Kingsland explosion was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in New Jersey, 1917.
This was a suspected act of German sabotage, not a battle. On January 11, 1917, a fire began in a building at the Canadian Car and Foundry Company's shell-assembly plant in the Kingsland section of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, which was producing munitions for the Allies. The fire set off an estimated half a million exploding artillery shells and destroyed the entire plant. Investigators traced the origin to a worker's bench and suspected German-directed sabotage, though a later international arbitration commission did not conclusively pin the fire on a German agent, and Germany eventually paid reparations without admitting guilt. Remarkably, no one was killed, an outcome credited in part to a switchboard operator who stayed at her post to warn workers to flee. Coming months after the Black Tom blast, the disaster deepened American alarm over enemy sabotage on the eve of the United States entering World War I.
Approximate location. The nearest recorded settlement is shown; the exact site is unrecorded.
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