Hidden Death: Land Mines

^{National Archives from U.S. Information Agency}

^{American lieutenant, wounded by a Viet Cong land mine, is treated by a medic.}

Land mines have been around for a long time, and it’s only in the last few years that they have aroused public concern. A few land mines were used in the American Civil War, although they seem to have been mostly improvised devices – usually an artillery shell with a percussion cap arrangement where the time fuse would have gone. The public took a dim view of these “land torpedoes,” calling them, as they did submarines, “infernal devices.” The Turks used land mines on the beaches at Gallipoli, but they were not common on most of the major battle fronts. Barbed wire and the machine guns provided a pretty complete defensive system. Land mines would just have complicated things when it was time to advance.

It was the appearance of the tank that caused a quantum jump in land mine warfare. The Achilles’ heel of the lumbering monsters was their caterpillar treads.

A small amount of explosive could break a tread, leaving the tank immobile and almost helpless – certainly useless as a breakthrough weapon. Early land mines were do‑it‑yourself propositions, improvised from artillery shells or bulk explosives. Later, government‑issue mines appeared, but, by that time, the war was almost over.

When the Second World War began, all belligerents had factory‑made land mines. Some were antitank mines; some were antipersonnel mines. Antipersonnel mines were even simpler than antitank mines: it takes very little high explosive to blow a man’s foot off. Most of the early mines had metal bodies. To locate them, members of antitank and mine platoons would sweep the ground with electronic metal detectors – ancestors of the gadgets hobbyists used to find coins in public parks and on beaches. The armies then switched to non‑metallic mines.

The Germans had a nasty little number the GIs called a “shoe mine.” It was a wooden box the size of a shoe box with a loose lid. Any pressure on the lid ignited a percussion cap, which exploded a charge of TNT. The foot that stepped on the shoe mine never needed a shoe again – if its owner survived. The United States used a similar device, a small round plastic case that exploded if any pressure was put on its top. To locate these non‑metallic mines, the infantry had to use their bayonets. They probed the ground ahead of them as they walked.

The British even had a purpose‑built bayonet probe – one of their cheap “spike” bayonets welded to a length of pipe.

The antitank mines needed far more pressure to make them explode. Men could walk across a field of antitank mines with complete safety, but any tanks attempting to follow them would be in serious trouble. Some mines, especially antitank mines, had two devices for setting them off. A plate on top would explode the mine if pressure were placed on it. Another device on the bottom would also explode the mine if it were lifted up and pressure removed from the bottom element.

One type of antipersonnel mine, the “claymore,” was not buried, but placed above the surface, usually hidden by brush or high grass. It was used a lot in Vietnam. The claymore was a curved plastic case holding a slab of high explosive behind hundreds of steel ball bearings. When it exploded, it threw the ball bearings in a 60‑degree arc to a range of 270 yards. It could be ignited by a trip wire or electricity.

Another antipersonnel mine using ball bearings was the “bouncing betty.”

When an enemy hit a trip wire, it would explode a small powder charge in the base of the mine. The mine would fly up, but it was attached to a wire anchored to the ground. When the mine reached waist height, the wire released a firing pin and the mine exploded and scattered ball bearings in all directions.

One thing few citizens who have not been in combat know is that armies frequently marked their minefields with wire and warning signs. Trying to find their way around a minefield could delay enemies almost as much as trying to cross it, and it could channel them into areas that have already been zeroed in on by the defenders’s guns. It also helps avoid the chance of being blown up by your own mines. And, it greatly reduces the chance of civilians being killed by mines long after the fighting is over.

That’s why one of the new methods of laying mines is particularly nasty.

Helicopters now can scatter both antitank and antipersonnel mines over a wide area. A single Black Hawk helicopter can place 960 mines. Unless the mines are the self‑destructing type, one may lie on the ground for years until someone, maybe a child, sets it off. Finding and collecting such randomly scattered mines in unmarked minefields after a war is a herculean task.

Cluster bombs, delivered by airplanes, helicopters, artillery shells, or rockets cause a similar problem. At a predetermined height, the bomb, shell, or rocket opens and scatters scores of bomblets, each less than four inches long and an inch‑a‑half in diameter, over an area known to contain enemy troops.

The bomblets trail streamers that unscrew their arming devices. The problem is that these tiny bombs, each with the power of a hand grenade, may not explode when they strike, because the arming device may not have been fully unscrewed.

If a curious child should pick up a bomblet, it might go off.

Antitank mines were one of the main means of taking the Blitz out of Blitzkrieg, and they were so successful they stimulated the use of antipersonnel mines. At one time, mines were individually dug in. Now, the work is often done with machinery. Even in marked minefields, the chances are that the weapons have been plowed in with a mechanical minelayer.

Clearing mines is also often done without hand work. One Russian general is reported to have sent his troops right across an undefended German minefield to save time. His reasoning: He wouldn’t have lost any more men than if the area were defended by artillery. On D day in Normandy, the Allies used tanks pushing heavy rollers or cylinder that flailed the ground with chains to set off antitank mines ahead of them. That worked until the Germans began planting mines with delayed action fuses. Artillery and mortar barrages were a good way to eliminate minefields. So were “Bangalore torpedoes” – long pipes filled with explosives that were pushed over the minefields and exploded. A modern version of the “torpedo” used a rocket to pull an explosive filled hose across the minefield. The newest way to clear minefields is to use fuel‑air explosives. The United States has a bomb containing three smaller bombs, each containing 71.8 pounds of ethylene oxide. The bomblets are ejected from the big bomb and arrive by parachute, open, and the gas vaporizes, forming a cloud about 50 feet in diameter and eight feet high. Then it detonates, exploding all the mines beneath it. Deep penetration bombs filled with ethylene oxide can also be used to fill underground fortifications, like those in Afghanistan with explosive vapor.

In the last half of the Korean War, the trench‑and‑bunker warfare environment resulted in all kinds of homemade mines. The Husch flare, named after the lieutenant who invented it, used by the 27th Infantry Regiment, was typical.

It was a diesel oil drum buried in the mountainside and slanted toward North Korean lines. At the bottom of the drum was a half‑pound block of TNT, a blasting cap and a firing pin. Leading from that were trip wires going in many directions. The drum was then filled with napalm and many hand grenades. The flare would not only cause great harm to anyone trying to sneak through the barbed wire at night, it would show the troops where the enemy soldiers were and illuminate the targets.

Today, a kind of mine called a roadside bomb is one of the principal weapons of the Iraqi guerrillas. Because of the huge number of artillery shells, bombs, and rockets apparently lying around everywhere in Iraq, making the bomb is simplicity itself. Get one or many shells, bombs, and so on, wire them together and set them off with a small charge of TNT or some other explosive. A favorite method of ignition involves a mobile telephone. Dial the phone’s number and, instead of ringing, it sets off the bomb. The bomb doesn’t have to be dug in, something that might attract attention on a paved road. Just hide it in a trash can, a wrecked vehicle, or the body of a dead animal – a dog, a donkey, or maybe a camel. A big bomb doesn’t have to explode under a vehicle. A really big one can take out several vehicles in the area. You’ll find more on this in Chapter 50 (on improvised weapons).