Land Mines and Torpedo Heads

[michaeldr]

A ‘search’ of the forum archive throws up 7 threads for land mines

There is one mention of their use at Gallipoli, at Suvla Bay in August 1915

[Quote: C.TIERNEY. May 18 2004, 05:28 PM Post #7

The first mention I have come across is of landmines is that they were encountered by the 10th Div on landing at Suvla Bay. Gallipoli. If I recall they didn’t cause many casualties and seemed to have been "blast" rather than anti-personnel "shrapnel"]

However Liman von Sanders writing in his ‘Five Years in Turkey’ (page 62) mentions in his preparations at the end of March 1915:

“For the improvement of the field fortifications of the most endangered stretches of the coast all available men were put to work and mostly at night. The available Turkish means of obstruction were as short as were the tools, but we did the best we could. Torpedo heads were used alongside with the regular land mines and fences of gardens and fields were stripped of their wood and wire. At places particularly suitable for landings barbed wire was stretched under water.”

Has anyone any idea what the General meant by “the regular land mines” in March 1915?

And has anyone ever come across a reference to a detonation which might have been one of his ‘Torpedo heads’ going off!

Or were these simply mistaken for large calibre shells?

Regards

Michael D.R.

[Mike_H]

Michael

The Turks had an electrically detonated land mine that was used at Gallipoli. This was the "Tufkenjieff" Mine (hope the spelling is right), named after its designer. It was a hollow cast 5 or 6 inch iron cube with internal segmentation with a brass plug that screwed into one face to hold an electric detonator. The mines were

detonated by command wire rather than contact. The IWM has one on display in its WW1 galleries in the Gallipoli case, I believe that example was recovered from Lancashire Landing.

Mike

[michaeldr]

Thanks Mike, that’s an interesting description

Reading around the web I see that electric detonation had been used the Russo-Japanese War and I suppose that modern contact/pressure detonation was yet to come

I wonder how much of an innovation the use of torpedo heads was in early 1915

And whether their use here contributed in any way to the development of the contact/pressure detonated land mine?

Regards

Michael D.R.

[CROONAERT]

Reading around the web I see that electric detonation had been used the Russo-Japanese War

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Believe it or not, the first "electrically detonated" mines had been used in the Russo - Turkish War of 1828-29! They weren't all that successful though until the American Civil War in which fougasses, electrically detonated "kettle" mines and the first pressure operated mines were employed.

All of these were very basic, however, until the 1920's when the AP mines as we know today were developed. (Although the British and Germans did develop some (wooden) anti tank mines, operated by pressure plates, during WW1 that didn't rely on unspent ordnance.

Dave.

[michaeldr]

Many thanks for that Dave

I really had no idea that the electrical detonation system went back over eighty years before the First War!

Regards

Michael D.R.