Re: [SG] Wandering mines (was: NAC SAS rescues hostage. . .)

At 00:42 03/02/99 +0100, you wrote:
SNIP
>John Atkinson wrote:
>
>> Russia, in WWII.  Dogs, anti-tank mines, and improper training
>> methods--the dogs hid under tanks and blew up, alright.  They just
went
>> for Russian tanks (just like the ones in training) instead of German
>> ones.  Program cancelled.
>
>Sweden, during and after WWII. Same basic idea, but IIRC our dogs were
>trained on Soviet tanks <g> My great-uncle used to have one of those
mine
>dogs, but both he and it died long before I was born.
>
>Later,
>Oerjan Ohlson

The story of the boomeranging Soviet mine-dogs comes from German
sources,
and I think it's dodgy for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the Germans
shot
every dog they found on the offchance it was a mine-dog, which doesn't
sound
like the reaction to a comical Soviet mistake.	Secondly, the Red army
persisted with it from late '41 to '43, and would surely have spotted
the
problem fairly early on(!).  They claimed 12 German tanks killed by dogs
at
Kursk.	The main reason for ditching the idea appears to be the change
from
defence to offence in '43.

More on-topic:	I recall a proposed "smart mine" consisting of a sphere
with
an explosive charge, rockets to hurl it in the right direction and a MAD
to
let it find tanks.  It would have bowled around the battlefield until it
ran
into a target, then exploded.  The biggest theoretical problem was the
huge
number of false targets.

Rob

"Rob Paul

Dept of Zoology
Oxford University
South Parks Road
Oxford
(01865) 271124
----------------------------------------------
"Once again, villainy is rotting meat 
before the maggots of justice!"
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