermos flasks, tins of fish in tomato sauce, boot soles and heels, pencils and fountain pens were among other exhibits shown.
A list of explosives found includes ”a rat stuffed with explosive and fitted with time pencil”, a file said.
A drawing, complete with sausages, mash and peas, demonstrates how explosives and a timer could be concealed in a workman’s mess tin under a false bottom.
”These were devices that were supposed to cause mayhem on this island,” said Professor Christopher Andrew, who is writing a history of MI5, the British domestic intelligence service.
But they were never carried out successfully.
”As far as we know there was never any successful sabotage by German agents in the UK during the war,” Davies said.
”There were a couple of successes in Gibraltar,” he said, referring to the tiny British colony on the southern tip of Spain. – Sapa-AFP