Bomb Disposal Engineers of 22nd Bn. remove fuse of another large mine in middle of Naha. Lots of these mines were detected and did not slow up any of our heavy equipment, which still reached our lines on time. Okinawa - May 30, 1945
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
Jim-- Right again. A disaster waiting to happen. I saw the same thing on a drone video with three or four Iraqi soldiers trying to disarm an IED. AKs and body parts flying everywhere.
Heck no! In fact our training was to blow everything in place. We learned to use the rocket wrench and the disruptor but never used them operationally. We used the DAREOD to clear unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs but anything bigger we'd stand off at a safe distance and use the turret mounted C6 or M2 to cause them to explode. I guess they had larger cojones back then.
Blowing a mine in place has always seemed safer for everybody in my experience. While being able to defuse a mine is possible the addition of a live grenade under the mine is a distinct possibility. And that's not a new thing. I've even heard of "Bouncing Betty's" being dug in under an anti-tank mine.
Digging out a WWII German aerial mine to get to the fuses etc these contained 1000Kg of high explosive and could be either, magnetic, acoustic or magnetic/acoustic.
It's all in a book Softly Tread The Brave By Southall which I highly recommend I've 3 copies one the elusive 1st Ed not the book club one, this is bravery on another level where you had to have nerves well above what a front line soldier would possess.
How would ones nerves be in WWII delousing one of these wedged on a fully laden ammunition barge at the port the only way to reach the fuses & other components was to lie on the mine practically upside down and working out of sight with your hands when the fuse ran !
In his mind he ran, but stayed transfixed screwing in the plug to stop the detonation, the fuse runs for 17 seconds with a blast radius of 400 yards he beat the fuse by a fraction that could not be measured.....
The germans also made a fundamental flaw in the design of the self destruct mechanism which was a sliding block hooked onto a clock when a certain period had elapsed it would release the block to initiate the firing sequence, they stuffed up making the slide & block out of the same metal hence almost all the time they bound up and failed to initiate the explosion.
Had they not done this then very few of these mines would have ever been deloused, the job was far from easy considering where some of them ended up plus development there was the ZUS-40 booby trap over come eventually but it still cost lives, it stopped the main fuse being removed like a secondary firing mechanism.
And the irony is they were RNVR so could only receive the George Cross Syme & Mould are the 2 main persons in the book with others as well, in the end the mines became so lethal they even scared the Germans, the only one they never really defeated was the Oyster mine.
The sequal to that book is Open The Ports By J. Grovsener which was so dangerous it did not receive official sanction again mine clearance divers.
I've even heard of "Bouncing Betty's" being dug in under an anti-tank mine.
Or the whole field can be wired together so when you try to pull the first one out they all go together. Plus booby traps behind you...they can run miles in diameter.
PM
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