Mines: their effect in WW2

Can you imagine knowing you are going to cross a mined area and your "flails" are bogged down in mud, as happened in the attack on Le Havre. from Camerons regimental History; "The leading companies at first felt helpless, not knowing whether to try to push on and ignore the supporting armoured vehicles, or to wait for them in their gapping activities. During this period of indecision they were in the open and receiving the full blast of enemy artillery. Eventually "D" company pressed over the mines and ditch and, to their surprise and delight found themselves beyond the fire".
My Father was in D company. He said the mines were the lesser of 2 evils.

 

minefields are suppossed to delay, put off and general kill as many of the enemy as possible.

Not really accurate. Delay, put off maybe, that is why a minefield is classed as an 'obstacle', ie it's supposed to make an advance difficult, not act as an impenetrable barrier. It has to be covered because a determined enemy will advance over a minefield.

As for "kill as many of the enemy as possible", I think you'll find that very few AP mines are designed to kill, although some do. They are actually designed to maim, injure and incapacitate. The reason is not a pleasant one. If you kill one of the enemy in a minefield you remove a single soldier from the battle. If however you injure one, you add his screaming to the moral effect and remove at least another two soldiers to recover their injured mate. That's three from the battle and an negetive effect on moral, all for a small device that could be as cheap as a couple of quid.

 

I guess if the minefield is too good and well covered by other fire then it is just a delay, would the enemy not just wait till they can clear it properly with lower losses, or am I just just appyling logic in that loses may be of some considoration??.

If it was designed well enough, i.e its hidden or looks weak enough that the attack 'has a go' it will serious hurt the attacker and delay him. I dunno Im very interested in the statagy of laying the mines by the guys here with lot more knowledge then me. Good thread.

Kev

 

Before a deliberate attack there should have been a (or several) recce. That would have indicated that there were minefields and other obsticles. Once the disposition of the defending forces is known, or thought to be known, a plan is made for the attack. This will attribute the expected losses of different stratergies, which could be.

Attempting to clear lanes through a minefield before or during and advance (this can include artillery bombardment of the minefields in order to initiate as many as possible, but won't clear 'lanes' or the minefield). This is best done at night and as quietly as possible, making the job very much more difficult, and may compromise the surprise of an attack and indicate planned lines of advance.

Avoiding the obsticles and advancing through prepared 'killing zones'.

Advancing through the minefields lead by engineer assets such as flails and mine ploughs, or more usually the poor sapper on his belt buckles with a mine prod.

None of the stratergies are ideal, and all will have a casualty rate calculated for that particular operation. Whichever has the lowest will be implemented once other factors are taken into account.

If however the advance is planned quickly and there is no recce, once you find yourself in a minefield and under fire you are left with only two options; forward or back, as staying where you are isn't a survival tactic. Which one is a decision that has to be taken by the commander on the ground and he'll have to live with the results of that decision...... or not

 

Interesting stuff sapper, thanks for sharing.

 

In many cases whole areas were marked off with a red skull and cross bones sign, with the words MINEN!
In some cases, they were "Bogus" but had to be checked anyway, When the enemy laid a minefield, he would naturally zero his guns on that area. Knowing full well that we would try to clear them and become sitting ducks.

 

I have tried to post the description of mine laying out in front the infantry, but I am not allowed to do it. That was Captain Edwards bit. Sorry!
Sapper

 

This 'mine migration' intrigues me, I've heard of it before but have no idea how large an effect it might have over time. I assume it's all down to what the grounds like, gradient,soil,sand etc? how far can they 'walk'?

Mine migration is a problem in long term minefields. It is more accute in sandy or gravel conditions and will be accentuated on gradients or if the area is effected by tide (river banks or beaches).

On gradients the mines will migrate with the aid of gravity, moving toward the botom of the slope. It occurs with the natural movement of the sand or gravel by wind or water. This means that mines layed on slopes along roads will have the danger of the mines migrating into the roadside ditches which are natural places for soldiers to take cover. There have been several accidents in Cyprus where UN Engineers have been using plant to clear ditches as part of normal route maintenance and finding mines with the obvious concequences. One accident that I know of was fatal for a Dutch Grader operator in the buffer zone in Cyprus.

When the minefield is on a shoreline or within the tidal area of a river bank, the mines can be repeatedly uncovered and re-covered by normal tidal action, allowing the tidal effects to move them lateraly along the shore. They can be moved many metres over time and as tidal areas are salt water, corrosion of any exposed parts can also add to the mines becoming unstable.Since the Falklands war it has been found that some mines have moved and the fences marking them have not!

 

MInes in sand ..On Beaches, will move and sink and rise again, sometimes with many years between their appearance. Many years afer the war some school children here where I live were blown up and killed on the beach, years after the beach had been thoroughly cleared.

Some asked the question about should you cross a minefield or wait? My answer to that is what we would do,,(Captain Edwards RTE bit discribes it wonderfully) We would go out in front of the leading infantry, under the enmies noses, and clear the field. I have been on these mind boggling stunts.

We cleared a path through the minefield on a downward enemy facing slope, right under his nose, very close, he never heard a damn thing. we got back "nearly always" casualty free.

But if you want a little night time excitement? There was plenty of that.

WE di get very good at this mine clearing silently. and yet there would be two or three platoons out there in front. Not a bloody whisper...
More tea Vicar!
It was clever stuff. I must try to put Cap Edwards bit on again.
Sapper

 

Out in “No mans land” Laying mines<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o:p></o:p>

in front of the leading infantry.<o:p></o:p>

Captain Michael Edwards. RE.<o:p></o:p>

The retaking of the Chateau de La Londe enabled me to check over the previous battleground of the South Lance. of the 23rd. June, to see whether I could find any signs which would indic&shy;ate what may have happened to my three missing sappers. I found no trace whatever of them, nor graves marked with their ident&shy;ity, and it could therefore be fairly safely assumed that they had been taken prisoner. <o:p></o:p>

For the next few days the Company was busylaying about 2000 A/Tk mines and all Platoons were employed throughout the night of June 30th. without incident. Again in the first three days of July, mine laying continued each night in front of our forward positions along the Le Mesnil-Chateau de La Londe front. Ten rows of mines were laid to give 2 mines per yard of front and the fields were fenced with barbed wire, then they were carefully recorded. <o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>

 

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Although we normally had sections of Infantry with us as a protective screen, there were occasions when their own patrolling commitments restricted the amount of help they could give. On such nights in “no mans land” we would set up our own listening posts, and should any enemy movement occur we would stop minelaying and get down silently into defensive positions until it was quiet again. <o:p></o:p>

The amount of work that trained troops could do at night without detection surprised me. On that particular minefield operation there were three platoons, alongside one another in a long line, each field butting on to the other, and yet I saw and heard nothing of the others although they came right up to my right hand boundary. There was one such mine laying operation, on the night of the 2nd/3rd. of July, which remains in my memory very clearly. <o:p></o:p>

 

We had just completed mine laying shortly before first light and 3Platoon were already moving silently back along the approach route. I had to remain behind, as usual with my “bodyguard” to complete the minefield record. As I completed my notes we began to feel that uneasy disquiet, the silence of the minutes before dawn. I decided to get back along the track just at the moment that the enemy started to fire their automatic weapons in a wide sweep along their front, and tracers began to hit the ground behind us. In a flash we hurled ourselves into the side ditch, as we sensed the danger, now very evident as the burst swept past us, in a flash we were out again on the track to cover a few more yards before the next burst. We seemed to take such a long time to cover such a short distance.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o:p></o:p>

Hope this is interesting?<o:p></o:p>
Sapper<o:p></o:p>

 

It is very interesting sapper, thanks for sharing it.

 

If you kill one of the enemy in a minefield you remove a single soldier from the battle. If however you injure one, you add his screaming to the moral effect and remove at least another two soldiers to recover their injured mate.

That is what they taught us but they also added that for one wounded enemy, it actually invovled something like 74!

However, we were also taught to use the "double tap" for shooting at the enemy!!!

 

That is what they taught us but they also added that for one wounded enemy, it actually invovled something like 74!

However, we were also taught to use the "double tap" for shooting at the enemy!!!

Where on earth did they get a silly number like 74? Sounds like typical RAF logic to me. The reason it is a minimum of 2 is that that is how many are needed to cary the injured to safety. Any more than 4 and you have probably stared to count the streacher bearers, medics, ambulance drivers, doctors, nurses theater techs etc. Not a very clever calculation as that lot were not a risk to you in the first place and are only doing (albeit a good job) what they were going to be doing in the first place.

As for double tapping, when it's done correctly it is a technique of improving your hit probability while still conserving ammunition when using automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Not much use in the days of the Lee Enfield. :mellow:

 

Thanks sapper for sharing this.
Wish we had a few more Veterans here.

As for double-tapping I was pretty good at it with my GPMG.
The RSM borrowed my Gimpy to have a go.
Didn't tell him I'd loosened the gas-plug.
I got hell of a dirty look when he got a stoppage.

Well I've always had difficulty double tapping with a Gimpy. I suppose I just haven't got the touch