Land Mines

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

I seemed to recall a thread that discussed the use of mines in the war, the type later referred to as land mines. I was not able to locate this particular topic however.

I just came across two references to the use of land mines, called contact mines, in 1914. The 13th Pioneer Bn. began to experiment in contact mines as early as November 1914 and the 99th Reserve Regiment also attempted to unsuccessfully place contact mines inside a French sap during an early raid also in November 1914.

Does anyone recall where this thread was located?

Ralph

[Raster Scanning]

I remember it as well, was it on the old WFA forum?

John

[Chris_Baker]

It is possible that it was on the old WFA forum. I have a copy of all the content; I'll see if I can find it.

In the meantime, I have just finished re-reading "Fifteeen rounds a minute", which is the story of the 2nd Grenadier Guards in 1914, mostly from the letters and diaries of 'Ma' Jeffreys.

A letter from a Captain Pike dated 23 September 1914, while the Battalion was on the Aisne front, said "...The German line in one place is only 700 yards from us and I was watching them yesterday moving about. You can see them quite plainly, they are digging like anything and I expect laying mines...."

[CROONAERT]

There actually is a thread on this forum.It's in the "soldiers" section,under the title of "missing" (we went off at a tangent on this subject!)

Dave

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

Thanks Dave, I knew I had recalled seeing something on mines. When I could not locate it I thought I was going senile.

Ralph

[egbert]

Ralph,

I just finished a book from 1929, about an infantry officer's war diary: he mentioned a lot of mine fields in no mans' land: called "Flatterminen"

[Tom Tulloch-Marshall]

Ralph - I found some detailed sketches of "German Traps And Land Mines" in the war diaries of 55th Div General Staff - PRO WO95/2905 - the sketches are copied from captured German documents and were issued by General Staff (Intelligence) General Headquarters, 10th November 1918. RE Printing Company ref W.O.B./2380, and presumably there were others because the sheets I saw were series IV.

The "mines" themselves are Medium Trench Mortar Bombs with varying methods of detonation. An anti tank mine is shown boxed & buried infront of (ie allied side) screw pickets, with a firing wire connected from the picket to an instantaneous fuse - so hitting the picket would blow the mine under the tank. A second type called a "Zinc Tread Mine" is connected to a "firing box" - essentially a simple step-on device which would again fire an instantaneous fuse and set off the TMB.

The anti-tank device looks as if it would be particularly vulnerable to shell-fire (moving the picket and causing detonation) and the tread-mine appears to be an extremely complicated way to go about dealing with an Infantry attack. I dont recall any reference to 55th Div having encountered these devices.

Regards - Tom