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82-458: Each fortified district consisted of a large number of concrete bunkers (pillboxes) armed with machineguns, antitank guns and artillery. The bunkers were built in groups for mutual support, each group forming a centre of resistance. The area in between was filled with various barriers and obstacles, as well as mine fields . A dedicated military unit ( Fortified district troops ) was permanently assigned to man each region. The concept of ukrepraions

164-834: A ZPU-2 anti-aircraft gun platoon. Machine gun companies consisted of three platoons each armed with six PK and PKS 12.7 mm machine guns, the 12.7 mm NSV heavy machine gun , the AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, and the SPG-9 anti-tank grenade launcher. The motor rifle units of the fortified regions had a similar structure to other motor rifle units and were mostly equipped with ZIL-131 and GAZ-66 trucks. The tank battalions numbered 31 tanks, generally T-54s or T-55s and sometimes including OT-55 flamethrower tanks. Separate rocket battalions were equipped with 18 BM-21 Grad or BM-13 systems, six per battery; anti-tank batteries were equipped with six 100 mm MT-12 anti-tank guns. During

246-409: A besieger. Originally the term referred to a covered passageway that traversed the ditch outside the curtain of a fortress . Fire from this point could cover the ditch beyond the curtain wall to deter any attempt to storm the wall. Thus the passageway was equipped with musket ports and cannon ports that fired along the ditch. While fortifications were evolving to the simpler polygonal style,

328-581: A captain, Rains had earlier employed explosive booby traps during the Seminole Wars in Florida in 1840. Over the course of the war, mines only caused a few hundred casualties, but they had a large effect on morale and slowed down the advance of Union troops. Many on both sides considered the use of mines barbaric, and in response, generals in the Union Army forced Confederate prisoners to remove

410-405: A cone-shape hole with gunpowder at the bottom, covered either by rocks and scrap iron ( stone fougasse ) or mortar shells, similar to large black powder hand grenades ( shell fougasse ). It was triggered by a flintlock connected to a tripwire on the surface. It could sometimes cause heavy casualties but required high maintenance due to the susceptibility of black powder to dampness. Consequently, it

492-408: A conflict. Land mines are divided into two types: anti-tank mines, which are designed to disable tanks or other vehicles; and anti-personnel mines, which are designed to injure or kill people. The history of land mines can be divided into three main phases: In the ancient world, buried spikes provided many of the same functions as modern mines. Mines using gunpowder as the explosive were used from

574-407: A device is typically detonated automatically by way of pressure when a target steps on it or drives over it, although other detonation mechanisms are also sometimes used. A land mine may cause damage by direct blast effect, by fragments that are thrown by the blast, or by both. Land mines are typically laid throughout an area, creating a minefield which is dangerous to cross. The use of land mines

656-567: A few decades during the Cold War , the U.S. developed atomic demolition munitions , often referred to as nuclear land mines. These were portable nuclear bombs that could be placed by hand, and could be detonated remotely or with a timer. Some of these were deployed in Europe. Governments in West Germany , Turkey and Greece wanted to have nuclear minefields as a defense against attack from

738-413: A five-point pattern; and abatis , fallen trees with sharpened branches facing outwards. As with modern land mines, they were "victim-operated", often concealed, and formed zones that were wide enough so that the enemy could not do much harm from outside, but were under fire (from spear throws, in this case) if they attempted to remove the obstacles. A notable use of these defenses was by Julius Caesar in

820-482: A fuse to burn, became possible after electricity was developed. An electric current sent down a wire could ignite the charge with a spark. The Russians claim first use of this technology in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 , and with it the fougasse remained useful until it was superseded by the claymore in the 1960s. Victim-activated mines were also unreliable because they relied on a flintlock to ignite

902-582: A hazard to allies as enemies. Tripwire-operated mines were not defended by pressure mines; the Chinese were often able to disable them and reuse them against UN forces. Looking for more destructive mines, the Americans developed the Claymore , a directional fragmentation mine that hurls steel balls in a 60-degree arc at a lethal speed of 1,200 metres per second. They also developed a pressure-operated mine,

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984-503: A large area. The use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions is prohibited by the international CCM treaty . If bomblets do not explode, they are referred to as unexploded ordnance (UXO) , along with unexploded artillery shells and other explosive devices that were not manually placed (that is, mines and booby traps are not UXOs). Explosive remnants of war (ERW) include UXOs and abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO), devices that were never used and were left behind after

1066-408: A magnetic trigger to detonate even if the vehicle's tires or tracks did not touch the mine. Advanced mines are able to sense the difference between friendly and enemy types of vehicles by way of a built-in signature catalog (an identification friend or foe system). This theoretically enables friendly forces to use the mined area while denying the enemy access. Many mines combine the main trigger with

1148-458: A million mines in two fields running across the entire battlefield and five miles deep. Nicknamed the " Devil's gardens ", they were covered by 88 mm anti-tank guns and small-arms fire. The Allies prevailed, but at the cost of over half their tanks; 20 percent of the losses were caused by mines. The Soviets learned the value of mines from their war with Finland, and when Germany invaded they made heavy use of them, manufacturing over 67 million. At

1230-448: A pressure plate; this triggers a detonator or igniter, which in turn sets off a booster charge. There may be additional firing mechanisms in anti-handling devices. A land mine can be triggered by a number of things including pressure , movement, sound, magnetism and vibration . Anti-personnel mines commonly use the pressure of a person's foot as a trigger, but tripwires are also frequently employed. Most modern anti-vehicle mines use

1312-473: A separate communications battalion or company, an engineer-sapper battalion, company, or platoon, and support and maintenance units. The machine gun artillery battalions of the fortified regions differed little in their organization, usually consisting of two machine gun companies, a motor rifle company, and a mortar battery. Depending on their location, they could also consist of a company of tank turrets dug in as pillboxes, two or three artillery caponiers , and

1394-457: A separate machine gun artillery battalion of six companies, two of which were equipped with ten OT-55 and IS-4, and separate sapper, communications, repair and recovery battalions, as well as an anti-tank battalion with 18 85 mm guns and a rocket artillery battery with 4 BM-13 Katyusha units. By the late 1980s, ten fortified regions were located in the Primorsky and Amur regions, five in

1476-610: A series of anti-tank mines, the Tellermines (plate mines). They also developed the Schrapnell mine (also known as the S-mine ), the first bounding mine . When triggered, this jumped up to about waist height and exploded, sending thousands of steel balls in all directions. Triggered by pressure, trip wires or electronics, it could harm soldiers within an area of about 2,800 square feet. Tens of millions of mines were laid in

1558-673: A similar, but more reliable mine, the C3A1 ("Elsie") and the British army adopted it. The British also developed the L9 bar mine, a wide anti-tank mine with a rectangular shape, which covered more area, allowing a minefield to be laid four times as fast as previous mines. They also upgraded the Dingbat to the Ranger , a plastic mine that was fired from a truck-mounted discharger that could fire 72 mines at

1640-488: A time. In the 1950s, the US Operation Doan Brook studied the feasibility of delivering mines by air. This led to three types of air-delivered mine. Wide area anti-personnel mines ( WAAPMs ) were small steel spheres that discharged tripwires when they hit the ground; each dispenser held 540 mines. The BLU-43 Dragontooth was small and had a flattened W shape to slow its descent, while the gravel mine

1722-485: A time. Booby traps can also be non-explosive devices such as punji sticks . Overlapping both categories is the improvised explosive device (IED), which is "a device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating explosive material, destructive, lethal, noxious, incendiary, pyrotechnic materials or chemicals designed to destroy, disfigure, distract or harass. They may incorporate military stores, but are normally devised from non-military components." Some meet

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1804-418: A touch or tilt trigger to prevent enemy engineers from defusing the mine. Land mine designs tend to use as little metal as possible to make searching with a metal detector more difficult; land mines made mostly of plastic have the added advantage of being very inexpensive. Some types of modern mines are designed to self-destruct , or chemically render themselves inert after a period of weeks or months to reduce

1886-650: A wide range of conditions; it could be melted to fill a container of any shape, and it was cheap to make. Thus, it became the standard explosive in mines after the First World War. The British used mines in the Siege of Khartoum . A Sudanese Mahdist force much larger than British strength was held off for ten months, but the town was ultimately taken and the British massacred. In the Boer War (1899–1903), they succeeded in holding Mafeking against Boer forces with

1968-485: A wire that made a flintlock fire. Such mines were deployed on the slope in front of a fort. They were used during the Franco-Prussian War , but were probably not very effective because a flintlock does not work for long when left untended. Another device, the fougasse , was not victim-operated or mass-produced, but it was a precursor of modern fragmentation mines and the claymore mine . It consisted of

2050-664: Is controversial because of their potential as indiscriminate weapons. They can remain dangerous many years after a conflict has ended, harming civilians and the economy. With pressure from a number of campaign groups organised through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines , a global movement to prohibit their use led to the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, also known as

2132-527: The Huolongjing ( Fire Dragon Manual ), describes hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder. The wad of the mine was made of hard wood, carrying three different fuses in case of defective connection to the touch hole. These fuses were long and lit by hand, so they required carefully timed calculations of enemy movements. The Huolongjing also describes land mines that were set off by enemy movement. A 9-foot (3 m) length of bamboo

2214-712: The Ottawa Treaty . To date, 164 nations have signed the treaty. However, China , the Russian Federation and the United States are not signatories. In the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (also known as the " Ottawa Treaty ") and the " Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices ", a mine is defined as a "munition designed to be placed under, on or near the ground or other surface area and to be exploded by

2296-578: The Battle of Alesia . His forces were besieging Vercingetorix , the leader of the Gauls, but Vercingetorix managed to send for reinforcements. To maintain the siege and defend against the reinforcements, Caesar formed a line of fortifications on both sides, and they played an important role in his victory. Lilies were also used by Scots against the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and by Germans at

2378-498: The Battle of Kursk , which put an end to the German advance, they laid over a million mines in eight belts with an overall depth of 35 kilometres. Mines forced tanks to slow down and wait for soldiers to go ahead and remove the mines. The main method of breaching minefields involved prodding the dirt with a bayonet or stick at an angle of 30 degrees (to avoid putting pressure on the top of the mine and detonating it). Since all mines at

2460-551: The Battle of Passchendaele in the First World War . A more easily deployed defense used by the Romans was the caltrop , a weapon 12–15 cm across with four sharp spikes that are oriented so that when it is thrown on the ground, one spike always points up. As with modern antipersonnel mines, caltrops are designed to disable soldiers rather than kill them; they are also more effective in stopping mounted forces, who lack

2542-633: The Gulf War , and the Islamic State have all contributed to land mine saturation in Iraq from the 1980s through 2020. In 2019, Iraq was the most saturated country in the world with land mines. Countries that provided land mines during the Iran-Iraq War included Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Italy, Romania, Singapore, the former Soviet Union and the U.S., and were concentrated in

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2624-610: The M14 ("toe-popper"). These, too, were ready too late for the Korean war. In 1948, the British developed the No. 6 antipersonnel mine , a minimum-metal mine with a narrow diameter, making it difficult to detect with metal detectors or prodding. Its three-pronged pressure piece inspired the nickname "carrot mine". However, it was unreliable in wet conditions. In the 1960s the Canadians developed

2706-721: The M23 chemical mine , which used the VX nerve agent , in 1960. The Soviets developed the KhF, a "bounding chemical mine". The French had chemical mines and the Iraqis were believed to have them before the invasion of Kuwait. In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force, prohibiting the use of chemical weapons and mandating their destruction. By July 2023 all declared stockpiles of chemical weapons were destroyed. For

2788-537: The Mannerheim Line , integrated these natural defenses with mines, including simple fragmentation mines mounted on stakes. While the Germans were advancing rapidly using blitzkrieg tactics, they did not make much use of mines. After 1942, however, they were on the defensive and became the most inventive and systematic users of mines. Their production shot up and they began inventing new types of mines as

2870-623: The PMN anti-personnel mine . The MS3 has been found in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. Caponier A caponier is a type of defensive structure in a fortification . Fire from this point could cover the ditch beyond the curtain wall to deter any attempt to storm the wall. The word originates from the French caponnière , meaning "chicken coop" (a capon is a castrated male chicken ). In some types of bastioned fortifications,

2952-567: The Second World War , particularly in the deserts of North Africa and the steppes of Eastern Europe , where the open ground favored tanks. However, the first country to use them was Finland. They were defending against a much larger Soviet force with over 6,000 tanks, twenty times the number the Finns had; but they had terrain that was broken up by lakes and forests, so tank movement was restricted to roads and tracks. Their defensive line,

3034-741: The Snake and the Conger were developed for clearing mines, but were not very effective . One of the best options was the flail , which had weights attached by chains to rotating drums. The first version, the Scorpion, was attached to the Matilda tank and used in the Second Battle of El Alamein. The Crab, attached to the Sherman tank , was faster, at 2 kilometers per hour; it was used during D-Day and

3116-524: The Warsaw Pact . However, such weapons were politically and tactically infeasible, and by 1989 the last of these munitions was retired. The British also had a project, codenamed Blue Peacock , to develop nuclear mines to be buried in Germany; the project was cancelled in 1958. A conventional land mine consists of a casing that is mostly filled with the main charge. It has a firing mechanism such as

3198-559: The Allies found ways to counter the existing ones. To make it more difficult to remove antitank mines, they surrounded them with S-mines and added anti-handling devices that would explode when soldiers tried to lift them. They also took a formal approach to laying mines and they kept detailed records of the locations of mines. In the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the Germans prepared for an Allied attack by laying about half

3280-488: The First World War, it was the standard explosive used by the British military. In 1847, Ascanio Sobrero invented nitroglycerine to treat angina pectoris and it turned out to be a much more powerful explosive than guncotton. It was very dangerous to use until Alfred Nobel found a way to incorporate it in a solid mixture called dynamite and developed a safe detonator. Even then, dynamite needed to be stored carefully or it could form crystals that detonated easily. Thus,

3362-620: The First World War, the Germans developed a device, nicknamed the "Yperite Mine" by the British, that they left behind in abandoned trenches and bunkers. It was detonated by a delayed charge, spreading mustard gas ("Yperite"). In the Second World War they developed a modern chemical mine, the Sprüh-Büchse 37 (Bounding Gas Mine 37), but never used it. The United States developed the M1 chemical mine , which used mustard gas, in 1939; and

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3444-470: The First World War, they burst into about 1,000 high-velocity fragments; in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), it had only been 20 to 30 fragments. Nevertheless, antipersonnel mines were not a big factor in the war because machine guns, barbed wire and rapid-fire artillery were far more effective defenses. An exception was in Africa (now Tanzania and Namibia ) where the warfare was much more mobile. Towards

3526-567: The German forces of 4th Panzer and 6th Armies , but those armies were in no position to attack to break the siege due to lack of supplies. Don Front employed six field fortified regions, 54th, 115th, 156th, 77th, 118th, and 159th, to protect and cover wide swaths of the encirclement front, enabling the field armies of the Front to concentrate the bulk of their combat forces in narrow, carefully selected main attack sectors. This use of fortified regions in an economy of force role proved so successful that

3608-993: The Kurdish areas in the northern area of Iraq. During the Gulf War, the U.S. deployed 117,634 mines, with 27,967 being anti-personnel mines and 89,667 being anti-vehicle mines. The U.S. did not use land mines during the Iraq War . Landmines and other unexploded battlefield ordnances, contaminate at least 724 million square meters of land in Afghanistan . Only two of Afghanistan's twenty-nine provinces are believed to be free of landmines. The most heavily mined provinces are Herat and Kandahar. Since 1989, nearly 44,000 Afghan civilians have been recorded to have been killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) averaging to around 110 people per month. Improvised mines (IM) and ERW from armed clashes caused nearly 99 percent of

3690-604: The Ming dynasty to the American Civil War. Subsequently, high explosives were developed for use in land mines. Some fortifications in the Roman Empire were surrounded by a series of hazards buried in the ground. These included goads , one-foot-long (30 cm) pieces of wood with iron hooks on their ends; lilia (lilies, so named after their appearance), which were pits in which sharpened logs were arranged in

3772-616: The Red Army routinely employed them in the same fashion, but on an even larger scale, for the remainder of the war. Of the 47 fortified regions in the Red Army at the end of World War II, more than 30 were used to form machine gun artillery brigades and the rest were disbanded. By the 1950s the fortified regions in the Far East had been disbanded, and only a few remained in the Transcaucasus and Karelia, using different TO&Es from

3854-770: The Transbaikal, one in Kazakhstan, and four on the Turkish border. The organization of each fortified region differed according to the needs of their respective military districts. However, each fortified region generally included between three and five separate machine gun artillery battalions (with some additionally including a motor rifle battalion), a tank battalion and between one and three battalions or companies of tank turrets dug in as pillboxes, one to three artillery battalions or separate batteries (including rocket and anti-tank), an anti-aircraft rocket battalion or battery,

3936-521: The US developed the M24 , a mine that was placed off to the side of the road. When triggered by a tripwire, it fired a rocket. However, the mine was not available until after the war. The Chinese had a lot of success with massed infantry attacks. The extensive forest cover limited the range of machine guns, but anti-personnel mines were effective. However, mines were poorly recorded and marked, often becoming as much

4018-763: The World War II units (see http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/other/ur.htm ). As Sino-Soviet tensions increased during the 1960s, the Soviet Army began to create new fortified regions to provide security in the Far East. The first two, the 97th and 114th, were formed in March 1966 to protect the Transbaikal railways. Each included three motor rifle battalions with four companies each, four tank battalions with four companies equipped with T-34-85 , IS-2 , IS-3 , IS-4 , T-54/T-55 , and OT-55 tanks. The units also included

4100-572: The advantage of being able to carefully scrutinize each step they take (though forcing foot-mounted forces to take the time to do so has benefits in and of itself). They were used by the Jin dynasty in China at the Battle of Zhongdu to slow down the advance of Genghis Khan 's army; Joan of Arc was wounded by one in the Siege of Orléans ; in Japan they are known as tetsu-bishu and were used by ninjas from

4182-533: The aftermath. During the Cold War , the members of NATO were concerned about massive armored attacks by the Soviet Union. They planned for a minefield stretching across the entire West German border, and developed new types of mines. The British designed an anti-tank mine, the Mark 7 , to defeat rollers by detonating the second time it was pressed. It also had a 0.7-second delay so the tank would be directly over

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4264-517: The beginning of the war had metal casings, metal detectors could be used to speed up the locating of mines. A Polish officer, Józef Kosacki , developed a portable mine detector known as the Polish mine detector . To counter the detector, Germans developed mines with wooden casings, the Schu-mine 42 (antipersonnel) and Holzmine 42 (anti-tank). Effective, cheap and easy to make, the schu mine became

4346-435: The butt end disturbed a bowl underneath and a slow-burning incandescent material in the bowl ignited the fuses. At Augsburg in 1573, three centuries after the Chinese invented the first pressure-operated mine, a German military engineer by the name of Samuel Zimmermann invented the Fladdermine (flying mine). It consisted of a few pounds of black powder buried near the surface and was activated by stepping on it or tripping

4428-406: The caponier served as a means of access to the outworks , protecting troops from direct fire; they were often roofless. Although they could be used for firing along the ditch, the flanks of the bastions were the main defence of the ditch by fire. In later polygonal forts , caponiers were often roofed and were not intended as a type of covered way , but as the main way of keeping the ditch clear of

4510-416: The casualties recorded in 2021. During the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine , both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used land mines. Ukrainian officials claim Russian forces planted thousands of land mines or other explosive devices during their withdrawal from Ukrainian cities, including in civilian areas. Russian forces have also utilized remotely delivered anti-personnel mines such as the POM-3 . In

4592-451: The definition of mines or booby traps and are also referred to as "improvised", "artisanal" or "locally manufactured" mines. Other types of IED are remotely activated, so are not considered mines. Remotely delivered mines are dropped from aircraft or carried by devices such as artillery shells or rockets. Another type of remotely delivered explosive is the cluster munition , a device that releases several sub munitions ("bomblets") over

4674-417: The ditch without subjecting the next caponier to fire. The length of the straight sections of the ditch is chosen so that it can be covered by fire from a single caponier. Caponiers are often wedge shaped so that they can fire down both angles of the ditch. An alternative to the caponier is a counterscarp battery, dug into the outer face of the corner of the ditch, giving a similar field of fire . Reached by

4756-403: The ditch, and often has provision for small cannon to sweep the ditch as well. To clear the smoke and fumes from the firing the roof of the caponier is often provided with ventilation ports. To avoid fire from one caponier bearing on the next, caponiers are sometimes set at alternate corners of the fort, so that they fire towards a blank wall at the opposite end of the ditch, giving full coverage of

4838-413: The end of the war, the British started to use tanks to break through trench defenses. The Germans responded with anti-tank guns and mines. Improvised mines gave way to mass-produced mines consisting of wooden boxes filled with guncotton, and minefields were standardized to stop masses of tanks from advancing. Between world wars, the future Allies did little work on land mines, but the Germans developed

4920-423: The explosive. The percussion cap , developed in the early 19th century, made them much more reliable, and pressure-operated mines were deployed on land and sea in the Crimean War (1853–1856). During the American Civil War , the Confederate brigadier general Gabriel J. Rains deployed thousands of "torpedoes" consisting of artillery shells with pressure caps, beginning with the Battle of Yorktown in 1862. As

5002-470: The fall and winter of 1989, during the reorganization of the Soviet Army, most of the fortified regions were reorganized into machine gun artillery regiments of newly created machine gun artillery divisions. Mine field A land mine , or landmine , is an explosive weapon concealed under or camouflaged on the ground, and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets, ranging from combatants to vehicles and tanks, as they pass over or near it. Such

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5084-515: The fortified lines in the west had fallen, the Red Army began organizing a somewhat different sort of unit, also known as a "Field" Fortified Region (District). These were brigade-sized in terms of manpower (apx. 4,500 men), with anywhere between four and eight machine gun - artillery battalions, a signal company, a medium mortar company, and other supporting units. They were not tied to any fortified line and had some, mostly horse-drawn, mobility, so are sometimes referred to as "field" units, as opposed to

5166-415: The fourteenth century onward. Caltrops are still strung together and used as roadblocks in some modern conflicts. Gunpowder , an explosive mixture of sulfur , charcoal and potassium nitrate was invented in China by the 10th century and was used in warfare soon after. An "enormous bomb", credited to Lou Qianxia, was used in 1277 by the Chinese at the Battle of Zhongdu. A 14th-century military treatise,

5248-408: The help of a mixture of real and fake minefields; and they laid mines alongside railroad tracks to discourage sabotage. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, both sides used land and sea mines, although the effect on land mainly affected morale. The naval mines were far more effective, destroying several battleships. One sign of the increasing power of explosives used in land mines was that, by

5330-461: The increasing mobility of war. The Germans developed the Skorpion system, which scattered AT2 mines from a tracked vehicle. The Italians developed a helicopter delivery system that could rapidly switch between SB-33 anti-personnel mines and SB-81 anti-tank mines . The US developed a range of systems called the Family of Scatterable Mines (FASCAM) that could deliver mines by fast jet, artillery, helicopter and ground launcher. The Iraq-Iran War ,

5412-417: The likelihood of civilian casualties at the conflict's end. These self-destruct mechanisms are not absolutely reliable, and most land mines laid historically are not equipped in this manner. There is a common misperception that a landmine is armed by stepping on it and only triggered by stepping off. This is not the case for almost all types of mine. In virtually all cases the initial pressure trigger detonates

5494-406: The men of the fortified regions were almost entirely trained as heavy weapon crews, in order to hold ground by firepower rather than by manpower. This was a very practical solution, given that so much of the Soviet-German front was impracticable for offensive action by either side. The new field fortified regions were most extensively employed during Operation Koltso . Don Front was outnumbered by

5576-414: The military still preferred guncotton. In 1863, the German chemical industry developed trinitrotoluene ( TNT ). This had the advantage that it was difficult to detonate, so it could withstand the shock of firing by artillery pieces. It was also advantageous for land mines for several reasons: it was not detonated by the shock of shells landing nearby; it was lightweight, unaffected by damp, and stable under

5658-427: The mine, since mines are designed to kill or maim the victim rather than standing still until the mine can be disarmed. This misperception originated with the fictional portrayal of mines, often in movies in which the disarming of a mine is a source of narrative tension. Some types of mines do actually use this mechanism, though these types are rare. One example is the MS3, a pressure-release mine similar in appearance to

5740-484: The mine. They also developed the first scatterable mine, the No. 7 ("Dingbat"). The Americans used the M6 antitank mine and tripwire-operated bounding antipersonnel mines such as the M2 and M16 . In the Korean War , land mine use was dictated by the steep terrain, narrow valleys, forest cover and lack of developed roads. This made tanks less effective and more easily stopped by mines. However, mines laid near roads were often easy to spot. In response to this problem,

5822-401: The mines. Starting in the 19th century, more powerful explosives than gunpowder were developed, often for non-military reasons such as blasting train tunnels in the Alps and Rockies. Guncotton , up to four times more powerful than gunpowder, was invented by Christian Schonbein in 1846. It was dangerous to make until Frederick Augustus Abel developed a safe method in 1865. From the 1870s to

5904-598: The most common mine in the war. Mine casings were also made of glass, concrete and clay. The Russians developed a mine with a pressed-cardboard casing, the PMK40, and the Italians made an anti-tank mine out of bakelite . In 1944, the Germans created the Topfmine , an entirely non-metallic mine. They ensured that they could detect their own mines by covering them with radioactive sand; the Allies did not find this out until after

5986-409: The pre-war units, which were static. "Strong in artillery and machine guns and weak in riflemen, the fortified region was used as an economy of force minor formation for purely defensive tasks such as the holding of passive sectors or the flank of a penetration." In effect, as Soviet production of heavy weapons vastly increased in the middle part of the war, while manpower was hard put to keep pace,

6068-534: The presence, proximity or contact of a person or vehicle". Similar in function is the booby-trap , which the protocol defines as "any device or material which is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act". Such actions might include opening a door or picking up an object. Normally, mines are mass-produced and placed in groups, while booby traps are improvised and deployed one at

6150-477: The term was sometimes used to describe the flanking positions set at the corners of the ditch that provide the same function in that style of fort, especially in France. In bastioned forts, it usually takes the form of a low open passage, often partly sunken into the floor of the ditch and projecting outward into and across it, with access from the main fortress via a passage through the curtain wall. The roof, if any,

6232-438: The war. Several mechanical methods for clearing mines were tried. Heavy rollers were attached to tanks or cargo trucks, but they did not last long and their weight made the tanks considerably slower. Tanks and bulldozers pushed ploughs that pushed aside any mines to a depth of 30 cm. The Bangalore torpedo , a long thin tube filled with explosives, was invented in 1912 and used to clear barbed wire; larger versions such as

6314-439: The weight fell, the wheels struck sparks against flint , igniting a set of fuses leading to multiple mines. A similar mechanism was used in the first wheellock musket in Europe as sketched by Leonardo da Vinci around 1500 AD. Another victim-operated device was the "underground sky-soaring thunder", which lured bounty hunters with halberds , pikes , and lances planted in the ground. If they pulled on one of these weapons,

6396-538: Was developed during the Russian Civil War , when large territories were to be defended by relatively sparse military force. The first military units named so appeared in 1923. In 1928 the program for the construction of the comprehensive system of fortified districts was launched. It started with 13 fortified districts, which over time evolved into the Stalin Line . Beginning in early 1942, long after

6478-472: Was larger. Both were packed by the thousand into bombs. All three were designed to inactivate after a period of time, but any that failed to activate presented a safety challenge. Over 37 million Gravel mines were produced between 1967 and 1968, and when they were dropped in places like Vietnam their locations were unmarked and unrecorded. A similar problem was presented by unexploded cluster munitions. The next generation of scatterable mines arose in response to

6560-519: Was mainly employed in the defenses of major fortifications, in which role it used in several European wars of the eighteenth century and the American Revolution . One of the greatest limitations of early land mines was the unreliable fuses and their susceptibility to dampness. This changed with the invention of the safety fuse . Later, command initiation , the ability to detonate a charge immediately instead of waiting several minutes for

6642-446: Was often made against weather, observation and small arms fire, not artillery. As polygonal fortresses evolved, caponiers became more substantial, higher and protected above from plunging fire with masonry and earth cover. In late 19th century, works which were largely underground, caponiers were reached via a tunnel from within the fort. The caponier is usually equipped with a firing step and rifle ports to allow troops to fire along

6724-439: Was waterproofed by wrapping it in cowhide and covering it with oil. It was filled with compressed gunpowder and lead or iron pellets, sealed with wax and concealed in a trench. The triggering mechanism was not fully described until the early 17th century. When the enemy stepped onto hidden boards, they dislodged a pin, causing a weight to fall. A cord attached to the weight was wrapped around a drum attached to two steel wheels; when

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