Unexpected WW 2 boobytrapping and mining tutorial

[John Kettler]

No, it's not a training film. Would you believe a syndicated episode of the old TV series Combat on American TV Channel? In an episode called "The Enemy," the LT, played by Vic Morrow, somehow sans squad (didn't see first part) winds up capturing a German Pioneer officer who, with his unit, boobytrapped a French village in anticipation of the arrival of the Americans. Once the LT figures out what's what, he makes the German systematically show him the location of and render safe every boobytrap and mine in the place. Call the German talented, cooperative and highly conscious of his duty to escape! The result is a fascinating and disturbing look at what our forebears faced for real, in a catalogue of diabolical tricks and traps ranging from dirt covered Hawkens mines to exploding pens, from floorboards wired to explosives to 36 hour delay time bombs. Particularly intriguing is the depiction of how these things really work and the special pins, clips and procedures needed to neutralize them. Pull fuzes, tilt fuzes, pressure plates and more are covered, in an alarming list of nasty things to leave for the foe to find.

Very high grog factor and in a TV show no less! Hope some of you get/got to see this.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

No, it's not a training film. Would you believe a syndicated episode of the old TV series Combat on American TV Channel? In an episode called "The Enemy," the LT, played by Vic Morrow, somehow sans squad (didn't see first part) winds up capturing a German Pioneer officer who, with his unit, boobytrapped a French village in anticipation of the arrival of the Americans. Once the LT figures out what's what, he makes the German systematically show him the location of and render safe every boobytrap and mine in the place. Call the German talented, cooperative and highly conscious of his duty to escape! The result is a fascinating and disturbing look at what our forebears faced for real, in a catalogue of diabolical tricks and traps ranging from dirt covered Hawkens mines to exploding pens, from floorboards wired to explosives to 36 hour delay time bombs. Particularly intriguing is the depiction of how these things really work and the special pins, clips and procedures needed to neutralize them. Pull fuzes, tilt fuzes, pressure plates and more are covered, in an alarming list of nasty things to leave for the foe to find.

Very high grog factor and in a TV show no less! Hope some of you get/got to see this.

Regards,

John Kettler

Having been a combat engineer and having been taught how to use mines, boobytraps I can tell you that 3/4 of what you describe is hollywood bunk. Even in todays army let alone in 1944.

[Dogface]

That and Vic was the Sargent.

Rick Jason was Lt. Hanley, who BTW started out as TSgt. Hanley.

[ March 22, 2006, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: Dogface ]

[John Kettler]

Panther Commander,

With all due deference to your having been a combat engineer, unless you've seen the episode in question, I fail to see how you can so sweepingly dismiss the portrayal of the infernal devices in the show, particularly since I've seen period U.S. Army footage of actual German boobytraps even nastier than what was in the show, to include a boobytrapped wooden stoop, a booby trapped toilet tank, and even a faucet rigged to set off explosives when turned. Also, the Russians have recently found large demo charges in important WW 2 era buildings.

Dogface,

I tried so hard to get it right that I got it wrong.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Troops,

Here's a link to an eminently topical U.S. training film covering German mines and boobytraps in Tunisia. Its title is Enemy Mines in Tunisia.

http://ihffilm.com/702.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[scoop88]

John:

Sorry I missed that episode. I watched that show religiously as a kid. The whole subject of mines and boobytraps during WWII is fascinating but seems to have gotten overlooked as the years have passed. (Were there any mines or boobytraps in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers? I don't remember any, but it's been a long time since I saw those films.)

I remember reading how the Germans would booby-trap swastika flags and other potential souvenirs that would mame or kill anyone who tried to take them, not to mention the tens of thousands (maybe millions) of mines that were sewn in North Africa by both sides.

Thanks for the post.

[John Kettler]

scoop88,

That show was verboten when I was a kid. Never got to see more than a few minutes of it, since my parents came home right after Star Trek which aired immediately before it. Naturally, I got into wargaming, military history and technology and eleven years plus as a professional military analyst by way of compensation! In the show one of the prime snares was a pair of boobytrapped Zeiss binoculars. As for North Africa, they're still finding live mines there from the War. Understand the 45mm Brixia Red Devil grenades cum mortar bombs are a particular problem, being so small.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Panther Commander,

With all due deference to your having been a combat engineer, unless you've seen the episode in question, I fail to see how you can so sweepingly dismiss the portrayal of the infernal devices in the show, particularly since I've seen period U.S. Army footage of actual German boobytraps even nastier than what was in the show, to include a boobytrapped wooden stoop, a booby trapped toilet tank, and even a faucet rigged to set off explosives when turned. Also, the Russians have recently found large demo charges in important WW 2 era buildings.

Dogface,

I tried so hard to get it right that I got it wrong.

Regards,

John Kettler

John,

I have not seen the show or don't remember it if I have. I was only going on your description of the devices.

I'm not saying that the Germans didn't boobytrap things. They did. What I'm saying is that what you are describiing belongs more to James Bond than a combat engineer battalion in the field. Think about this, where would those engineer troops get very specialized devices like exploding pens, time delayed fuses, etc.?

Yes, the Germans had them, but not the average everyday field units.

When I was in Germany there was a Hitler bunker discovered in Frankfurt a.M. It was booby trapped with a wide variety of ingenious devices. There was also an underground airfield that had been rigged with booby traps as well that was within 10 miles of our post. But these were situations where they had the time and resources. So I had first hand knowledge of Germas skills at rigging a building

with booby traps.

A field engineer battalion, with a little time, and putting some thought into it, could come up with the wooden stoops, toilet tanks and faucet booby traps that you mention in your follow up post.

They even used crooked pictures, furniture out of place and other such traps.

But all of these are fairly simply constructed. They are either pressure applied or pressure release for detonation. They are not anywhere near in the same category traps as an exploding pen or 36 hour time delay fuses.

That was what I was referring to.

[John Kettler]

Panther Commander,

I freely grant that the exploding pen was a bit much, but I believe there were German HQs in Russia

which were blown sky high using long delay timed explosive demo charges (the Combat episode had clock fuze fitted to a 75mm shell (mit antitilt switch)), so many that the Germans stopped using major buildings for HQs in consequence. One such building in Kiev, I believe, was found recently in which the charges didn't go off, leaving a whopping amount of explosive to be found 60+ years later.

Interesting stuff on your encounters with real (and presumably unstable to boot) German boobytraps. In the program, the Pioneer officer had a pocketful of safing pins and some spring clips for use on pressure activated devices. I have a somewhat dated copy of JANE'S MINE WARFARE

which shows and describes the use of things like those in render safe procedures for various German mines.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ March 24, 2006, 10:18 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Panther Commander,

I freely grant that the exploding pen was a bit much, but I believe there were German HQs in Russia

which were blown sky high using long delay timed explosive demo charges (the Combat episode had clock fuze fitted to a 75mm shell (mit antitilt switch), so many that the Germans stopped using major buildings for HQs in consequence. One such building in Kiev, I believe, was found recently in which the charges didn't go off, leaving a whopping amount of explosive to be found 60+ years later.

Interesting stuff on your encounters with real (and presumably unstable to boot) German boobytraps. In the program, the Pioneer officer had a pocketful of safing pins and some spring clips for use on pressure activated devices. I have a somewhat dated copy of JANE'S MINE WARFARE

which shows and describes the use of things like those in render safe procedures for various German mines.

Regards,

John Kettler

The safing pins have kind of gone the way of WWII in todays world. The mines and booby traps today are deadly enough that SOP now is to blow them in place if you can. Often that includes our own.

Each nations engineers were specialists at something. Do I understand you to say that the buildings you are discussing were rigged by Soviet engineers and not German ones?

Somewhere I read, or heard, that one of the main reasons Hitler was reluctant to actually take Leningrad was that the entire city had been booby trapped, to blow it up if the Germans took it. I have no idea where I came by that information.

If, the examples you give of these buildings being rigged as booby traps, is accurate the Leningrad story may have some truth to it.

[ March 24, 2006, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: Panther Commander ]

[Mad Russian]

Forgot to mention that the Hitler Bunker in Frankfurt was so intricately booby trapped that they resealed it and didn't go inside.

IIRC, there was an article done on it in Stars and Stripes during the mid-late 70's. The bunker would have been discovered from 1975-1977. There was a photo of a large room with concrete walls, and again IIRC, it was crisscrossed with so many wires you could hardly see across the room.

The article went into a fair amount of detail about the different kinds of booby traps involved.

Of course, being young gung-ho engineers, we were all for going in and dismantling them just so we could look around. Yeah right, 30 year old booby traps and unstable explosives. Good thing somebody with some common sense was in charge...

[John Kettler]

Panther Commander,

Interesting stuff! Were all the wires in the bunker

tripwires? If so, egad!

The rigged buildings in Russia were argument by analogy to the clockwork detonated shell I saw on the TV program I mentioned. Was simply trying to point out a valid historical precedent for the much tamer device I saw on the Combat episode.

Regards,

John Kettler

[wunwinglow]

Isn't there still an unexploded mine on the Messine Ridge, left over from the First World War?

Tim P

[John Kettler]

Panther Commander,

I believe you'll find the sixth item here of, er, former professional interest.

http://www.big-ordnance.com/forsale/mine_ammunition.htm

wunwinglow (to my understanding, a great but doomed Chinese aviator),

I not only believe you're correct but seem to recall someone posted in detail on this recently.

Something about a farmer whose house was directly over a huge charge of explosives.

Regards,

John Kettler

[wunwinglow]

John, almost correct; Korean. But doomed, all the same! I joined an Il2 Sturmovik Squadron, the Cess Patrol, and they renamed me 'Wunhunglow'. Delightful chaps...

Tim P

[Mad Russian]

JK... of passing interest in the, "military hardware for sale", department...about 2 months ago the FBI arrested a fellow that sold 2 81mm mortar rounds here to a local collector.

One was defused the other was live. The collector played dumb, and maybe he was, but at least he wasn't killed!

There is a reason that stuff is handled as few times as possible.

As engineers we were always blowing things up and our explosives went in one track (M113's) and our blasting caps in another track.

It's all fun to play with if you follow the rules. It is NOT fun to play with once it is activated. Booby traps are set normally with both pressure and pressure release activation in a series. So you never know what will set it off.

Of course, there are more sensitive detonators that just pressure these days. Things have gotten so much more sophisticated since WWII.

An energetic engineer squad could even in WWII come up with some things look really complicated but are fairly simple. They can be done in CM as well if you have the resources. Which is the basic problem in RL as well.

Here is a basic trick, take an AT mine and put it on the road. Then back off to both sides of the road where the won't be triggered by the vehicles on the road, line the field TOWARD the enemy from the road mine placement, with more AT mines. When the first vehicle hits the mine on the road the others will turn off the road into the real minefield.

........................Mine..Mine..Mine

Friendly......Mine..Road..Road..Road..Road......Enemy

........................Mine..Mine..Mine

This is a mine ambush. It lets the enemy trigger the ambush and then damage himself trying to get away. Just a litte something for you guys to play with...

In todays world, ALL engineer obstacles are covered with observation and fire. Meaning that nothing is put out there blindly and left unattended. That is a good idea in CM too.

[Stoffel]

There is an unexploded mine left in Belgium dating back from ww 1.

I cant recall which area though.

There were two but the other one exploded somewhere in the 70's,I thought by static electricity or a thunderstorm, and left a very big hole in the ground.

The entire area around it is sealed off,an absolute forbidden area.

[John Kettler]

Panther Commander,

During his Basic, my now retired brother underwent grenade training. Recruit attention was anything but focused until the DI whipped off his uniform jacket and tee, revealing a torso absolutely awash in scars--scars caused by a grenade mishap. The "if it happened to me, it can happen to you, so listen up!" made a telling impression.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sergei]

Germans used time detonators to blow up houses while retreating from Lapland, too. Probably with preference for the biggest buildings, as those would have been the most needed for HQ's, communications hubs etc. But it just meant that every building was thoroughly searched for explosives before taken for use.

In 1941 Finnish engineers found Soviets to have planted several radio controlled bombs to the city of Viipuri. The bombs would have been triggered with a specific signal on a certain radio frequency. As the frequency was known, Finns started playing a music record round the clock for three days on that frequency so any unfound detonators wouldn't receive the signal until the batteries had run flat.

[John Kettler]

Sergei,

Nice historical morsel! Am a bit confused, though, by the countermeasure. Unless the frequency being played simply saturated the detonator receivers, so they were unable to detect what presumably was some sort of modulation on the primary frequency, I don't see how this prevents the bombs from being remote detonated. Contrast this with the modern sweep transmitter used to trigger radio controlled bombs.

Regards,

John Kettler